Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

We had a grand old time. I told dad I’d clean up the projector with alcohol when he brings it over.

(Yes, he was the light plug, and yes, when he “plugged into” my mom the lampshade on his head lit up. I had no idea why the other adults at the party thought it was so funny until years later. I just thought it was a cool idea.)

Can’t wait for the viewing party! Let me know when!

I was the only one of five kids who went into an engineering-esque field. I had a 12th grade math teacher who wanted me to go into engineering. I told her of my ho-hum grade point average, but she was still confident I could get a certain scholarship, especially since she was willing to recommend me. I had no idea why she chose me; I didn’t manage to get A’s most of the time in her class. But I guess I did well enough.

Of course, she was right. Years later, I was programming in C++.

I loved your degaussing story! My father never did anything like that, but he had a working ham radio receiver all the way up to the 70s.

I can relate to this one on a couple of levels.
First my Dad was an EE who worked for Kodak, so we always had plenty of photographic gadgets around. ( Actually, he worked in the government division that made spy satellites. )

When I was a child, I used to watch him fix our TV. He would change out vacuum tubes and degauss the screen with a sci-fi looking coil.

He would help me and my friend Dave with all of our crazy experiments and inventions.

Now both Dave and I are Mechanical Engineers. I wrote about one of our “Kodak moments” on my old Amazon blog. Bill and Dave’s Space Program: http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK2NEGLZUH9SYC6

My new blog is here: http://azeperak.org/blog/
( I have another entry on Kodak spy satellites in there.)

I also started adding some articles to encourage kids to pursue Engineering and Science. My next article will be to encourage girls to consider Engineering.

Anyway, I enjoyed your post.

Will Azeperak
Azeperak@yahoo.com