Although my college degrees are in Electrical Engineering, it is only because the field of Computer Engineering was in its infancy. My primary concentration was in logic design and computer architecture. Even the most advanced computers today are still based on the same basic building blocks that perform the logical operations of AND, OR, and NOT. When I was in grade school, these logic elements were constructed out of individual transistors. By the time I was in high school, they had become available on integrated circuits that offered multiple gates, shift registers, flip-flops, multiplexors, and a bunch of other more sophisticated functions. Pictured above is the collection of chips I assembled while in college so that I could quickly prototype my ideas. My first self directed design was a 16-channel logic analyzer which won me the Stearn’s Prize awarded to the outstanding student in electrical or computer engineering at Union College.

Alas, It has been more than three decades since I built anything from these parts and I decided that they would not be making the move to the River House. Jeanine and I are making a concerted effort to get rid of all of the things we have accumulated over the years but no longer use.