He was an optical engineer who repaired aircraft instruments in Alaska in WWII, a mountain man who could turn a canoe into a sailboat with a folding machete, bed sheets and a few sticks, who
taught me diffraction, color
theory and relativity on paper when other kids were learning multiplication tables, who designed a potentiometer that went to the Moon by pointing the world's fastest camera at the world's fastest oscilloscope, who designed those traffic lights which only appear bright when you are in the appropriate lane, who didn't have to help me at all when I built my own Heathkit dual - channel scope in grade school, nor had to help me program my Apple II in machine language, who
quit Honeywell to work for 3M when the Space Program turned into the nuclear missile program, who studied mining geology in college after growing up in a mining town in Utah, it was he who
taught me, early on: make sure your contraption works!