Page 48 - Analog Circuit Design Art, Science, and Personalities

Bernard Gordon

puted in a linear manner but rather must be arrived at via a series of interactive
decisions. The designer must be as an artist-he must cogitate, smell, and feel the
system. The problem must dominate the engineer’s mind and being, such as when a
concert pianist or violinist performs a work.
This is a trying and complex task. A breadth of knowledge is required, an intensity
of concentration or attack is required, the designer must live and sleep the problem,
and eventually, a set of compromises, clever relationships. and compensating effects
will yield, in their totality, a result significantly superior to that which might be
obtained by the mere summation of a subset of independent specifications.
There has always been, and there probably always will be: the need for analog
designers to find competitive and clever solutions, superior to those which might
merely be just competently amved at. In the examples given, the common denom-
inator is the need for the designer to mentally and physically, consciously and
unconsciously, relate to the problem. In the case of the Univac memory, it was the
need to understand the behavior and limitations of the piezoelectric transducers by
attempting to think, “I am a transducer; what can I do, what can I not do, how can I
best be used?” And then. to become a modulator or an amplifier and understand, as
such, one’s limitations and possibilities in gain bandwidth relations. In the second
example, it is the need to become an X-ray detector that converts photons to electrons
or to undcrstand the limitations of analog components and then to try to arrange
one’s being into a new form and to mentally play until a new solution is recognized.
As postulated at the beginning of this chapter, one cannot write an equation for
the mental state or methodology by which any individual designer might go about
“Being the Machine?” but the ability to do so, however it is derived, generally pro-
duces superior results. It transcends simple competent knowledge and its application
and becomes an act of creativity, or an art form.

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