Brilliant people not seeing the bigness of future markets is common
enough. My father, SK this last May, retired as the principal
engineer for General Dynamics, Electric Boat, his ability to design
never thought of electronics was legend.
As his guitar playing son in the early 60's when he was still an up &
coming EE, I remember being frustrated using a tuning fork to tune my
acoustic guitar. The only electric tuning device at the time was the
Strobo-Conn mechanical tuner and it was priced for studios. I asked
him to make an inexpensive, portable, battery powered tuning device
that would indicate high,low and dead on for a the specific
fundamental frequencies of EADGBE so I could use it to get my guitar
tuning dead on, and small enough to fit in the guitar case.
He declined saying his contract with General Dynamics wouldn't allow
it and besides, nobody would want to buy such a thing. There was
nothing on the market at the time and there wouldn't be one for many
years. I tried telling him if he designed this and went into business
for himself making these, there would be sales to almost every
stringed musician in the free world; the voice of a 14 year old
seeing the future wasn't heard.
Can't say I blame him for not leaving the security of a solid job
providing for his family, but what a market he missed being the first
inventor in.
OTOH, he did invent many things at home which were solely for his
enjoyment; in the last issue of Ham Radio he had a comment about the
efficacy of narrow band FM (which he had refined in home). In the
early 70's he made a battery powered "black box" which plugged into
the audio jack of his Collins. This device filtered the audio to a
very few Hz and generated an independent side tone which made for for
clear CW reception with no atmospheric noise in the background. He
used it extensively but there was only the one made.
73,
Gary, KA1J
> Years ago, my cousin (an Electrical Engineer specializing in machine
> code and now a SK) asked me about SDRs before anyone had openly heard
> about them. He was interested in starting something up and wondered if
> I'd be interested. I thought for a moment about old timers and their
> resistance to change and replied, "Nah, I doubt there'd be a place fo
> it" Shows how good my predictions for the future are, <:-))
>
> 73
>
> Roger (K8RI)
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