Hans Camenzind's (free, downloadable) Book

On a sunny day (Mon, 31 May 2004 15:19:19 -0700) it happened Jim Thompson wrote in :

Nice, the works! Thank you. JP

Jim:

I love the way Hans weaves "the history" in with the technology.

We need to remember "the greats".

-- Peter Indialantic By-the-Sea, FL.

Hans is a neat guy, although you have to be cautious... he sent a few projects my way because he was "too busy"... they were the clients from hell :-)

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Why?. What do you mean by "greats"

Electronics is simply not on a par with say, physics. There are lots of truly trivial circuits which are essentially, the *first* things that would randamly pop into peoples minds, yet have names attached to them as if such circuits are a measure of that named persons worth. The only reason that certain names are attached to such trivial, obvious circuits, is that others were not present at the time. Being first to do something is not, on its own, a measure of value.

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Some of us, who in the 60s and 70s struggled with ways to improve circuit concepts like the band-gap reference, and to create low-voltage low-power circuitry, have considerable respect for "greats" like Robert Widlar, who features prominently in Camenzind's book. But perhaps you'd have had to have been there and done that, and read with excitement and pleasure a new Widlar article in the Journal of Solid-State Circuits, etc.

Thanks, - Win

(email: use hill_at_rowland-dot-org for now)

Hans needs a proof reader. Page 12 (1-6) "ark-over in insulators".

Jim (the other one) Meyer N.E.

Uh...it's like that in Physics, too. The Kronecker delta comes to mind: delta sub{i,j} is a symbol that's defined to be 1 if i = j, zero otherwise. And Kronecker's name is enshrined forever. (As well it should be, by the way...it's just that the thing it's attached to happens to be trivial).

And then there's the Levi-Civita symbol, epsilon sub{i,j,k} which is +1 or -1 according to whether (i,j,k) is an even or odd permutation of (1,2,3), and zero if any two of (i,j,k) are the same.

And the list goes on. The Kronecker delta and the Levi-Civita symbol got those names not because they were brilliant discoveries, but because they needed a name, and attaching the name of the people who were working on them made sense. It's no coincidence that these people also did lots *else*, often of far greater importance.

(To touch on a few others, there are Sylvester's Law of Inertia, Gauss's constant, Hermitian matrices, the Pauli spin matrices (which were just a rewriting of Hamilton's unit basis for the quaternions), the Einstein summation convention, etc.; and if you're willing to move a little further, there's the Shannon Sampling Theorem)

When you do a thousand things, some interesting, some pedestrian, the pedestrian ones are the ones most likely to be encountered by lots of people, and to need naming. That's life.

-John Hughes

But by itself, struggling to do something, is not a measure of merit.

A factor is whether or not "typical" individuals, if actually given the same opportunity would have achieved similar results. *Someone* has to be there at the start of a new discipline. There is no reason to presume that such firsts are special. It requires evidence.

The "greats" is certainly a subjective evaluation. However, to be "great" one needs evidence that what such "great" individuals achieved, was *way* *better* than what a "normal" person would have achieved. I don't see any evidence for this for many of the often quoted names in electronics. This is in contrast to names like Fynmann, Dirac, Hiesenburg, Einstein etc. where detailed examination of their work clearly shows immense ability outwith the *norm*. Indeed, to be quite frank, there is no comparison between the common names mentioned in physics with those often quoted in electronics. Electronics is simply not that challenging, despite the need for many of us engaged in such work wanting our work to have great status. It doesn't. Its usually, the same shit, different day sort of thing.

Its all too easy to give credit to those we know about, ie ones who get the press, irrespective of their worth. This is a basic phenomena of evolution. Popular traits are held in high regard because probabilistically popular traits are the, ones that are maximised.

With all due respect to Widlar, are you really suggesting that he is on a par to Fynmann and Einstein?

Being pretty good at ones job, does not make one great. In fact, what is termed good should be classed as "normal". A competent individual in his profession should be expected to have a certain standard that is above the layman in that same profession. For example, I rarely clap when watching a live band. They are *supposed* to sound "good", i.e not bad. A quote comes to mind from Mutiny on the Bounty , "sir, if we are to thrash them for minor infractions, what are we to do with them for more serious ones".

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Widlar was great, yes, but he certainly was not in the superstar league of Feynman and Einstein. If I were to call them "great," that would be to damn with faint praise.

Let's check the Goggle ratings,

Hans Camenzind - 256 Widlar - 856, Robert Widlar + Bob Widlar - 159 + 199 = 358 Winfield Hill - 6,090, Paul Horowitz - 6,480 Bob Pease + Robert Pease - 5,250 + 4,390 = 9640 Kevin Aylward - 13,000 Feynman - 460,000 Einstein - 4,330,000

Hah, I threw the 3rd and 5th lines in there to show just how silly these "ratings" can be. Kevin Aylward includes this guy,

who proves that those "Kevin Aylward" types are sure interesting folks.

BTW, Michael Jackson gets 2,400,000 so Einstein is doing OK.

Thanks, - Win

(email: use hill_at_rowland-dot-org for now)

I tend to agree, unless "passion" can be considerd a "figure of merit". Passion is what keeps many a nose to the grindstone when it might be easier to, oh, go have a beer.

One decent piece of evidence would be the number of peers who say things like "What a clever solution; I'd never have thought of that!".

And on one day, a given person might hit something unique, but another day somebody else might. Right, if they're both of the same level of competence (by definition, sorta).

Interesting line of thought. By those criteria, I'd call Tesla "great", but not "good", because while he broke so much new ground, he kept inadequate notes (in the sense that it's extremely difficult to duplicate much of his work from them alone). Also, he didn't play well with others, but then he didn't have many "peers".

Mark L. (good but not great) Fergerson

Jim Thompson gets 174,000... mostly crooks and thieves :)

I don't know why Kevin has to have such a sour personality... he must feel really insufficient and impotent ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Oh...

I'm a realist. I see life how it really is. I actually know what a sour personality actually means. Hint: all emotions are selfish etc...

Ahmmm...

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

For us it's great to have the techno side mixed in. But for most of the public, who have no tech nohow, it's a distraction, and sometimes causes them to forego reading the tome.

Well, if they don't get remembered, then they are no longer great.

Maybe he figured you could handle them because your reputation as SuperDesigner preceded you....

That doesn't mean you have to go around being such a black cloud to the rest of the world. I'd grant you that, yeah, 99.9999% of the people on this planet couldn't hold a candle to the likes of Bob Widlar much less Feynman and Einstein, but there's no reason they shouldn't take joy and be proud of whatever their lot in life is, even if it is something as mundane as picking cotton in a field... or designing electronics. :-)

[snip]

Well, in regards to Shockley, Bardeen and Brattain, the Nobel Institute apparently thought so, as he mentioned. And they were "just doing their job" for Bell Telephone.

But then how many of the Jackos are +, and how many are - ????

Thomas Edison & Thomas Alva Edison = 830,000 Nikola Tesla = 106,000 Alexander Graham Bell = 562,000

Watson A.Name "Watt Sun - the Dark Remover" schrieb:

Or he thought a client from hell deserves a designer from hell ;-)

--
Cheers
Stefan

Yes, most of the world figures out good from bad from advice from their neighbor or newspapers, TV, magazines, et. Oh yes, history books, professors, et. et.

Once one sees the value system of the world for what it is, one sees the world as the black cloud. Those whom are "successful" are often so by the efforts of those they have devoured.

I'd grant you that, yeah, 99.9999% of the people on this

Who's standard of judgment? Aylward's right in regards to the fact that many men would make the same discoveries, had they had the preparation of Widlar or Feynman. Genius is rare.

but there's no reason they shouldn't take joy and be proud of

Picking cotton or designing electronics for those who are abusing you as a slave is nothing to be proud of or take joy in. Profiting and enjoying the fruit of your own labor, so you can be a proud producer rather than an ashamed peasant is the only way to find peace, and then perhaps pride and joy.

--
Scott

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