Are you like Edison or Tesla?

One of the great stories of engineering history is of Edison and Tesla.  Much virtual ink has been spilled in arguing over which was the better engineer, Edison or Tesla.  There's also a popular concept, at least among engineers and nerds, that Tesla was a genius and Edison was an evil villain who stole ideas and oppressed Tesla.  Tesla was forced to leave Edison's company and was never able to financially capitalize on his amazing inventions.  This thesis usually ends with the classic line that "Tesla died penniless and alone."

An interesting part of the story is their differing personalities and engineering styles.  These differences lead to conflict when they worked together and ultimately, they could not get along.
Edison was a great technology visionary and inventor.  He had strong business and communication skills, thus was able to raise money for his businesses and popularize his ideas.  He built a large team to research and development projects; completing thousands of experiments and optimizing a design.  He's the inventor of the light bulb and phonograph, founder of General Electric Corporation, holder of 1,093 patents.  He developed and improved the telephone and telegraph into everyday machines.

Tesla was a brilliant scientist and engineer.  He worked out amazing ideas and plans by himself and had a vision for inventions way ahead of his time.  He invented the AC motor, AC power transmission (the basis for modern power grids), radio, the remote control, hydroelectric power plants.  Some say he predicted solar energy, ocean wave energy, interplanetary communications and electronic satellites.  He was primarily interested in ideas, science and inventions.  He had little interest in business maneuverings to make money from his inventions.

TESLA STUDYING

The central story of Edison and Tesla's conflict is AC vs. DC power; the "War of the Currents."  Edison had developed and invested in a DC power distribution system for his lightbulbs and other electric-powered devices.  For electric motors, Edison favored DC current, which necessitated a long tube of magnets and linear motion for the mechanical power of the motor.  Tesla, while working with Edison, focused on AC power transmission and AC motors.  He postulated that a round structure with AC current was the best choice for motors.  Edison demanded that DC current was the best power system, while Tesla calculated that AC power was far superior for sending electrical energy over long distances.  The two clashed on this projected and ultimately could not work together.  In a few years Tesla joined Westinghouse, and won the war of the currents with AC motors and transformers.  History shows that Tesla was right about motors and power over long distances, and, to be fair, Edison was right that DC power is extremely useful for powering devices.

It is said that after Tesla proved the AC motor concept at Westinghouse, Edison still could have completed development of the AC motor at GE.  But he was too stubborn and continued working on the long, thin DC motor.  Meanwhile, Tesla helped Westinghouse grow into a massive, successful corporation.  Of course, Edison and General Electric found success with many other products and inventions.  So they both did well.

Let's dig into their personalities a bit more.  Edison was an optimizer and a driver.  He took ideas, experimented and improved them until they worked well.  He built a research and development group and pushed them to grind through many interations and make improvements until a product was viable.  He invented, or at least popularized, the modern corporate structure of research and development teams.  Tesla once said if Edison had to find a needle in a haystack, "he would simply pick up each piece of straw till he found the needle." (From Tesla, I assume this was not a compliment.)

EDISON EXPERIMENTING

Tesla was a brilliant scientist and futurist.  He could envision and invent things that few others could see.  His ideas were big and disruptive.  He was opinionated and eccentric.  He often worked alone with minimal notes, similar to the stereotype of a mad scientist.  With the aforementioned needle in a haystack problem, Tesla would likely think about it for weeks, and spend lots of money building equipment.  Then he would turn on the giant magnetic that he built, and instantly pull the needle out of the haystack.

Let's summarize their personality traits.

EDISON CHARACTERISTICS
What's good?
Optimizer, driver, build a team, make a product, make profit, persevere, able to persuade others to see his vision

What's bad?
Aggressive to make himself look bad and others look bad, stubborn, slow to admit he's wrong

TESLA CHARACTERISTICS
What's good?
brillant engineer and futurist, generator of big, disruptive ideas, technically correct most of the time

What's bad?
struggled to turn inventions into practical products, unwilling/unable to communicate his ideas to others, was not good at working in teams

So, which one do you identify with the most?  Which one do you wish you were more like?  How can we learn from each of them?

Imagine if Edison and Tesla found a way to work together well?  They could have built Edison-Tesla Corp; the combination of GE, Westinghouse and Motorola all rolled into one company.  Imagine if Edison supported Tesla's AC motor idea and pursued it when the concept was proven?  Imagine if Edison was a little more flexible with Tesla and allowed him to explore more of his ideas.  Imagine if Tesla was able to communicate the AC motor idea in a way that Edison could understand? Imagine if Tesla was able to make some explanations or side experiments, just to help Edison see the value of the AC motor?

If Edison and Tesla had found a way to work together, they could have built Tesla cars 100 years before Elon Musk !

Data Management is 50% of Engineering.

"Data Management is 50% of Engineering." I first heard this phrase about 20 years ago, during the first year of my engineering career. There's a lot of truth to that statement. With the explosion in data and devices, I think it might be 60 or 70 percent of engineering by now!

There are so many results, reports, analysis, simulations, measurements and so forth, that it's often difficult to get a clear conclusion from the data. It's annoying and tiresome to spend hours finding, copying and renaming files. It is much easier to see what the data is telling us, if the data is easy to find, understand and compare. Also, good data management frees up time and energy to spend on finding conclusions and creative solutions.

TURN THIS ---> INTO THIS

IL_test2.s4p --->
Test2_IL_PN100123_SN02.s4p
FEXT_Test4_try2.s4p ---> Test4_FEXT_PN100123_SN02_try2.s4p
NEXT_try3_TEST6.s4p ---> Test6_NEXT_PN100123_SN02_try3.s4p 

Here are some simple steps to achieve good data management:
1. Long filenames are good !

• Every file should have unique labels, so that it can be traced to its source and recreated if necessary.
• Adding details in a file header is also very valuable.
• For instance, an s-parameter file is named: Partnumber_batchnumber_32AWG_100ohms.s4p
• The header of the file shows when it was measured and on what equipment.
• Now the user knows what the file measured (partnumber...) and when (date-time) and where (what equipment.)

2. Use tools to do the work faster and better.

• Utilize tools that automatically read files, extract traceability information, read data, plus analyze and make reports.
• Once item 1 is implemented, using tools to extract and sort information gets much easier. For instance, take the filename from item 1, extract the part number, 100 ohms impedance, data, etc, and make a report with plots and analysis results.
• If you have some tools that do this, learn them, master them and use them. If not, get them or make your own !

3. Keep strange or bad data. 

• Label them accurately and descriptively..... and keep them. These datapoints are precious because they are great opportunities for learning.
• I've often looked back at strange data a few weeks later, and realized why it was strange and how to fix it. Now I have a dataset to show the problem and how to fix it.

4. When organizing data into groups, use 3 or 4 levels or categories, not too many, not too few.

• Too many levels are hard to navigate and process, too few levels make big piles of miscellaneous data in the same directory.
• Side note: Never use "archive" in the name of a file or directory. Archive is a code word that means "Nobody will look at this ever again."

5. Make readme.txt notes or decoder rings to explain data labels that aren't obvious. 

• The person you are most likely to help is yourself, months or years later.
• Here's an example. There's a set of experimental data (simulation, measurement, analysis, whatever) labeled A,B,C,D and E.
• Make a short text file that explains what A,B,C, D and E are.
• It's freeform text, so write whatever helps you describe the data. Put in links to websites or to other filenames, or point to some company  database that gives more detail.

Example:  README.TXT
measurementA.data - baseline production data for part 123measurementB.data - baseline product, but with a hole in it measurementC.data - invalid data, bad electrical connection measurementD.data - high tension experiment measurementE.data - updated product, prototype E

In order to implement these steps quickly and easily, I wrote a couple tools to copy, move and rename files. For all you matlab users out there, the functions "easycopy" and "easyrename" can be downloaded from the Matlab File Exchange. These functions can take any files and copy/move/rename them to the desired filenames and locations. They provide a way of organizing and labeling files with some automation, so that the user can quickly implement a file and directory naming strategy.

Easycopy can copy or rename a list of filenames to a list of destinations. It can also use wildcards to find a bunch of files and then automatically copy them to new filenames. It can read a list of files and destinations from a spreadsheet or text file and perform a batch of commands all at once. Easyrename does the same things as easycopy, but with a move/rename command.

Check out these functions and let me know what you think !
FREE MATLAB DOWNLOADS
https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/63417-easycopy
https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/63586-easyrename

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Fast, Easy Resonance Analysis

When designing interconnects for electronics, it only takes a few days to develop the basic structure and tune the impedance.  However, reducing and removing resonances is typically a time-consuming, iterative process that can take weeks or months.  With the use of eigenmodes and terminal coupling metrics, resonance reduction can be done in just a few days.  I co-authored an article about this method.  Please check it out and let me know what you think !

https://www.signalintegrityjournal.com/articles/441-gssg-resonance-method-for-interconnect-designs