|
|
Oral History – Paul Penfield Jr.
(Continued)
|
|
Well, I think that covers
most of the topics we wanted to cover.
This interview has been very enjoyable for me.
Its nice to reminisce about
these times. Looking at your
website, and seeing all the old gear, like the Heathkits. I made more Heathkits than you could
shake a stick at. This was even
earlier than high school. It was in
junior high. They came out right
after the war. Heath started as a
surplus army place in Benton Harbor, Mich.
They sold surplus gear, and pretty soon determined they could put
kits together and sell them, and they did a very good job at the
construction manuals for putting the kits together. That was what really sold the kits. I sometimes worry about today’s
youngsters because so much of the hands-on experience that people get is at
the keyboard – and that’s one level removed from reality. There’s something about being able to
assemble gear, other than plugging it into a backplane. I think the
universities are finding this also.
The students that are coming are not as well prepared in hands-on
experience, as was typical 20 or 30 years ago.
You mentioned earlier that
you stepped down in 1999 as the Department Chair of Electrical Engineering
and Computer Science at MIT. What
are your current professional activities? Are you writing again?
|
|
|
Oral History – Paul Penfield Jr.
(Continued)
|
|
What I’m doing right now is
going back to some of my early interests, not in semiconductors, but in
fundamental physics, particularly in the relationship between information
theory and thermodynamics. Turns
out there is a very strong, yet unexploited relationship. By teaching this at a fairly simple
level, mainly to freshmen, you suddenly are exposed to all sorts of
fundamental questions to be answered.
I’m having a lot of fun.
This is a bit of an outgrowth of my interest in explaining things to
hobbyists. It is similar because if you want to understand something, you
have to write about it and try to explain to someone else, and in the end,
you understand it better. Teaching
to freshmen has the same attribute.
In a funny way, my experience
as a writer when I was a graduate student is serving me now because MIT has
a new requirement on communication which they are instituting for all
undergraduates. This is twice as
intensive as our previous writing requirement, and I’m co-chair of the
faculty committee which is overseeing the introduction of this new
requirement. My background of
having written (these early transistor articles) and actually having paid
for at least part of my graduate school through the income from writing is
excellent background for me. It
takes a certain amount of experience to understand what this type of
communication means.
Go
To Penfield Oral History, Page 8
|
|