“We have never encountered poor engineering in nature” –Albrecht-Buehler

It’s 1978 and I’m sitting at a workbench, electronic test equipment arrayed all around me on shelves — oscilloscopes and ‘bit boxes’, the tools of my trade.   It’s the night shift and the factory is ‘cooling fan’ quiet, almost like sitting in my living room — at least in comparison to the buzzing of the day shift when the isles are full of managers and engineers…  office types, disturbing my otherwise silent technical devotions.   And just like in my living room, I light up a ‘righteous’ cigarette and lean back on my swiveling chair, contemplating a problem with a printed circuit board I’m troubleshooting — trying to put some ‘soul in the machine’ — but it won’t initialize — stuck in a loop. I take a puff (menthols!) and exhale up toward the high industrial ceiling. When my eyes come back to the problem I glance at the scope and notice a straight line on the screen but one that is fuzzy somehow — they are never really straight. Only moments before it had been an incomprehensible blur, racing at megahertz speed and I had barely been able to sync it up so as to bring the blur into focus. Now, as I rest the probe at my side the screen is quiet — in keeping with my surroundings — relaxed at ‘zero’ volt

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