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Buts it not what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with these new fangled gadgets called transistors. As I told Stan Roodman at breakfast the other day, timing is everything. I graduated from WU in 1961 after taking 2 semester long courses in transistor theory. If we had graduated a year or two earlier, all I would have been taught was vacuum tube theory. To my astonishment, not only were there people in the world who appreciated that skill, they were willing to pay me the handsome sum of $500 a month. |
If you grew up in the 1950's, and you were good in math and science, it was a natural thing to choose. It was well known that large companies like GE had "quotas", but if you were good and worked hard, it was also known that the technical fields were a level playing field. I have to admit that I worked hard - all the way through Hanley, U City HIgh, and Washington U at places like Steak and Shake (car hop), Famous Barr (ready to wear sales), Central Hardware (credit check clerk), Chicken Delight (cook and delivery boy), and Schenberg's Market (checker) to name a few. I had good company - Don Turken, Jerry Kraus, Stan Komen, Larry Cohen, Larry Rothman, and Stan Garber. During my junior and senior years at Washington U. I worked for Sachs Electric which was by far the most successful electrical contracting and engineering firm in the Midwest. |