[sdiy] Doug Curtis

[Paul Schreiber]

Sorry, I just got off a plane from Chicago a while ago.

I have not verified this, I don't know what the "time frame is" (died 
yesterday/last month...) I checked the San Jose Mercury-News, there was no 
mention. I have a call into to his wife (he has 2 daughters, they would be about 
18 and 16 now).

What *terrible* news if true. Doug was the nicest, kindest person you would ever 
hope to meet. He was quite embarrassed about being 'famous' (the original CEM 
chip was a design that he did as a student and won a national design contest). 
He & I have 2 patents together on the Tandy ASIC for true RMS calculations used 
over 100,000 DVMs. He still wrote *everything* in spiral notebooks....lord knows 
what will happen to then (he told me he had kept *every one* since he was 16yrs 
old). In his office I bet there were 250 of them.

I agree and Bob Moog & Doug Curtis made analog synthesizers what they are and 
were. Yes, the SSM ICs were *first*, but they had problems and Doug had 95% 
market share.

BTW: in OEM quantities, the CEM ICs were about $3ea :)

Paul S.
crappy way to end a day :(