General > General Technical Chat
Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: Stray Electron on November 07, 2018, 12:02:52 am ---he was very good at being able to explain topics in an understandable fashion.
--- End quote ---
As opposed to some professors that tend to explain understandable topics in an obscure fashion. ;D
rhb:
First of all I suspect a very large proportion of the older readers of EEVblog got a lot of their start in electronics from Don's books and articles. Always clear, well written and with a sense of humor.
Don's most important books:
The TTL Cookbook
The CMOS Cookbook
The Active Filter Cookbook
were staples on the shelves of any serious hobbyist. And it you needed a terminal for your Apple I (for which he designed the keyboard) or Altair 8800B you also had the TV Typewriter Cookbook. I don't recall that I ever called him, though I might have once. But he was widely known to accept phone calls and letters and answer questions. At 65 I still idolize him. He was the real deal.
In the 70's and 80's if you claimed to be interested in electronics and didn't recognize allusions to Don and his books and articles you were immediately dismissed a pretentious wannabe.
As for calling himself a "guru" (if he ever did) you need to remember that in the 1970's the US was overrun with a vast number of frauds who came to the West and set themselves up as "gurus". For those of us who lived in that era, someone claiming to be a "tech guru" is a tongue in cheek joke. So when I hear or read some younger person claiming seriously to be a "guru" I always laugh. Absolute guaranteed way for me not to take them seriously at all.
It appears as if Don may have passed away in the past few days as his last blog entry was 11-1-18 and he seems to have been very consistent about making a short post every day. I hope that's not the case. If anyone knows please post a link to an obituary. He wandered off into archaeology and other stuff and stopped writing on electronics almost completely.
On Halloween he posted a link to the Lawrence Welk version of "One Toke Over the Line"!!! Obviously Welk and his production staff did *not* understanding of "toke".
CatalinaWOW:
One of the things that made me like Don Lancaster a lot in his articles and on his web page is that he really did make sure the math worked. It came out most clearly in his discussions of solar powered cars, but it was there everywhere.
You can partly understand his fascination with Postscript when you realize that as magazines and other outlets died much of his income came from his self publishing business. He put a lot of time and effort into how to efficiently put words on paper and into a mailer.
chris_leyson:
I missed out out Don Lancasters books, learnt logic design from the Texas TTL data book, Motorola 4000 series data book, Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar and back issues of Wireless World.
EEVblog:
--- Quote from: rhb on November 07, 2018, 12:37:55 am ---As for calling himself a "guru" (if he ever did)
--- End quote ---
His website is called the Guru's Lair
And he claims 1800 articles and 36 books, wow that's a lot of work.
https://www.tinaja.com/glair01.shtml
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