Those of you who know Dad know that he has always been a teacher. He always loves to give someone a better insight into things that he is familiar with and enjoys.
For example, Dad, being a pioneer in the computer industry, really enjoyed teaching people about how computers operate. He went to the trouble of doing a mockup of a computer. It was a very simple arrangement that was just a black, rectangular box made out of plywood. He took it around to the every one of his kids' classrooms (and obviously there were plenty of those classrooms around) and would do a presentation. He talked to the kids about how a binary counting system worked and how the computer functioned on a binary, on/off principle. It was really very simplistic. He had two sets of four lights and the lights were just a string of Christmas lights. He drilled a hole in the face of the box and stuck the Christmas light through. It was also wired up so that he could switch each light on and off independently. As he switched the lights on and off he would teach the kids how to count in the binary system. I'm sure that that's the first place that I ever learned about the binary system and found it to be something that I've always remembered because my dad is such a great teacher.
I also remember times when dad, to earn a few extra dollars and to do something he likes, went and taught at LDS Business College and some of the other business schools in Salt Lake. He would teach one night or two nights a week. He taught computer programming to kids who were learning how to operate computers. He would always bring home a big stack of mimeograph handouts and we the kids were his collating machine. We'd start at the first stack and move our way down picking up one sheet out of each stack and then stapling them together. I remember a number of times working around a big table dad bought that used to sit down the basement. We would just work our way around the table, taking a sheet off of each stack of mimeographed copies, collating them and stapling them together so that he could use them at his class that evening at the business college.
--Mike
For example, Dad, being a pioneer in the computer industry, really enjoyed teaching people about how computers operate. He went to the trouble of doing a mockup of a computer. It was a very simple arrangement that was just a black, rectangular box made out of plywood. He took it around to the every one of his kids' classrooms (and obviously there were plenty of those classrooms around) and would do a presentation. He talked to the kids about how a binary counting system worked and how the computer functioned on a binary, on/off principle. It was really very simplistic. He had two sets of four lights and the lights were just a string of Christmas lights. He drilled a hole in the face of the box and stuck the Christmas light through. It was also wired up so that he could switch each light on and off independently. As he switched the lights on and off he would teach the kids how to count in the binary system. I'm sure that that's the first place that I ever learned about the binary system and found it to be something that I've always remembered because my dad is such a great teacher.
I also remember times when dad, to earn a few extra dollars and to do something he likes, went and taught at LDS Business College and some of the other business schools in Salt Lake. He would teach one night or two nights a week. He taught computer programming to kids who were learning how to operate computers. He would always bring home a big stack of mimeograph handouts and we the kids were his collating machine. We'd start at the first stack and move our way down picking up one sheet out of each stack and then stapling them together. I remember a number of times working around a big table dad bought that used to sit down the basement. We would just work our way around the table, taking a sheet off of each stack of mimeographed copies, collating them and stapling them together so that he could use them at his class that evening at the business college.
--Mike
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