Inspired by a couple of unrelated threads:

Who remembers Oliver Germanium?

 

Nope.

Doesn't even come up on a internet search, other than an Oliver Ward that used to be president of a company formally known as Germanium Power Devices Corp.

 

He used to chum around with Bill Silicon!
Max.

 

And Gladys Indium.

 

I heard he got a job on the railroad, he was such a good conductor.
Max.

 

Really?! No one remembers him? I haz sad

 

I heard he got a job on the railroad, he was such a good conductor.
Max.

That ended in a doping scandal.

 

I heard he got on his megacycle and rode away. He ran off with Milli Volt.

 

So you mean Ali G or am I having a false memory?

 

Oliver Germanium? He had a job to maintain the proper operation of one of those Australian 'Truck Trains'? He was a semi-conductor.

 

It makes me think of the old booklet "resi and transi":
https://blog.adafruit.com/2013/01/20/resi-and-transi-banish-the-mysteries-of-electronics/

Bertus

 

Oh, well.

The pirate found him. Pirates is good at findin' things. Sometimes other peoples' things.

Oliver Ward was Oliver Germanium. Germanium Power Devices used to run large display ads in Electronics. The ads featured a photo of Ward, a large man with a beard in a 3-piece suit. He was called Oliver Germanium in the ads. This was probably around the time that Max Headroom made his debut. I don't remember if the Signetics write-only memory was still in the data books at the time.

Electronics was a biweekly (i.e. fortnightly) magazine originally aimed at people who did electronics, primarily design engineers. Sadly, it became a magazine for people who talked about electronics while others did the work. Like many of the professional electronics periodicals of the day, it was free for qualified subscribers and stupidly expensive for the unqualified. After the change, free was too high a price for me.

 

OK, I now vaguely remember him. There were a number of weird ads in that magazine. I remember Sony used to have ones with incredibly busty blonds. Also, there was a data acquisition company that had a "mad man ceo/spokesman" with some crazy ads. Stopped subscribing to Electronics in 1986 (when I moved from a semiconductor company to a software one).

The Signetics WOM dates from around 1972. I loved the chip destruct line;

 

Oh wow, I had no idea. This guy was (is) quite a colorful character. Harvard educated lawyer who decided to go into business.

"Elementary my dear Schotky"

"The more we study Rectification',' says Oliver O Ward, President GPD and sometimes known as the Professor of Germanium, "the more we see that Silicon is clearly the outdated technology. "

Google has many results, but in the "Books" search section (searched oliver ward oliver germanium").

 

Captain Zilog!!!!



https://www.google.com/search?q=cap...Q7AkIOg&biw=1366&bih=634#imgrc=DlA3hyKbzH7WMM: