Backscatter

Reality and the Virtual Engineer

by Donald Christiansen

Electronic system designers today can cope with a degree of complexity that, before the computer, was beyond our imagination. Sitting before their monitors they can assemble a new system from old subsystems and never touch a soldering iron or walk out to the factory floor. The new, highly complex system will probably work fine, doing things its predecessors never did, but I worry that the designer may not know what is in the old black boxes that are incorporated in the new system. Don't get me wrong. I have great intuitive confidence in the quality of the components in the black boxes. I know that back in some lab physicists and device engineers are worrying about things like stress-induced leakage current and bulk oxide trapping, with an eye toward improving the next generation of whatever is in the black boxes. Yet I have this uneasy feeling that the designers may be losing touch with the hardware. Today's engineer is not as hands-on as were those of an earlier generation. Engineers, of course, are not the only ones affected by our computerized society. There are fewer shade-tree mechanics; who can fix their own cars with all the on-board computers? TV sets and VCRs that don't work are replaced like light bulbs.

It is my recollection that young people were once attracted to engineering because of things they had played with or even built when they were in grammar school. I confirmed this by doing a little research:

• Dave Packard, co-founder with Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard, built a radio receiver at age 12. Hewlett built a pair of crystal sets, one for himself and another for his sister. Both Hewlett and Packard built models and conducted experiments with explosives. The latter were not always successful. Packard would show friends a less-than-perfect thumb on his left hand as proof. A copper tube filled with blasting powder had exploded when he tried to hammer a cap onto one end. This may have persuaded him to pursue electrical rather than chemical engineering!

• As a teenager, radio communications pioneer Harold Beverage built his first radio and a spark-gap transmitter that had a range of some 50 miles.

• While in grammar school, Leo Beranek, famous for his work in acoustics and speech communications, strung an antenna between his house and a tree to help bring in stations on a one-tube Crosley receiver. In high school he took an International Correspondence Schools course in radio, built a crystal set, and repaired radios for neighbors.

• His uncle gave computer pioneer Ross Aiken an electrical kit containing a motor, batteries, and carbon rods (useful in building a microphone) when he was 12. Experimenting with it, he became captivated by electricity.

• As a youngster, Charles Concordia, known for his developments in power system control, brought his bedspring into play as an experimental radio antenna.

Many other prominent electrical engineers were propelled toward the profession through model building, kit assembly, and taking things apart. Gordon Teal, developer of germanium and silicon semiconductors, said he was always very curious about why things worked and why they didn't.

For the mid-century electrical engineers, the hands-on approach continued into college, where undergraduates not only conducted experiments with actual components and test gear, but also were required to do mechanical drawing, make patterns in a woodworking shop, pour castings in a foundry, and turn and grind the finished castings in a machine shop.

On their first jobs, new grads were thrust into the real world of hardware. For the circuit designer, this meant the occasional insulation meltdown and smoking components, signals that a breadboard might be about to burst into flame. Notwithstanding the failures, most of these designers recall with nostalgia the aroma of rosin-core solder and the warm glow of vacuum tubes. At home, they built amplifiers, vacuum-tube voltmeters, signal generators, and even TV sets from kits.

What is different about today's potential electrical engineers? For one thing, kids' toys are mostly ready made, not built from scratch or kits. (Is the Erector set still around? In fairness, Lego offers some of the same challenges.) Entertainment is more likely to consist of watching TV or playing computer games, rather than salvaging wheels from a stroller to build a new wagon. The mouse has replaced the telegraph key, but the technology behind it is beyond the comprehension of most grade schoolers.

Kids' immersion in this new environment causes me to wonder what the factors are that condition any of them to study electrical engineering. No doubt good teachers in math and science, especially at the high school level, are important. But engineering school faculty say that many who sign up for electrical engineering arrive knowing little about the field, its specialties, its employment opportunities, or course requirements.

Perhaps one of the best ways to help young people test their interest in and aptitude for a technical career is through the school science fair. We as individuals might volunteer to help coach participants, even encouraging those who are uncertain about a project to choose one that is electrically or mechanically oriented, as opposed to the many that relate strictly to the biological sciences.

Other hands-on activities may be too challenging for grade- or high schoolers. These may instead attract undergraduate electrical and mechanical engineering students. The better projects could be as worthy as some of the design projects being developed by the schools themselves under ABET's EC2000 criteria. Robotry contests, for example, involve many interdisciplinary factors: mechanical design, stability, mobility, motive power, electrical power, software, and the like. Television programs, like The Learning Channel's Junkyard Wars, sometimes offer another version of robotry. The show adds an element of risk: a contestant's well-crafted entry may be demolished by its opponent!

I often think some youngsters, particularly those who excel at and enjoy mathematics, may believe that engineering is exclusively math-centered. I like to remind them that engineering is ultimately product- or service-oriented and that electronics systems are often big, complex, and both hardware- and software-rich.

By now you must have realized that the scenario with which I opened this essay was somewhat overdrawn. We all hope and trust that an actual design team would have on it individuals who are versed in all aspects of the system, including specialists in hardware and software reliability.

Nevertheless, I offer the following modest suggestion that might help narrow the gap between today's virtual designers and the hands-on engineers of yesteryear. As educators modify undergraduate electrical engineering curricula to meet EC2000 criteria, they might do well to consider a mandatory course that would cover electronic components, physics of failure, and elements of systems reliability. Students might also be given the chance to spend a day in a chip fabrication facility. (Yes, a few schools have their own fab labs.) Because the vast majority of today's components are invisible to the naked eye, hidden by the tens of thousands in a miniscule package with lots of pins sticking out, students would benefit, I believe, in seeing their discrete component counterparts — a "real" resistor and a "real" transistor, for example — as well as seeing how integrated circuits are actually fabricated and tested. I think it would lift their spirits, too, bringing a touch of reality to a profession that must take more and more on faith as the things that really do the work disappear into smaller and
smaller black boxes.

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Donald Christiansen is the former editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum and an independent publishing consultant. He can be contacted at donchristiansen@ieee.org.