As a young analog engineer, Bob Pease and his best friend, Jim Williams (later, one of the founders of Linear Technology) were two of my heros. I actually had the pleasure of speaking with both of them at differfent times.
Bob Pease was one of the funniest guys I've ever heard or read. He could crack up an audience of otherwise stoic engineers at National Semiconductor seminiars, and in his monthly articles in Electronic Design while sneaking in a wealth instructive, insightful info on the deeper aspects of analog circuit design. He also compiled the legendary "
National Semiconductor Audio Handbook" and the later version, the "
National Semiconductor Audio/Radio Handbook."
I still have well worn original copies of both which I've owned since they were new. Yes, I'm that old.
I identified strongly with Jim Williams because like me, did not have his engineering degree. Analog circuitry just made sense to him, and it grew from there. When I read one of his articles where he said that he envisioned analog circuitry while downhill skiing, I phoned him at his work just to tell him how much I understood that.
Interestingly, they both died within a week of each other. Interestingely, the two losses were related, since Bobs accident occurred on his way home from Jims memorial service.
Sorry for digressing, but you brought up some really great memories of really great guys.
Although at a partly late stage, Bob Widlar, who (apparently) was a significant friend of Bob Pease (both worked at National Semiconductor, and Bob Pease did a nice article about Widlar, when he passed away, so young, relatively), was/is one of my Electronics hero's.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Widlar.
Amazingly he designed lots of integrated circuit "inventions", especially including the first (commercially significant), op amp, the uA709. The earlier uA702 was also his design. He was to do a number of other op amps (and ICs), as well.
Luckily he was NOT a very, very late developer, because he unfortunately died, aged ONLY 53.
I'd be glad to have *ONLY* invented/designed ONE of his chips, by the age of 83, let alone 53.
It must have been real (great) fun, to pioneer those early chips in the 1960s/70s/80s and onwards. These days we just take them for granted.
People/engineers, use to (in the 1960s, especially), REALLY know how to make complicated circuits, of good quality, JUST out of transistors (obviously passives/diodes etc as well).
E.g. They could design very high quality, powerful amplifiers, and music Synthesizers. With not a single IC, in the whole thing.
These days, a lot/most of these "pure" transistor designers, have either disappeared, or not done it for such a long period of time, they have mostly forgotten how to do it. Very few people, these days, are left, who could do it, extremely well.
Looking back over some (now) very old electronics magazines. I am sometimes AMAZED at how clever they were, with the transistor circuitry design.
E.g. An ALL electronic, mains frequency divider (to divide it down to seconds), to drive a mechanical digits, clock.
Using a somewhat small number of transistors.
The gist of the design, was that each mains pulse (sine wave), would make a transistorized mono-stable, generate a brief pulse, which charged up a capacitor, a bit.
Once it reached a certain voltage (which represented x10 counts), it reset itself, and triggered a similar pulse onto the next stage. Similarly it divided by x6 counts, finally creating a very accurate (for its day, approx 1960s), time clock.
At that time digital binary dividers (the modern way of doing it, e.g. TTL), were impractically too expensive.
It only had about 15 transistors, in total (if I remember, correctly). It may have been from the 1950s, or 1960s, I can't accurately remember, but probably the 1960s.
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