Tom Stockham's passing, see rec.audio.pro

I didn't cross-post it, and I won't multiple-post it, but some of you may
have heard of Tom Stockham (pioneering applier of blind-deconvolution
techniques and Other Matters), and might like to see memorial remarks that I
and others posted recently on rec.audio.pro, where I first saw this news.
(I cited certain other highly-technical innovators also, and a little DSP
history, in my own message.)

Now please excuse me, I have scarcely posted in this newsgroup since 1992
[Note 1].

Very truly yours,

Max W. Hauser


--
(Note 1:  That was after someone's innocent request for information in May
1991, here and on sci.electronics, on how to do 180-degree phase shifting,
prompted a now-classic chorus of Usenet-type responses, subsequently edited
and re-posted as Message-ID <51184 @ prls.UUCP> , amazing to me, to Bob
Pease I understand, and to many others who saw it then and since, and that
moreover shows promise of entertaining audiences through the ages!)

Thanks for the notification, Max. That is certainly noteworthy. Dr.
Stockham's 1978 (?) IEEE paper on deconvolution was one of the motivating
influences in my life to pursue a career in DSP. I am thankful for the
contributions he made in the field.

--Randy

Max Hauser wrote:

> I didn't cross-post it, and I won't multiple-post it, but some of you may
> have heard of Tom Stockham (pioneering applier of blind-deconvolution
> techniques and Other Matters), and might like to see memorial remarks that I
> and others posted recently on rec.audio.pro, where I first saw this news.
> (I cited certain other highly-technical innovators also, and a little DSP
> history, in my own message.)
> 
> Now please excuse me, I have scarcely posted in this newsgroup since 1992
> [Note 1].
> 
> Very truly yours,
> 
> Max W. Hauser
> 
> 
> --
> (Note 1:  That was after someone's innocent request for information in May
> 1991, here and on sci.electronics, on how to do 180-degree phase shifting,
> prompted a now-classic chorus of Usenet-type responses, subsequently edited
> and re-posted as Message-ID <51184 @ prls.UUCP> , amazing to me, to Bob
> Pease I understand, and to many others who saw it then and since, and that
> moreover shows promise of entertaining audiences through the ages!)
> 
> 


-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "...the answer lies within your soul
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %       'cause no one knows which side
%%% 919-577-9882                %                   the coin will fall."
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           %  'Big Wheels', *Out of the Blue*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr

hey Max,

i'm really happy to see you post and i will always remember Toronto 1989
when you told the Crystal guy that they should just hang a few more
"marketing" bits offa that successive approximation register and call that
16 bit A/D a 20 or 22 bit A/D.  that was a classic moment.  also was the
first slide of your sigma-delta paper with the different "kingdoms"  (i only
remember AES as the "blue kingdom").

r b-j

In article vvshvqc62ddu83@corp.supernews.com, Max Hauser at max@tdl.com
wrote on 01/09/2004 01:19:

> I didn't cross-post it, and I won't multiple-post it, but some of you may
> have heard of Tom Stockham (pioneering applier of blind-deconvolution
> techniques and Other Matters), and might like to see memorial remarks that I
> and others posted recently on rec.audio.pro, where I first saw this news.
> (I cited certain other highly-technical innovators also, and a little DSP
> history, in my own message.)
> 
> Now please excuse me, I have scarcely posted in this newsgroup since 1992
> [Note 1].
> 
> Very truly yours,
> 
> Max W. Hauser
> 
> 
> --
> (Note 1:  That was after someone's innocent request for information in May
> 1991, here and on sci.electronics, on how to do 180-degree phase shifting,
> prompted a now-classic chorus of Usenet-type responses, subsequently edited
> and re-posted as Message-ID <51184 @ prls.UUCP> , amazing to me, to Bob
> Pease I understand, and to many others who saw it then and since, and that
> moreover shows promise of entertaining audiences through the ages!)
> 
> 

"robert bristow-johnson" <rbj@surfglobal.net> wrote in message
news:BC24FEC3.7926%rbj@surfglobal.net...
>
>
> hey Max,
>
> i'm really happy to see you post and i will always remember Toronto 1989
> when you told the Crystal guy that they should just hang a few more
> "marketing" bits offa that successive approximation register and call that
> 16 bit A/D a 20 or 22 bit A/D.  that was a classic moment.  also was the
> first slide of your sigma-delta paper with the different "kingdoms"  (i
only
> remember AES as the "blue kingdom").
>
> r b-j

Thank you, that is kind.  (In detail, 1989 was technically Burr-Brown, not
Crystal, and it was a very well respected veteran analog designer, Jimmy
Naylor if memory serves, whom I engaged in public exchange; memory is, of
course, subject to correction by reality.)  All of this is offhand and late
at night at the moment.   However The AES, having after all something to do
with Audio, has the classy habit of recording almost all of its technical
sessions, and therefore I have this, as well as sundry other, exchanges on
tape.  (One of the few not recorded -- Berlin, 1993 -- appears below in
transcript, originally for a different context, for your possible
amusement).  The multi-colored map of the Technical Kingdoms where research
on oversampling data conversion took place was a stylized parallel of Lyman
Frank Baum's four-color map of the fictional Land of Oz (Winkies, Gillikans,
Quadlings, and Munchkins -- the Munchkins being of course blue, like the
JAES -- everybody likes the Munchkins, they remember the movie); this photo
was commissioned by me in 1990 from an enterprising scientific photographer
in Ithaca, New York, who assembled four major technical journal cover pages
into a color photo resembling the Oz antecedent.  (IEEE J. Solid-State
Circuits, IEEE Tr. on ASSP -- underwent title change about then; IEEE Tr.
Communications or CAS, I'm not sure which, CAS would be the better parallel,
because of the particular yellow it uses; and J. AES, more or less
respectively.)  Photographer had to cut the covers off the journals to do
that.  (Since I did not use the four-color map slide until September 1990 in
Los Angeles, tho many times thereafter, you must have seen multiple
presentations.)  Finally as a detail of historical record it is, and
invariably was for the first dozen years or so, and often thereater,
"delta-sigma," see the defining papers by Inose, Yasuda, and (in one case)
Murakami in 1962 and 1963.  (One of these stressed even in its title that
"delta-sigma" was by definition a one-bit, as well as an oversampling and
noise-shaping, encoding, though these details are sometimes overlooked today
by newcomers.)

With kind regards -- Max W. Hauser


--
In March 1993, after unification, I was in Berlin for a conference of audio
engineers.  ...  It was an unusual technical conference as it coincided with
the 50th anniv'y of stereo tape recording -- practiced in Berlin in 1943,
recording heartbreakingly tender piano solos with Furtwaengler directing,
while bombs fell outside!  Juxtaposition of the soaring spirit with
apocalypse -- highs and lows of human condition.   Samples were played very
movingly at the opening of the conference, by some of the same engineers
from 1943.  Anyway later in the conference, I delivered a paper on a type of
custom silicon signal processing chip that could be rapidly designed and
prototyped.  Now you might have seen the 1956 novel _From Russia with Love_
by Ian Fleming, with an early scene where a group of Stalinist officials
meet to plan an international incident while maneuvering and infighting
among themselves.   (That and other gothic details departed in the movie
adaptation, where the villains became a criminal mafia instead.)  The
meeting is chaired by a General Grubozaboyshikov with an atmosphere of
delicate menace.  (... "Let us smoke, comrades," said General G, putting an
American Zippo lighter to one of his own Moskva-Volga cigarettes.  There was
a clicking of lighters around the table.")

The 1993 audience was interested, and in the course of some
question-and-answer, there was a particular exchange.  "What happens if you
design these chips of yours for a customer on a tight schedule, and the
prototypes don't work?" asked one of the Europeans.  In that case, I
replied,  "in the words of General Grubozaboyshikov in the novel _From
Russia With  Love,_ `there will be -- displeasure.'  "  (They liked that.)

Max Hauser wrote:
 > [...]
> Finally as a detail of historical record it is, and
> invariably was for the first dozen years or so, and often thereater,
> "delta-sigma," see the defining papers by Inose, Yasuda, and (in one case)
> Murakami in 1962 and 1963.  

*YES*!!!

(told you so, Robert...)
-- 
%  Randy Yates                  % "...the answer lies within your soul
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC            %       'cause no one knows which side
%%% 919-577-9882                %                   the coin will fall."
%%%% <yates@ieee.org>           %  'Big Wheels', *Out of the Blue*, ELO
http://home.earthlink.net/~yatescr