[optacon-l] Re: John Linvill's obituary
- From: Ollie <mallard@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:46:05 +0100
Oooops, sorry! I thought I was sending this
e-mail in private... I'm so used to other lists
I'm on, where pressing Reply only goes to the sender...
Forgive me for this mistake.
Ciao,
Ollie
At 19:33 11/03/2011, you wrote:
>Shalom Bob,
>You probably don't even remember me, but we "met"
>on the Euroguidedogs mailing list, and you helped me with Hebrew braille...
>
>I've re-joined the Optacon list recently,
>and here I find you again! I'm so glad to be
>able to resume contact with an old friend...
>
>Here is the article for you. I'm sure loads of
>people will have sent it to you by now, but I
>wanted to use this opportunity to write to you again.
>
>I'm in a bit of a hurry right now, as my husband
>is about to retorn from work and I must finish
>cooking dinner, but I would love to hear from you if and when you like.
>
>Take care, Shabbat Shalom,
>Ollie
>
>*******
>
>Stanford Report, March 10, 2011
>
>Stanford engineering professor and inventor John G. Linvill dies at 91
>
>A pioneer of Silicon Valley, John Linvill
>"transistorized" the Stanford electrical
>engineering curriculum and helped shape an industry that shaped the world.
>
>Chuck Painter
>John Linvill with his daughter, Candy, working on the Optacon
>
>John Linvill invented the optical-to-tactile
>converter, or Optacon, as a means to allow his
>blind daughter, Candy, to read ordinary print.
>
>BY ANDREW MYERS
>
>John Linvill, professor emeritus of electrical
>engineering at Stanford and inventor of the
>Optacon reading device for the blind, has died. He was 91.
>
>Linvill was a revered figure at Stanford as much
>for his self-effacing and unpretentious style as
>for his engineering foresight and his commitment to the
>entrepreneurial spirit. He chaired the Department
>of Electrical Engineering from 1964 to 1980 and
>was a seminal figure in the School of Engineering during
>the 1960s and '70s heyday that fed well-trained
>electrical engineers to an eager and growing Silicon Valley.
>
>Born and raised in Missouri, Linvill received a
>bachelor's degree in mathematics from William
>Jewell College in 1941 before enrolling at the Massachusetts
>Institute of Technology, where he earned his
>bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in
>electrical engineering. After two years as an assistant professor
>at MIT, Linvill joined Bell Labs, doing research
>on transistor circuit design problems.
>
>Linvill was content at Bell Labs, but in 1954,
>Stanford Engineering Dean Fred Terman came
>calling. Terman had in hand an unexpected gift from Sid Gilfillan,
>who expressed an interest in bringing someone to
>Stanford to build a program in the application of
>transistors. Terman's search led him to Linvill, who
>had earned a reputation as a proven and popular
>teacher while at MIT and an outstanding scholar
>in research in transistor circuits.
>
>In 1955, Linvill became Stanford's first
>appointment in a discipline that helped to shape
>an industry that in turn shaped the world. While the trajectory
>of Stanford's program began with transistor
>circuit design, it took a dramatic turn in 1956
>with the arrival of William Shockley in Palo Alto, the heart
>what is now Silicon Valley.
>
>A shrewd judge of talent
>
>During Linvill's career in the Department of
>Electrical Engineering, he repeatedly exhibited
>an intuitive understanding of transformative moments in research.
>He was able to see a breakthrough, to imagine its
>potential importance and to set in motion the
>wheels to make sure that Stanford led, always. He was a
>shrewd judge of his own talents and strengths,
>and an even shrewder judge of talent in others he
>wanted to join Stanford to realize the rare opportunity
>being presented to those with an entrepreneurial bent.
>
>John Linvill
>
>John Linvill
>
>It was this quality that led Linvill to
>contemplate the sort of academic preparation that
>would best suit electrical engineering students intent on joining
>the nascent semiconductor industry. Linvill had
>to decide whether Stanford students would be
>better served by a curriculum in traditional circuit design
>or one that included a strong component of
>semiconductor device physics and fabrication.
>
>Characteristically, Linvill tested his hypotheses
>on people of insight. In the fall of 1956 the
>year William Shockley shared the Nobel Prize for the invention
>of the transistor Linvill realized that he,
>Terman and Shockley held a similar view: that
>Silicon Valley would most need electrical engineers skilled
>in the art of semiconductor device design and fabrication.
>
>Early conversations among the inventors led to a
>proposal in which Stanford would establish a
>laboratory where electrical engineering students could research
>semiconductor devices. But semiconductor
>fabrication was not yet part of any university
>curriculum and was, in some circles, considered dangerous for students.
>
>Shockley believed the young professionals in his
>company were models for a new sort of engineer,
>and he agreed to provide the training necessary for Stanford
>to build a device fabrication laboratory.
>Stanford, in turn, would place a faculty member
>in Shockley's firm to learn the technology.
>
>Linvill's next move was to persuade Jim Gibbons,
>one of his former PhD students and a future dean
>of engineering, to accept a 50-50 appointment at Stanford
>and at Shockley Semiconductor. Linvill's charge
>for Gibbons was to set up the lab and help him
>initiate a research curriculum at Stanford. Lab construction
>began on Aug. 1, 1957. Just six weeks later, on
>Sept. 19, Shockley's model young professionals
>left his firm en masse to form Fairchild Semiconductor.
>By then, however, the embryonic Stanford lab was
>under way, and by March 1958, working with just a
>student and a technician, Gibbons had succeeded in producing
>Stanford's first semiconductor device, a year ahead of schedule.
>
>The first step in Linvill's vision for
>solid-state electronics at Stanford was complete.
>In quick succession he brought on Gerald Pearson, a talented Bell
>Labs researcher and a co-inventor of the silicon
>photovoltaic cell, and John Moll, an established
>expert in the physics of transistor operation and co-inventor
>of the MOS transistor. Together with Linvill and
>Gibbons, they created Stanford's first program in
>graduate research and education in solid-state devices.
>Soon, Bill Spicer, Jim Angell and, later, Robert
>White would enrich Stanford's faculty. In just a
>few short years, Linvill had assembled the core of Stanford's
>storied Solid State Laboratory, progenitor of
>several important electrical engineering laboratories at Stanford.
>
>Later, Linvill would entice and mentor integrated
>circuit pioneers Jim Meindl, founder of
>Stanford's Integrated Circuits Laboratory; John Hennessy, founder
>of MIPS and now president of Stanford; Jim Clark,
>the founder of Silicon Graphics; and Jim Plummer,
>current dean of the School of Engineering. Many of
>these early hires and large numbers of students remained lifelong friends.
>
>Invented device to help blind people read
>
>Linvill reveled in his role of mentor. He was
>genuinely interested in the success of others,
>especially entrepreneurial success. Linvill applied his engineering
>creativity and his entrepreneurial spirit to help
>his daughter, Candy, who became blind in infancy.
>Linvill sought a way to help her to directly read printed
>materials without translation into Braille. His
>solution, using integrated circuits developed in
>the labs and with the help of colleagues at Stanford and
>the Stanford Research Institute, was the Optacon
>(optical-to-tactile converter). The Optacon was a
>portable device with a small, hand-held camera that
>could be moved across any type of printed
>material to generate images on a fingertip-sized
>tactile display that were then felt and interpreted by a blind
>reader.
>
>Linvill received a patent for the Optacon in
>1966. He was a co-founder in 1970 of Telesensory
>Systems Inc., a company established to manufacture and disseminate
>the Optacon worldwide. The Optacon was to become
>one of the most important examples of how
>technology could be applied to the development of assistive
>devices for people with disabilities. In 1971,
>Industrial Research Inc. named the Optacon one of
>the 100 most significant products of the year. Helped
>greatly by her father's invention, Candy attended
>Stanford and went on to earn her doctorate in clinical psychology.
>
>The late 1970s demanded a new era of innovation
>in Stanford's electrical engineering curriculum.
>The advent of the microprocessor at Intel introduced electronic
>hardware controlled by software programs
>integrated in the system. Linvill and colleagues
>foresaw that optimum system design would soon require the creation
>of hardware and software designed for specific
>applications computer graphics, for example
>and that groundbreaking research would require an effective
>partnership between electrical engineering and
>computer science. The result was Stanford's
>Center for Integrated Systems (CIS).
>
>Linvill and CIS colleagues anticipated, as well,
>that with the proper openness, integrated systems
>research would profit by engaging with forward-looking
>electronics companies. As co-director of CIS,
>Linvill conceived and implemented a visitors
>program in CIS to bring industry professionals to Stanford and
>the Fellow/Mentor/Advisor (FMA) program that
>placed Stanford doctoral candidates in industry
>for a portion of their education. More than 30 years later,
>CIS has become the model for university-corporate partnerships.
>
>In 2007, at a special celebration surrounded by
>his family, Linvill was surprised by a group of
>former students, colleagues and friends who had endowed
>the Professor John G. Linvill Fellowship Fund,
>which supports the education of an outstanding
>graduate student in electrical engineering. Many of those
>contributors had flown in from across the country
>to toast their friend and mentor.
>
>In addition to serving as chair of the Department
>of Electrical Engineering, Linvill was associate
>dean of the School of Engineering from 1972 to 1980,
>and was the Canon USA Professor of Electrical
>Engineering from its endowment in 1989 until his
>retirement at the end of 1990. As a professor emeritus,
>Linvill continued to follow his passions,
>focusing research on integrated systems.
>
>Linvill was named a fellow of the Institute of
>Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1960 and
>was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1971
>and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in
>1974. He received the IEEE Education Medal in
>1976 and the John Scott Award in 1980 for his work on the
>Optacon.
>
>Linvill was honored with the American Electronics
>Association's Medal of Achievement in 1983 for
>his significant contributions to the advancement of electronics.
>He was recipient of the Louis Braille Prize
>(1984) from the Deutscher Blindenverband for the invention of the Optacon.
>
>John Grimes Linvill was born on Aug. 8, 1919, in
>Kansas City, Mo. His twin brother, William, also
>a Stanford professor, died in 1980. He is survived by
>his wife, Marjorie Linvill, of Palo Alto; a son,
>Greg (Betty), of Belmont, Calif.; a daughter,
>Candy Berg (Chris), of Portola Valley, Calif.; two granddaughters,
>Angela and Alyssa Linvill; and a great grandson, Sato Ramsaran.
>
>A service celebrating Linvill's life will be held
>at the Stanford Faculty Club on May 23 from 3:30
>to 5:30 p.m. The family asks that donations in memory
>of John G. Linvill be made to the LMSarcoma
>Direct Research Foundation in Tulsa, Okla. (
>www.lmsdr.org).
>
>Andrew Myers is associate director of
>communications at the School of Engineering.
>
>DAILY NEWS EMAIL
>
>MEDIA CONTACT
>
>Adam Gorlick, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224,
>agorlick@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>Andrew Myers, School of Engineering: (650) 736-2245,
>admyers@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
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>
>At 16:26 11/03/2011, you wrote:
> >Could someone send me the article in the body of an email so I can read
> >it?
> >
> >Thanks so much.
> >
> >Bob
> >My email is harlynn@xxxxxxxxx
> >
> >On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Ninette Legates wrote:
> >
> > > Yes, I really appreciated that article. It
> was so fascinating to read about
> > > Dr. Linvill's accomplishments.--Ninette
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > [mailto:optacon-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> > > On Behalf Of maryemerson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Sent: Friday, March 11, 2011 10:02 AM
> > > To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > Subject: [optacon-l] Re: John Linvill's obituary
> > >
> > > Thanks for letting us know. I've saved the
> obituary file in text form, and
> > > downloaded the JPG files.
> > >
> > > Mary
> > >
> > > to view the list archives, go to:
> > >
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