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Bruce Trump

Bob Pease died a year ago yesterday. What a loss for us analog heads who struggle to make our circuits work. His wealth of knowledge and experience seemed limitless. His insight and intuitive explanations helped so many engineers understand their circuits better.

I can’t say that I read every one of his columns. He often strayed far off his mainstream analog topics, waxing into lengthy discussions on hiking, sudden acceleration of cars and on and on. Sometimes these topics caused me to skip over the column. Other times I found it fascinating to peek into the curious, noisy mind of a genius. His quirkiness and eccentricity were legendary. All the more fun.

The marriage of Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor was a work in progress a year ago and we were officially prohibited from making contact with our new colleagues. I was so eager to reach out to Bob and ask a few questions. How disappointing it was that we missed by just a matter of weeks.

Please honor Bob by adding your comments below—maybe by mentioning a particularly memorable column, whether useful or quirky. And check out the “Remembering Bob Pease” page where you’ll find all of Bob’s stuff and links to last year’s comments from friends and colleagues.

RIP RAP,

Bruce

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  • I posted the following comments the week that Bob passed away and thought it would be OK to post them again here...

    I only knew Bob well for 5 years but I am honored to call him my friend.  Bob and I presented together at the AES show in San Francisco (2008) and I thought I was going to be able to just sit there and watch Bob give a presentation on analog power supplies for audio circuits using the LME series of parts.  Well two days before the presentation Bob comes into my cube in Bldg. C and dumps a 6” high stack of “Analog Power Point Foils” on my desk and says “Here is your ½ of the presentation to edit!” He smiled and walked off.  I stayed up most of the night hand editing my ½ of the foils.  The day of the presentation (a Sat) no one showed up at the booth to help me out…except Bob.  He worked the entire day in the booth with me and then we gave the presentation together.  I will never forget my “AES Presentation with Robert A. Pease”.  (I have the audio of the presentation if anyone would like me to email it to them.)

    It was great fun getting Bob into the Audio Groups sound room in building C to listen to the differences between the LME DIP and Metal Can (HA) opamps.  We had identical D/A preamp demo units and I had him listen, single blind, to the two audio preamps.  He said he was too old to hear the difference but he picked the metal can unit over the plastic DIP every time!  I then saw the wheels turning behind that white beard…bigger bond wires, better thermals, shielding, and other thoughts.  He later built one of his kludge circuits with 10 opamps in series which then switched over to just a single opamp in the signal path to prove I could not hear the difference.  He then asked me to listen to the result in his lab.  (Yes the one LME opamp was discernable from the 10 LME parts in series!)  If you ever saw one of Bob’s hand-made proto circuits it was amazing that it actually worked at all…but they always did!

    I let Bob drive my Shelby one day and it was great to see him have so much fun and he did quite well with the stiff clutch.  I hoped he would enjoy it so much he would consider buying a better car but unfortunately there was no way to get him out of his “Iconic Beetle”!  He gave my youngest son a signed copy of his “How to Drive into Accidents – And How Not to” book, that he had published, after I told Bob my son was 16 and just learning how to drive.  Always thinking of others!  That was Bob!

    Bob, I already greatly miss our late night phone calls about “Everything Analog/Audio…and Stuff”.

    Mark Brasfield – Texas Instruments / National Semiconductor - Principal Audio Applications Engineer (contractor)

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  • I posted the following comments the week that Bob passed away and thought it would be OK to post them again here...

    I only knew Bob well for 5 years but I am honored to call him my friend.  Bob and I presented together at the AES show in San Francisco (2008) and I thought I was going to be able to just sit there and watch Bob give a presentation on analog power supplies for audio circuits using the LME series of parts.  Well two days before the presentation Bob comes into my cube in Bldg. C and dumps a 6” high stack of “Analog Power Point Foils” on my desk and says “Here is your ½ of the presentation to edit!” He smiled and walked off.  I stayed up most of the night hand editing my ½ of the foils.  The day of the presentation (a Sat) no one showed up at the booth to help me out…except Bob.  He worked the entire day in the booth with me and then we gave the presentation together.  I will never forget my “AES Presentation with Robert A. Pease”.  (I have the audio of the presentation if anyone would like me to email it to them.)

    It was great fun getting Bob into the Audio Groups sound room in building C to listen to the differences between the LME DIP and Metal Can (HA) opamps.  We had identical D/A preamp demo units and I had him listen, single blind, to the two audio preamps.  He said he was too old to hear the difference but he picked the metal can unit over the plastic DIP every time!  I then saw the wheels turning behind that white beard…bigger bond wires, better thermals, shielding, and other thoughts.  He later built one of his kludge circuits with 10 opamps in series which then switched over to just a single opamp in the signal path to prove I could not hear the difference.  He then asked me to listen to the result in his lab.  (Yes the one LME opamp was discernable from the 10 LME parts in series!)  If you ever saw one of Bob’s hand-made proto circuits it was amazing that it actually worked at all…but they always did!

    I let Bob drive my Shelby one day and it was great to see him have so much fun and he did quite well with the stiff clutch.  I hoped he would enjoy it so much he would consider buying a better car but unfortunately there was no way to get him out of his “Iconic Beetle”!  He gave my youngest son a signed copy of his “How to Drive into Accidents – And How Not to” book, that he had published, after I told Bob my son was 16 and just learning how to drive.  Always thinking of others!  That was Bob!

    Bob, I already greatly miss our late night phone calls about “Everything Analog/Audio…and Stuff”.

    Mark Brasfield – Texas Instruments / National Semiconductor - Principal Audio Applications Engineer (contractor)

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