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Oral History – Paul Penfield Jr.
(Continued)
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I noticed from the list of
publications on your website that the number of transistor related articles
dramatically increased from 1954 through 1958, with as many as 20 published
articles a year in 1956 and 1957.
Was this a full time activity?
No, this was very much a part
time thing, and basically I worked on these evenings and over
weekends. This had nothing to do
with my school work exactly. After I graduated from college (Amherst) I
moved on to MIT, first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student,
preparatory to getting my doctorate in 1960. I was there for five years, from 1955 to 1960. My doctorate was in electrical
engineering. During this period, I
continued to write these articles.
I’m not convinced these were great articles, or that the
construction projects were as high quality as you could buy, but at the
time, there was nothing else, and there was a vacuum in the literature for
hobbyists and for people, who already knew something about electronic, who
wanted to learn transistors. I
tried to fill that vacuum, along with several other people, and I think we
did a reasonable job, publishing a whole series of articles. I had a long series in Audiocraft
magazine, which must have encompassed 20 or so articles, covering all
aspects of designing transistor audio circuits.
How were you able to
decide the topics for your transistor articles?
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Oral History – Paul Penfield Jr.
(Continued)
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My articles were basically of
two types. One type of article was
construction projects. That went
all the way from a guitar amplifier, a portable phonograph you could take
to the beach and not lug along a suitcase full of batteries, and I even
made an automotive application – a headlight dimmer. So, I wrote a lot of
construction articles. I liked construction projects. In every case, I designed and built each
of these. I fabricated the projects myself, took the photographs myself, or
had a friend take the photos. I
would then write the article and send it in to the magazine. The magazines paid for the articles,
$100 maybe. Audio magazine paid $30 a page, so if I wrote a four page
article, that was over $100. During
a brief period, I actually made enough money to pay for my tuition at
MIT. That was back when tuition
wasn’t very much, of course - $1100 a year. But I actually paid my tuition off this and didn’t have to
get an assistantship. So, I always
say that I worked my way through graduate school by writing articles. This was in the 1956, 1957
timeframe. I’d sit down and grind
out one article after another after another – about ¾ of these were
accepted. I didn’t get many
rejections, and when I did, I would send it in to another magazine and they
would accept it. There was such a dearth of good material on
transistors. Again, it was a case
of my being the right person at the right time.
Go
To Penfield Oral History, Page 5
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