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A Memory and a Mentor

Copyright © 2005, W. David Tarver

I just purchased a 2-gigabyte memory chip for one of my electronic gadgets, a digital audio recorder. Even though I am an electrical engineer, I had to stop and reflect in amazement at the little marvel that I was holding in my hand. 2 gigabytes is 16 billion bits of information. To put that into context, that’s enough memory to store 2500 books, which is a lot more books than I have ever owned.

Anyway, as I stood there drooling over my new memory chip, I couldn’t help but remember the first time I ever encountered such a device. It was way back in 1972, when I was a student at General Motors Institute (GMI). As a GMI student, I had an internship at a GM facility in Flint, Michigan. I was assigned to the Advanced Development Department, and my mentor there was a fellow by the name of Bill Kerscher. Bill was a young GMI graduate, and he looked like the typical GM engineer: a skinny, white, pocket-protector-and-thick-glasses-wearing nerd. I was young black engineering wanna-be, not two years out of high school. Bill and I were from totally different backgrounds, but we shared a love for cool gadgets and a passion for engineering. We got along well, not least because he drove a new Corvette and occasionally gave me a ride. Mostly, we got along because he understood how badly I wanted to be an engineer and he gave me good assignments to fuel my desire.

One day, we had a presentation from representatives of a new technology company. This new little company was called the Intel Corporation, and these guys were touting two of their recent inventions. The first was a semiconductor memory chip that could hold a whopping 256 bits of information, and the second was a little semiconductor device called a microprocessor. They left samples of both devices for us to play with in the Advanced Development Lab, and Bill Kerscher gave me the assignment of building a little system using the devices. I spent the next few weeks painstakingly assembling and programming a prototype using the Intel products.

I was unimpressed. The 256-bit memory chip was barely large enough to store someone’s name and address. The microprocessor only handled 4 bits of information at a time. I basically thought the devices were a novelty: difficult to use and not powerful enough to do many useful jobs. At that point, I couldn’t see the potential – I couldn’t see that microprocessors would get more and more powerful, and memory chips would hold more and more information, until they would dominate nearly every aspect of modern technology. No, I thought these devices were duds. I finished building the little system I was assigned to build, and then I went back to more "productive" work.

Years later, as an engineer at AT&T Bell Labs, and then as president of my own company, I designed and built lots of systems based on microprocessors and semiconductor memories. I came to understand the power of these devices and how to use them to do useful things. I finally got it. When I did, it was no big thing, because I had been in on the ground floor, thanks to the internship experience I got with GM and my mentor Bill Kerscher. Now when I look back, I see how important that early experience was, even if I didn’t fully grasp the significance of what I was exposed to.

During the holidays, I was home visiting the folks and I decided to look Bill up and thank him for being my mentor. I found him in the phone book and called him up. Bill himself answered the phone. He sounded exactly the same, though more than 30 years had passed since I had seen him. He’s wasn’t a young Corvette-driving bachelor anymore, he was a long-married, retired ex-GM engineer. We reminisced about the "good ole days" at GM, and caught up on what we had each been doing for the past 32 years. Finally I brought up our experience with the Intel guys. I said, "Too bad I didn’t realize how important Intel was. I should have sold everything I owned and bought Intel stock!" Bill replied, "You and me both! Who knew?"

I guess mentors don’t know everything.

February 15, 2005

Red Bank, NJ