An engineer for Linear Technology

I was visiting Linear Technology the other day and Doug Dickinson, Media Relations Manager, was leading me down the hallway to show me something in their engineering lab. As we approached the door I was very surprised to see an ancient oscilloscope – one of the very large old Tektronix s'copes, circa 1965. I thought, my god they can't actually be using this old model!

When we went into the lab I saw that this s'cope was part of a permanent memorial to a famous and highly respected linear design engineer – Jim Williams.

Jim had been a lead IC design engineer for Linear Technology for 30 years before suffering a stroke on June 10^th 2011 and passing away a couple of days later at the age of 63. He was famous for keeping all of breadboards and development boards handy on his bench in case he needed to resurrect them to answer a question for someone about one of the many ICs he'd designed – that's why it is so messy in the picture above.

Having a memorial in your lab is a pretty damn high honor for an engineer. Remembering Jim Williams.