My father Bob earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) in 1971, with a minor in Computer Science.  He had a long career as a test engineer, notably at Incoterm (Westboro, MA; later taken over by Honeywell), Microcom (Norwood), Technical Communications Corp (Concord), and MultiLink (Andover).

He also ran his own PC consulting business SUTHTRON from his den in the house where I grew up. The den was full of various electronic parts, technology books, his soldering iron, and a plastic katydid ‘to keep the bugs away.’ But, the main focal point of the room was his ‘homebrew’ computer. 

He started building the homebrew in the late 1970s, from parts he bought at Radio Shack or You-Do-It Electronics and castoffs from other people. It had an 8080 CPU (Intel 1st generation), 12K of RAM, an 8" floppy disk drive (Shugart 801).

He also made other interesting electronic ‘toys’, including a blinking LED star that went atop our Christmas tree, a 4-inch tall Christmas tree made of red LEDs and green wire, and buzzers for my 4-H Horse Club competitions. He was exploring voice synthesis circa 1982. Bob’s other hobbies included playing guitar and radio DXing.

-Sandy Sutherland