Electronics and the Bald Eagle

Electronics and the Bald Eagle

My dad had a great fondness for technology. In high school he built a camera. It is made of wood and has the large bellows and glass plates, with a cloth you cover your head, just like in the old movies. Not a pocket camera, but the shutter, a rolling window shade like device, still works. When I was a kid he had a large collection of half-frame cameras. Normal single lens reflex cameras put 24 or 36 images on a roll of film. A half frame camera makes the images half as large and puts 72 images on a 36 exposure roll with half the resolution. My father loved these cameras because you can take twice as many images per roll. The other way to look at it is they have half the resolution. Well for a guy who wore trifocals, resolution, who needs resolution. My father took tens of thousands of photos with these low resolution cameras all with the appeal of bank security camera clarity.

When the astronauts were going to the moon, they took large frame Hasselblad cameras and we got stunning images of the moon, if my dad had been in charge, and he said this a number of times, they would have stuck with the half-frame camera, saved on film, and we would have images only a police detective would find useful.

He was always into taking movies. He had a 16 mm camera and projector. He had 8 mm movies and finally super 8 movies. I remember watching him splice the movie film together with his splicer and little pieces of tape with sprocket holes. As a kid, he let us make movies, of course they had to be short as the film cost a couple of dollars a minute, but I made a 5 minute silent monster classic entitled, I am curiously green. It led to many future Halloween costumes, but never was picked up for distribution by a major studio. He had a movie light which was so bright and so hot that one could light paper on fire by shining it at it. As I kid we tested this fascinating pyrotechnic technique many times. It made great movies but left white spots in your field of view. “Smile” “I can’t see.” “Smile” “Where are you?” “Smile at the camera.” I know how Miss America must feel, mechanical smile, but no ability to see from the lights.

When video cameras came in, he was right in line. On our trip around the United States in 1966 we had extensive discussions of why we couldn’t have TV in the car. My dad was of course thinking about receiving the signal with an antennae. “TV signals are line of sight. It will never work.” We even thought of getting an aerodynamic antennae like in an airplane. In the six weeks it took to circumnavigate the entire United States stopping at every tourist spot and a bathroom stop every hour or so, we had lots of time to discuss TV reception and line of sight transmission. Every Christmas we would make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to see the stores around Union Square. We would go to Macy’s, and the Maiden Lane Pet store, where a cute, fluffy, mixed breed puppy would go for $300 in 1960’s money. I am sitting next to my own mixed ancestry mastador, so I must be careful not to say mutt. We would go to Dunhill’s tobacco shop to ask for empty cigar boxes, they were made of mahogany and provided excellent, although tobacco scented wood, for making things. FAO Swartz was on the list as was the City of Paris with its wonderful multistory Christmas tree in the foyer of the building. But there was Abercrombie & Fitch. Abercrombie & Fitch was not as it is now, a fashion house for young people. It was a store that sold weird stuff and hunting clothes to the fabulously rich. Sort of like Sharper Image for billionaires. They had leather, full sized, rhinoceroses. They had clothes to wear on Safari. They had golf balls with radio receivers in them so you couldn’t loose your ball. They had a video tape recorder for sale. It was so unique, and expensive, that it was in the front window of the store. Betsy, my sister wanted one for the car. There were a number of problems with this idea. First, it was really expensive and secondly it required 120 volt power. Third, televisions of the time had tubes, which required lots of power. Needless to say, in 1966, my father was willing to have a weeks long discussion of how we couldn’t have TV in the car, but the issues, were not “Because I said so.” They were “Because TV signals are line of sight.” The issues were always taken back to the physics.

Now, I must admit that many of the things my father said were impossible, have come to pass. I thought highly of Dick Tracy’s wrist watch TV phone. Which according to my father, was “IMPOSSIBLE”. When I was a kid building radio control airplanes trying to start glow motors, I asked about the possibility of electric flight. “It is impossible, because of power to weight.” We had long discussions of having phones in every car. “It is impossible, because of band width restrictions.” Video image transmission for the masses, IMPOSSIBLE. So while my dad was a very, very smart guy, and understood physics, and gave physics explanations for problems, he rarely understood how sneaky electrical engineers find some technological way to cheat. He loved electronics, but he didn’t expect them to violate the laws of physics by some cleaver work around.

He really got into video cameras. He would video tape everything. He video taped television, movies, lectures, dinner. We had thousands of VHS video tapes in the house. There was just one problem. While he video taped things without the commercials, that was nice before Tiveo and digital recording, but he did it at the lowest resolution possible, to save on video tape. He used a morass of wires and switches that the dog slept on. Now while I really liked the dog, it does not lead to high fidelity tapes that one would like to watch again. Fuzzy dogs sitting on morasses of wires make fuzzy video tapes. But don’t worry, we will have a lot of them. He would video tape entire cruises without stopping. He video taped meals. When he went to a wedding he would set up the video camera on a tripod in the corner, plug in the camera to wall power, and run it for five hours in one direction. I have watched more compelling bank security camera footage. He would then want to replay it, unedited, to show you the event. I at one point suggested that he call up the police and see if he could get a contract for providing videos that would just bore people into confessing. “Oh, officer, I did it. I did it. Just turn off that video tape of the food line at what’s her name’s wedding. Please, I beg you.”

When Alfia and I got married my dad carefully instructed the videographer to not ever turn off the camera and not move at all during the wedding. The only part of the tape that was useful was when the videographer caught the minister having a mental break down during the actual wedding ceremony. “Do you take this man to be your.. Who sent you?” “Marshal McCuen, sent me” “You have destroyed the sanctity of this marriage” “Oh get on with it.” The minister decompensated and ran from the ceremony in her purple cowboy boots, the video was unedited, and unwatched, but not to worry, it was low resolution.

The cameras, and video cameras, and digital cameras, and computers multiplied, and multiplied. Each device needed a little zipper bag to live in, and it needed to have back up. My dad would come over to our house to baby sit. He would unload the devices, two computers, power supplies, tape drives, cameras, the table would quickly be covered with electronics, power cords, and zipper bags. The computers always came in pairs. There were two Northstar Z80 machines, then two Sol 8080 machines, then two Osborne CPM machines, two PC knockoffs, on and on. They came in pairs, and they were PC’s. Never MACs. In the mid 1970’s when he started his computer enthusiasm, computers needed a support group. He would commute to the computer clubs weekly with his computers, set up, copy disks, disks, and disks, and disks of programs. Very few of the copies worked, as the copies were poor, but he copied disks, and copied disks, and copied disks. When you needed a piece of software, he was guaranteed to know someone, who could provide a copy, that didn’t work. But you had a copy of it!

At one point the computer, camera, video tape, copying hobby got so serious that he bought an Airstream trailer to provide more space to store the collection. The Airstream was about 30 feet long and parked in our front yard. He filled it with boxes, and tapes, and computers. The concept was quite simple. The Oakland fire of 1989 that burned down 3,000 homes, scared him. He decided that he needed to be able to escape in the face of another fire. Alfia and I had video taped a friend’s wedding on the Saturday before the Oakland fire. We got up and were driving over to Orinda from San Francisco when we first saw the fire. The goal of our trip was to use my dad’s computerized video editing equipment to make a wedding video for a friend. My dad had the video editing equipment, and special effects boxes. So we drove over to Orinda. We could see the fire from San Francisco but weren’t quite sure where it was. We could see it as we crossed the Bay Bridge, but couldn’t quite tell where it was. We then drove up to the Caldecott Tunnel on the way to Orinda, and right into the fire. The sky was black with smoke except for the burning embers floating everywhere. Even the sun was blackened by the smoke. People were panicking as homes were consumed by the fire storm. We opened the sun roof on the General Motors station wagon and began filming the chaos. We drove up over the Berkeley hills through Tilden Park and then down Fish Ranch Road to highway 24 beyond the Tunnel, to get to Orinda to help him evacuate. The winds were fierce, from the west, and hot with burning embers, he thought he might have to escape. We loaded the cars with electronics, and disks, and tapes. The experience of a fire storm is life changing, and as my father watched the video tape we were editing, he decided he needed a plan. An Airstream trailer would allow him to take his video tapes, and computer disks, and computers, and electronics, and escape. So he bought and then loaded the Airstream. There is just one minor problem. When you are 70, 80, going on 90, a 30 foot long, Airstream trailer filled with file cabinets with video tapes and electronics, pulled by a 1966 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, down a curvy, one lane, tree lined, mountain road, is not a fast escape. The Airstream was ultimately filled with stuff but never moved from its place in the front yard.

One of the goals of the computers, videos, cameras, and enthusiasm was to write. He wanted to write. The first approach was to build two computers, load them with memory. Why two? Well, what if one breaks? In the mid 1970’s a computer loaded with memory meant 12K, then 24K, but load them with memory. Then get a text editor, which at the time was electric pencil, then word star, then word perfect, then word. Then get a Sony tape recorder, first real to real, then cassette, then. Then get a foot switch to turn on and off the recorder. Then get a special desk to put the transcript to put the paper. At first he built a printer using his IBM Selectric. Electromagnets were installed that pulled on the typewriter mechanism to make it into a printer. Then it was Epson, dot matrix, then daisy wheel, then ink jet. All this effort was spent getting ready to write. He would get really, really, ready to write and then go to lunch. Then he would get really, really, ready to write, but it was then time for dinner, or a computer support group that was working on a new word processor that would take speech and put it to text, which would accelerate the writing. Needless to say, some things got written, but many of them were written by others on the wonderful systems he built.

There were many computer support groups over the years. They were not like AA, “I am Roger, and I am a computer enthusiast. It has been twelve milliseconds since I last used a computer.” “Hi Roger.” No these were computer support groups for people around the bay area that “shared’ software, advice, donuts, and discussions of computers. He was a member of the Forth Interest Group. Forth is a stack oriented computer language built on Reverse Polish Notation that is designed to develop software quickly. My dad was a fan of FORTH. “Forth is vastly superior to all other languages and allowed extremely rapid software development of computer programs that ran faster than machine code.” I must have heard that lecture a thousand times. No amount of argument was able to shake his faith that a computer language that ultimately produced machine code, could be faster than software written in machine code. But I digress. My dad was a FORTH enthusiast. He got ready to learn FORTH. He went to meetings to discuss FORTH. FORTH was going to be great. He was going to write great books using FORTH. Needless to say, while FORTH still exists, it did not enable my dad to produce the great literary works it so advertised.

So what can I say, he loved technology. He loved electronics, and cameras, and video, and computers, and stereos, and radios, and the little bags they all fit in, He was never an audiophile, or a videophile, he was a technophile, and a philistine, but that is another story. The one amazing thing about this electronics enthusiasm was that he never started a company to sell his knowledge. He soldered together four computers in the mid 1970’s. He discussed starting a company in the mid 1970’s to make phone scramblers with George Hect, a physicist and electrical engineer who developed electronic watches and the LCD monitor. He wrote lots of software to do studies but he never sold his knowledge, or marketed a product. He simply enjoyed technology.