Yes, you're right about that, Bill. However Maitani-san seems to have a
knack of choosing engineers that way! Some of these engineers I had worked
with and around are very interesting people to say the least because they
tend to offer amazing viewpoints that sometimes we ourselves would get
baffled. It boils down to their thought processes.
I recall once upon a time at the staff discussion room when one of our
colleagues in our team noticed that the overhead fluoro was flickering. It
seemed to irritate and unsettle him to the extent that he began to stare at
it incessantly. The flickering actually got him thinking about its strobe
effect and how it could change the way we look at how the horizontal cloth
focal plane shutter could actually work. And that was all the catalyst we
needed to begin thinking about strobing through the entire shutter duration
across the film plane. A particular eureka situation brought on an idea that
if we could find the right cyclic speed, we could use faster shutter speeds
to sync with the electronic flash. You obviously know where that led to and
as a brilliant afterthought by yet another engineer, he took the idea and
turned it into what we originally referred to as Auto-S. Now that even this
name had disappeared - so sad - we now call it Red-Eye Reduction, which is
such a mouthful.
Maitani-san was incredibly good at getting the most out of his engineers. He
has this nature of provoking us yet he would discipline us at the same time.
He encourages yet he warns. When we sit down to discuss, you usually could
hear the pin drop because our respect for him was also out of fear. He
doesn't tolerate foolishness but he sets very high standards of expectation
from each of us in our thinktank design group.
Although these days, it's almost impossible to attribute a single product
design to one person (be it a camera or an automobile etc), in our case at
Olympus during what many of us called the Golden Era, Maitani-san deservedly
took credit because of the leadership he wielded. We were only too happy to
attribute everything to this great man.
K.
On 01/09/06, Bill Pearce <bs.pearce@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> > I know one engineer who didn't even drive...and sometimes someone needed
> > to tell him that the left foot goes into the left shoe and both shoes
> must
> > match....real
> > eccentric but brilliant in engineering.
>
> As the son of an engineer, in a town full of them, and having worked with
> them a lot, I thine that most are that way, except those that are
> flamboyantly not.
>
> Bill Pearce
>
>
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