The Learning Curve
I always knew I had both mechanical ability and enough intelligence to learn just about anything I set my mind to. I built backyard projects involving motors and wheels from the age of about 13, including a mini bike and a few go-carts. When I got to high school, I was streamed, as we all were then, with the top group so I got introduced to advanced math and science and in general, I was near the top in these subjects. But even then, in my high school class of about 300, I could see that there were some students that were "brains" for lack of a better word. "Geeks", if you will, with pocket protectors and multiple pens and pencils. But I also knew that they didn't know a screwdriver from a wingnut, so for all practical purposes, they were pretty useless.
But on to college, which was engineering school for me. I chose Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, because it had a good reputation in both engineering and partying, not necessarily in that order, and was only 85 miles from my home in Newark, Delaware. This is where I started to realize my limitations. I graduated in the top 25% of my class in engineering, but not because I was smarter than 75% of the other students. I recall spending 3 or 4 nights a week at the library studying, in order to learn. I was fine with algebra and even could grasp calculus, but when we started to have to try to solve simultaneous equations using matrixes, my mind started to drift towards when the next party was going to start (usually at least 5 parties every weekend, there being some 32 fraternities on campus). In thermodynamics and its complex relationships between entropy and enthalpy, I started to think about how the internal combustion engine really worked, but decided that somebody else was going to have to do the math, 'cause I just wanted to make 'em run better!
What I did learn was that there were a bunch of really smart guys (all male school at the time) who could grasp these obscure concepts and actually do the math required to move on to rocket science. And there were electrical engineering students who were much clearer in their understanding of vacuum tubes than me. There were also students, mostly business majors who found out how to make figures lie and liars figure, so to speak. These became the class leaders and future politicians, who frankly, I couldn't stomach. But all these really smart students couldn't do what I could do. I was able to grasp how mechanical things worked, and then go out into the workshop and built them! I had built my first hot rod ('57 Pontiac powered '37 Chevy) before I even got my driver's license. I could weld, run a lathe and a milling machine, paint, take apart a motor and put it back together again, and I could actually carry on a conversation, write fairly well (that high school typing class sure has come in handy!), and found that Ieven be a leader in a group who could actually get people to work together.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I found myself married with a child, and definitely not liking working for someone else; anyone else, actually. I tried ROTC in college expecting to have to go to Vietnam after college, bu realized I'd never be able to function in military life. My first job was as a project engineer for the Dupont company which was draft deferred. When they started the lottery system to determine who would get drafted, my birthday came out number 331 - - I would never get drafted. We moved to Nova Scotia where I took a job working for my sister's husband who was ex-military. That lasted about a year until he told me one day "don't think; it hurts the team." That did it. I went out and bought a small business and a house with my meager savings of $3,000, a $5,000 loan from my brother and my mom, and a god-awful $19,000 home mortgage and a $21,000 bank loan. I might have been crazy, but I knew I had to become my own boss and I apparently had mucho confidence. I stayed in that business for 35 years, sold it due to health issues, and worked for it another year before retiring. Finally, almost 40 years after graduating from college, I would finally get the opportunity to do what I always wanted to - - build motors.
Now after living my dream for 5 years, building a motorcycle from scratch and successfully riding it a the Salt Flats, I find myself back in a quest for more knowledge. Sometimes I wish I had a good college program I could go to and take some more courses. Do you realize how much we learned during our first 16 years or so of schooling? I think we took it for granted that we had to learn; we were driven to keep up with our friends; afraid of being left in the dark. So for those of us who decided to become engineers or scientists or any other discipline, studying became our way of life. I now find that I need not only to learn about new concepts, but I need to go back and re-learn stuff that I was taught in high school. It's not easy! To succeed in building a better motor or a mousetrap today, one needs to learn about the immense world of digital electronics, implementation using a computer, and manufacturing techniques that weren't even thought of when we were in school. I feel like I have been living in a vacuum for 40 years. There are children that know more than I do about electronics and computers!
So I have decided that the only way I'm going to learn this stuff is, well, like I used to. I have started a notebook and I find that I have to write things down about 3 times before I figure them out. The information is at our fingertips, but it is in another language; one that speaks acronyms, algorithms, maps, bins, and all kinds of concepts that do not seem to be intuitive to me. Yesterday, I read about the difference between narrow band and wide band oxygen sensors and wondered who in the world figured that stuff out. Not that I really need to know exactly how they work, but it is daunting to realize that some people actually do!
Well at the end of the day, I have to keep reminding myself how I got to where I am. It's because I was able to grasp enough of the technology, and then go out and put those ideas into an actual product that worked. It's a combination of knowledge, skills, and perseverance (and of course, a little spare cash). I of course, wish that I had started sooner, but then I realize - - I also had to live the other parts of my life successfully, or I would never have got this opportunity in the first place. So be it.
Tom B.
P.S. Following are a few of my early endeavors
