Oral History of Wendell Sander

[@csvscs]

Love to hear these first person accounts of what happened back in the day

[@ComputerHistory]

Thanks for watching! 🌟

[@perrylund3995]

This is probably one the best interviews in a very large body of interviews by CHM. Being from Iowa and knowing this area, it's amazing how the rural educational system and work ethic produced people like Wendell. He was able to contribute into his 70s. I have to believe his work on phase modulation chips aimed at cell phones plays a bigger role today than was discussed in this interview. Great interview.

[@zanekaminski]

Interesting Wendell says it was ultrasonic pulses in the iPod headphone controls! I knew that he and his son developed the iPod headphone control scheme but I always assumed that the buttons were communicated using the low-frequency end of the spectrum, not high-frequency. I always thought pressing the buttons changed the mic bias voltage slightly, but slow enough to fall below the mic's high-pass filter. Then you could put an ADC on the bias voltage and figure out the buttons pressed. But apparently it is not so... I would really like for CHM to do a series with some of these great historical figures but interviewed by people who are a little more technically familiar with the work. I think there are a lot of unanswered questions that are just more specific in nature. This would come at the risk of the discussion being a little too technical for a lot of the potential audience, but I think that this kind of content would nevertheless make a great historical record for the next, y'know, 1000 years or whatever. My case in point: wouldn't we like to ask Stradivarius, in exacting technical detail, how he made his violins sound so good?