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Related:

The 10k on Widlar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29962835 - Jan 2022 (0 comments)

Bob Widlar – The Life of an Engineering Legend - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20014204 - May 2019 (10 comments)

Bob Widlar: the Valley's most celebrated dropout and IC designer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512819 - Nov 2018 (0 comments)

What’s All This Widlar Stuff, Anyhow? (1991) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8437737 - Oct 2014 (3 comments)

I don't normally include threads that got zero comments, but those articles are good—especially the last one, which is a must read—and Widlar has been surprisingly under-represented here.

> and Widlar has been surprisingly under-represented here.

I think that goes for hardware in general.

The art of analog electronics is amazing and especially underappreciated in computer-oriented circles. Widlar's brilliance manifested in the extreme simplicity of the circuits he designed for incredibly complicated ideas.
That ad with the big finger on it impresesd me.

"He soon came back as a contractor for National and, in 1980, ended up founding Linear Technology with Robert Swanson and Bob Dobkin,"

And off here comes the best technical writers when it comes to electronics, Jim Williams and Bob Pease. RIP.

I had that taped above an instrument rack looking down on us undergrad techs working with million dollar scopes.

The managers and customers didn't need to see it, but we were given strength from knowing it was there.

> digital? "every idiot can count to one" — BW