An Analog Life: Remembering Jim Williams

the world is an analogue place whether it be temperature pressure flow rate audio everything in the world is analyzed I call Jim a poet in circuitry now Jim was I think a scientist he was an inventor he was artistic and he was an engineer and and he had the rare ability to take all of those skills and integrate them together and make them easy to understand I can't tell you how many people use Jim as their sounding board for technical issues and there's great things that he would do he always be available for you no question was too stupid and he would sit down whether you were senior guy or junior guy right out of college and he would slowly methodically and in the very helping way help you figure out what the circuits were about and what was going on when Jim Williams came in he surprised me for his first interview he actually showed up Himba muta shots and I thought wow this guy is either really confident he had him in office and pulled up a chair as close as he could get the front of my desk look many i and proceeded to interview me for an hour early on Bob dobkin who was his boss encouraged Jim to write articles as he worked on application circuits and Jim became well-known because his application notes were very detailed and very thorough but very easy for the reader to understand math can describe 3.29 it can give you all those decimal points but it won't tell you the real understanding of what's going on and that's how he communicated very intuitively very you know he'd have little expressions that you'd pick up from reading him over the years I never really noticed Jim Williams celebrity status at linear technology until I went to a customer visit with him a customer completely ignored me and just went straight to Jim and said oh wow I finally get to meet you and shook his hand and there was a little bit of gushing involved and of course I was kind of going oh what's what's going on here Jim had a tap note years ago that was a page short and the back page was blank - Bob Swanson saw the the proof and said what's going on the back page Jim said nothing I I finished Bob said we're paying for that page and it's not going to be blank he drew a cartoon and it was a hip thereafter all of his app notes had cartoons Jim had a had a newborn son at the time in the early 90s and Jim and his his wife determined that Jim was the one who would take care of the baby at night and Jim decided what else do you do at night but hack circuits came up with the idea of baby bottles denoting the complexity of the circuit and a simple circuit would just get a couple baby bottles and a complicated one would get a lot of baby bottles signifying a feeding number of feedings customers still talked about that app note so my first impression of Jim Williams desk was that I thought he was a mad scientist Jim would make his bench here at work as messy as possible to make it more difficult for other engineers to come by and grab equipment they would need for their measurements off of his bench he doesn't just pile up his circuit boards that he finishes he assembles them and he also places them that they kind of look like a mini city they'll be like a bridge on top of two power supplies or something and his board would sit on top and a slope he needed a part it was there I would point investors to this maze of wires in Jim's office and say that's analog design and the investors with really impressed and they would walk away think boy these guys are a bunch of gurus and that must be some black magic just look at what it takes to be successful in analog Jim had a reputation that I don't know it's good to encourage and the younger crowd of playing pranks one morning I walked into my lab and I noticed that the clock in the wall was running five minutes an hour slow okay we knew somebody was messing with it so we fixed it then it started running backwards he was running at the correct speed but it was running backwards and I went so far as to call up the manufacturer and he said it's impossible for them to run backwards so I had the clock replace then I built up a little circuit consisting of a battery a micro switch a two-second time delay and a flash bulb you know anybody tampering with a clock of course would have the flashbulb flash in their face the next day I went in in the lab and I noticed that the clock wasn't hanging quite right it was setting out on the bottom so I carefully removed it and this dummy Hand Grenade fell out and there was a picture of a finger and a comment about this is the only picture you'll get from me how stupid do you think I am there we called it quits it wasn't until years later that he finally admitted that it was him he did electronic art he would look around at the junk stores for interesting looking parts and he would use those parts to make some sculpture that told pressure or temperature and they were all working in working conditions and he he loved to make him shows you the visual aesthetic that he had that your things are this Tektronix oscilloscope was beautiful just by looking inside and seeing other people's thoughtful contributions and he kind of interpreted that as a as a language tell you you know when Jim passed away an engineer came to Jim's house and knocked at his door his wife answered this engineer said is it true that that Jim has died yes he stood there and cried and his wife didn't know who he was but he knew who Jim listen I've known Jim since 70s Walt linear I'd see him every day I passed his des we talked about what's going on and calls he's got and what he's writing up and he worked for me sometimes he got a little direction from me sometimes he would make up instruction but he was always somebody that I could talk to about some of the problems we were having here and different product ideas almost daily for 30 years here and now that he's gone I look at his empty desk in his empty office and I miss it Beauty so I think analog is beauty you

Channel: Computer History Museum

Views: 22,488

Rating: 4.9901476 out of 5

Keywords: Analog Life, Jim Williams

Id: 1wwZ8eI3jvw

Length: 8min 23sec (503 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2012

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