Boolean Algebra

I remember one instructor in particular from my electronics training in the Coast Guard. His name was Mr. Richards, but he had a bit of an impediment, so the first day he walked into class, he announced “My name is Mistew Wichawds and you had bettew pay cwose attention. He was on the wrong side of middle-age. A man of small stature a receding hairline which combined with his prominent forehead and almost non-existent chin to give him the appearance of Professor Poindexter of my childhood cartoons.

With an air of someone performing a sacred ritual, he removed a single piece of chalk from the box on his desk. He walked up to the blackboard and facing us for the last time that morning, he conversationally suggested that we take notes. As his statement concluded, he broke the chalk in half, turned to the middle of the chalkboard and began writing. He wrote with both hands, each having a piece of chalk surrounded by a cloud of white dust as he furiously wrote on two separate digital electronics points simultaneously. Those of us in the classroom whose careers depended upon comprehension had just begun to recover our senses and begin writing when (and I swear this happened) Mr. Richards began lecturing us on a third aspect of digital electronics. His lectures lasted all of the seven hour workdays during the week we studied under him.

The second morning, I had a quart beer stein full of coffee in front of me, when he walked in looking contrite. He explained that he had been asked not to be so hard on us (expletive deleted but it is an alternative name for cats). Having learned of a complaint from the school administration, he promised he would not write about more than one thing at a time. Nor would he share some of his wisdom with us verbally while writing. With the same air of ceremony of the day before, he pulled another new piece of chalk from his box and began writing on the board. He wrote from the left hand side of the board all the way to the right hand side. We all began taking notes with less of a panic than the previous morning. We began to smell a rat when he got to the right hand side of the board and dropped down and wrote the next line from right to left in mirror-image. The students looked at each other, but we still felt we could handle this quirk.

Unfortunately, when he got to the left hand side of the board and dropped down to write the third line, he also picked up the eraser. As he wrote the third line, he erased the first. Panic, sweating and lots of coffee are all that I remember about the remainder of that week. I do however have a darned good grasp of Boolean algebra and basic digital electronic gates.

Those instructors at the Navy school were the best I ever studied under.