Adam - first thank you.  Pleased to know he's still kicking around.

On Sun, Dec 5, 2021 at 11:26 PM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think Don ever had a lot of crossover with the more academic world
> of Unix people, but he's one of my heroes and I have learned a hell of a
> lot from his works.
>
Not true at all.  If you grew up as EE, in the late 1960s/early 1970s it
was hard to not know about him since he was so prolific.  FWIW, before I
went to CMU, he was already a hero and I had a number of books from the
late 1960's.   When I was freshman in the early 1970s, his TTL Cookbook was
an optional text for the intro to EE course [I already had it but a number
of my mates had never seen it before].  His CMOS Cookbox was not published
yet, but when it was, I bought it.

Side story, I want to say about 1969/70, after reading one of his articles
in Radio-Electronics I sent him a (US snail mail) letter asking him for
help in designing an RF interface to a TV.  He replied to me but told me
such a design would be illegal to make as it would run afoul of FCC rules.
I wish I had kept that letter, but he reversed himself a few years later
with his TV Typewriter and Son of Video books.  My guess is he had been
researching the idea for one of the magazines when I contacted him, and
must have gotten a ruling from legal counsel about publishing the same.   I
always wondered what made him change his mind a few years later.  Since he
seems to publish an email, I think I'll have to write him and ask that way
to see if he responds.

Clem


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