About Me
I’m going to do this in order, chronologically. I’m an engineer. It’s the way I think. Here are my educational and career bona fides, if that's all you need. What follows is the rest of the story.
I was born in 1936, in a galaxy far, far away. Or at least it seems that way. Rural Kansas in the middle of the Depression, and my hometown of Iola, seem as distant in time and space to me now as Andromeda.
One of the advantages of being a child is that things that are hardships for adults are just fun for kids. Our old cars were a pain for Dad, because they constantly broke down, had flat tires and the heater never worked. But I liked sitting on the front fender, astraddle the big headlight, and riding like a hood ornament as Dad would drive around the block. I don’t know how Mom contended with keeping food for a growing family in an ice box during a Kansas summer, but I always looked forward to the ice wagon coming because the guy would chip off pieces from the blocks and give them to all us kids gathered around. Milking cows in a pool of feeble light from a kerosene lantern, washing dishes in water from a hand-pumped well and heated over a burner on the stove, farming with a team of draft horses...all that must have been wearing and wearying to the adults in my life who had to live each day that way. But to us kids—well, it was mostly just sort of fun. I’m glad I got the benefits without having to pay many of the premiums.
In 1946 I became a farm boy. Dad grew up on a farm, a couple of my uncles lived on farms, and Dad wanted us to live on a farm. So just after the war ended, Dad sold our house in town and we moved to a farm not so far from my home town. I believe that we should do somewhat like the Brits used to do, when they sent their kids to boarding school. Except I think we should board all our kids on farms from about age ten to high school graduation.
Living on a farm gives you an understanding of the cycles of life, of the mystery and beauty and treachery of Mother Nature, of the necessity for and benefits of hard physical work, and of the meaning of endurance and perseverance that can be learned in few other ways. Besides, you get to drive tractors, and every boy should get to drive a tractor. There are numerous moments in my life that have been written on my brain with permanent ink, some trivial and some life changing. But few are any more indelible than the memory of the day that a big, shiny red and yellow Massey Harris Model 44 tractor pulled into a field where I was plowing with our anemic little Farmall B. Dad had arranged to let me try it out for a while. I had never been at the controls of so much power in my life, and am fortunate that I didn’t pass out from hyperventilation caused by my excitement. I don’t think playing a Wii could bring that same thrill, no matter how vivid the high-def TV virtual image.
There are countless reasons why a person could be considered out of his mind to like living on a farm. Dressing in the dark in an unheated bedroom on a frigid winter morning to go hand-milk cows. Shoveling manure into a spreader to fertilize the pasture. Pitching dusty hay in a hay mow when it’s 105 degrees outside and hotter inside. Watching grass hoppers eat your corn crop down to bare stalks. But I liked it. Not the stuff I mentioned. I just liked the life of being on a farm.
Time seems to have a way of being elastic. I lived on a farm one decade out of my seven-plus, from age ten to age twenty. Yet, in my mind I always feel as though I spent all my growing up years as a farm kid. I suppose that’s mostly true. We do most of our growing up (or certainly, we should grow up) during that decade of our lives. Perhaps those ten years seem to constitute much more of my life than they actually did, because they were so influential on my personality and attitudes toward life. I feel I became much of the person that I am during those ten years, and at least in part because of them.
From age nine-and-a-half to age twenty-and-a-half—eleven years, to be technically correct—I attended a one-room country school, graduated from high school, spent two years in junior college, met and married Colleen, lost my cousin to a tractor accident, ran my own contract hay-baling business for two summers, got my first-ever piece published, started my engineering career and took my first airplane ride. It’s no wonder that decade-plus seems memorable—and a much larger portion of my life than a calendar would show it to be.
Education
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Kansas State University
There were times when I thought I wouldn’t live long enough to see it, but I did finally get my BSEE degree, in 1960. I spent two years going to the junior college in my home town, where I met my bride-to-be. We started our junior year at K-State, where I enrolled in Agricultural Engineering (I told you I liked the farm), and she in Home Economics (it’s now Human Ecology; sounds more sophisticated, but I doubt they learn any more than Colleen did). We spent the first semester there convincing ourselves that single life was not for us, and got married. I spent the second semester becoming convinced that Ag Engineering also wasn’t right for me, and switched to EE. Took two more years to correct that false start, but I finally made it. They let me wear that white cord around my neck as a reward for busting my buns for six years, and graduating Cum Laude.
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Ohio State UniversitySpeaking of false starts. I joined Bell Telephone Laboratory when I left K-State. I was impressed with getting to work at the Valhalla of electrical engineering, but went there primarily because of their work/study program with New York University to get my Masters Degree. It didn’t take long to realize that the focus of that program just didn’t suit me, and I dropped out of it. I continued working at the Labs for another year-plus, but then we packed up and headed for Columbus, Ohio, home of Ohio State University.
I went to work at the Antenna Lab on a really fascinating phased array project, taking classes part time toward my MSEE. It took three years, and two kids, but I finally finished the coursework, thesis and orals. We left for Texas and Texas Instruments, Inc. in 1965. I had to go back later to take the graduate exam that was offered only a couple of times each year, and received my diploma in the mail one afternoon. I wanted to play Elgar’s "Pomp and Circumstance" as I walked across the post office lobby to pick up my package, but couldn’t find a tape version of it. It was a rather unceremonious end to ten years of hard work, but I finally had my two degrees. And both those diplomas still look pretty good to me.
Career
Bell Telephone LaboratoryMy career path seemed to wander around through the woods, rather than following some nice, straight road from graduation to retirement, as some of my peers experienced. That tends to cause you to stumble over a rock in the path, now and then, but you do get to see some rather interesting parts of the forest. I mentioned that my first job out of college was with Bell Telephone Laboratory, in New Jersey.
After I dropped out of the Masters program, I was assigned the task of designing an antenna system to be installed in the underground launch cell of Nike Zeus missiles. The Zeus was America’s first attempt to develop an anti-missile missile. It never really worked, and that problem has not yet been reliably solved, even forty years later. But my little antenna design job sent me to White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, to conduct tests on the system. I got to see real missiles launched, and discovered that nothing I’d ever eaten on a Kansas farm had prepared me for Tex-Mex.
My second assignment at the Lab was to determine why the Zeus was far more likely to blow itself up than it was to blow up an incoming warhead. The Zeus was radar guided from a ground-based radar. After launch, and jettisoning of the booster, it would pull a hard turn down range. At this point, radar contact was often lost and the missile would fail-safe—i.e., blow up. My job was to learn why that was happening.
It was mostly a math assignment. We had to analyze telemetry data to pinpoint the exact orientation of the missile, while in flight, relative to the ground-based radar. I had learned a bit about vector analysis while at K-State, but this pushed me somewhat beyond my limits.I finally managed to complete the analysis, and we found out that the on-board antennas were the culprits. A new antenna design got the problem solved. I, and the Lab, learned two things from that experience. I learned that I was not destined to be a mathematician, and the Lab finally had to admit that existing technology was light-years away from being up to the task assigned to Zeus. The program was phased out not long thereafter, but Colleen and I had already packed up and headed west to Ohio.
Ohio State University Antenna LabI started work at the Ohio State Antenna Lab, which was part of the EE department, in the fall of 1962. That was a fascinating time to be an engineer. I was walking down the hallway at Bell Labs, not so long before that, listening to reports coming from radios in the offices reporting on the launch and recovery of Alan Shepard, America’s first man in space. AT&T had just put into orbit a huge, silvered balloon called Echo I, as a first step toward launching Telstar, America’s first communication satellite. Radio Astronomy was just becoming a science instead of a backyard hobby.
Our phased array project was to track signals bounced off Echo I and analyze them. One objective was to determine the effect of the atmosphere on the signals, and the other was to determine how well an array of smaller dishes (30 feet in diameter, in our system) could approximate the performance of one large, much more expensive, antenna. If you saw the movie Contact, and the vast array of huge dish antennas out in the desert of New Mexico, you can see where the concept took the field of radio astronomy. It was my first introduction to the world of complex electronics, and I felt I had found my home.
Electronic equipment was far more tactile in the days of vacuum tubes, and discrete transistors. You could see your circuit, touch the resistors and capacitors, replace them if they burnt out. Circuits made sense. In today’s digital integrated circuit world, none of that is true.
Circuits are too small to be seen with the naked eye, encapsulated within “chips.” They’re just little blocks on a circuit board. You can’t put a scope probe on a tube socket terminal and look at its signal. I found I truly enjoyed working on all that Buck Rogers looking stuff at the OSU array system. We tracked Echo I, watching it rise like a new star over the horizon. Our four antennas would pay obeisance to it, bowing to the horizon as it rose, and tracking it across the zenith to the opposite horizon.
I dabbled around in radio astronomy, occasionally. Late at night, between Echo passes, I would attempt to pick up the thermal energy radiated from the moon, for example. Our system was not sensitive enough for real astronomy work. I did my thesis on the theory behind the phased array concept, and finally, after three years, had completed the work for my Masters degree. It was time to move on. We headed for Texas.
Texas Instruments, Inc.The guy who had been my immediate supervisor at OSU had left a few months before I did, hired by a company down in Texas known primarily for inventing the digital integrated circuit. It was called Texas Instruments, Incorporated. He called me, about the time I was to leave OSU, and invited me down for an interview. I knew little about Texas, and nothing other than myth about Dallas. He took me into a lab filled with a radar that TI was building, called the ASR-5. It was the radar used at all major airports in the country to guide aircraft into and out of those airports.
It took about ten minutes for me to know that was what I wanted to work on. I called Colleen that evening to tell her about the day’s interview, and asked how upset she would be to live in Texas. A few weeks later we were living in a motel close to the TI plant, waiting for our stuff to arrive so we could get on with life.
I spent fourteen years in the ASR group at TI. I not only became a radar systems engineer, and development project engineer, but also entered the world of technical publications. Every contract that we won, and all those we lost, was done so on the basis of a comprehensive technical proposal. My group manager quickly came to recognize that I had a talent not only for the technical writing that was an essential part of those proposals, but for the publication of them, as well. We did it all in house, from initial draft to preparation of illustrations and photos, to printing and delivery to the customer. I carried more than one in a seat beside me on a flight to Washington, D.C. to assure that it was delivered before the deadline.
In the late 70s, TI made the decision to get out of the ASR business. I can’t say I thought that was a good move, but it caused me to make a good move. In looking for a new home within the company, I learned that a group that built Loran receivers for boats was working on a version to go in private planes. I quickly arranged an interview with the supervisor, and pleaded my case for a transfer. I was not only an experienced engineer, but a pilot and had several years experience working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It worked, and a few days later I was about to enter one of the best chapters of my life and career.
Loran, an acronym from Long Range Navigation, was developed during World War II as a means for ship navigation. The equipment was all vacuum tube technology, was bulky, heavy, consumed a lot of power and required a dedicated operator. That was fine on a ship. It even began to be used on large transport planes.
With the advent of digital integrated circuits and miniaturized processors, TI realized that a Loran receiver could be automated and put in the proverbial “bread box.” They designed and started marketing units to be used on small boats, such as would go deep sea fishing in the Gulf of Mexico.
A couple of the engineers were also pilots, and soon recognized that if certification for IFR (instrument flight rules) could be obtained from the FAA there would be a good market for a version of the unit adapted to general aviation aircraft. We met with the FAA and worked out a plan for certification. Basically, we had to fly the entire contiguous 48 states and demonstrate its acceptable accuracy. I was put in charge of all that flying. I was in hog heaven.
For the first year, we flew a Piper Navajo instrumented with equipment to record all the pertinent data to submit to the FAA. At first, I stayed in the back and operated the test equipment, but then temptation got the better of me. When we had finished the test portion of the flight, I would crawl into the right seat, next to the corporate pilot, to finish out the flight. It didn’t take long for me to talk him into letting me begin flying it. A while later, my supervisor paid for me to get my multi-engine rating so I could do that officially.
A twin-engine plane is more expensive to fly than a single, obviously, and having to commit a corporate pilot to each flight seemed a waste of resources, to this pilot’s way of thinking. So, I worked up a system of being able to collect data more or less automatically, got the FAA to approve it, and talked my supervisor into letting us finish the testing using the new, single-engine Piper Malibu.
The Malibu was just being introduced into the general aviation market, and represented the most advanced single on the market. Pressurized, it flew at turboprop altitudes, and had a cabin-class spaciousness. I got checked out at the Piper factory, and spent the next year or two in a state of bliss.
All good things must eventually come to an end, it seems. TI eventually decided that the general aviation market just wasn’t big enough for a company that size, and shut down the Loran business. I had about decided it was time to leave the corporate world anyway, so used that as justification for starting down the completely foreign path of retail business. In 1985, my son Curt and I started a high-end specialty audio store in Dallas. I’ve been in the audio business, in some capacity, ever since.
Preston Trail Audio
High end audio is a strange world, where grown men sit and listen for hours to audio systems costing many thousands of dollars, trying to decide which system has the most nuance, the best sound staging, the tightest bass. As much technology went into the design of those systems as into some of the electronics that I had worked with in engineering. But the marketplace isn’t kind to such things, and any downturn in the economy makes it easy to decide whether to pay the mortgage or buy a new set of speakers. It ultimately became apparent that the real market was in the installation of home theaters, and audio/video systems in new homes. We closed down Preston Trail Audio and started Home Technology and Entertainment, dedicated to custom home installation.
After several years of that, Curt decided he wanted to move to Florida, and I was ready to get out of full-time responsibilities. We closed HomeTech in 2000. Curt spent a few years in Florida with a custom installation company there, and then started Audio Design Incorporated. He supports custom installers with design and documentation services, and I support him with consulting engineering. I find it’s an interesting way to finish a forty-five year engineering career, which started out using a slide rule to design vacuum tube circuits. I now oftentimes find myself sitting in a motel room, most anywhere in the country, with my laptop connected via the Internet to Curt’s server in his home in Florida, busy designing a complex audio/video system for an installation in a home under construction in the Bahamas.
Ω Ω
While I was still enrolled in Agricultural Engineering at K-State, I had to design a house plan for one of my courses. Colleen and I thought that was great, for it let us plan what we thought our first house might look like, once we got to have one. I did what I thought was a great job on my house, and turned it in fully expecting an “A” grade. I got a “B.” Disappointed, and somewhat irritated, I asked the instructor why I had been graded down. He said he would have given me an A, but that I had needlessly wasted floor space by including a second bathroom in the house. “Why would you want two bathrooms in a house?” was his reaction. I was rather dumbfounded, but that was Kansas in the 1950s.
That story has stuck in my mind, all these years. It is representative of all that has changed in our lives and society, and in the world of engineering and technology, in the span of my career. I’m glad that I got to be a part of all that, and got to live the experience of America changing from a largely agrarian society to a technology-based society. No one could have imagined the changes that we farm-kids-turned-engineers would witness during our careers.