Electronic Design

Bob Pease

Bob Pease was an analog engineering legend, and wrote columns exclusively for Electronic Design magazine until his death in 2011. He also contributed to our magazine with Bob's Mailbox, where he answered questions from young engineers.

Bob obtained a BSEE from MIT in 1961 and was a staff scientist at National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, CA, for many years.

Articles by Bob Pease

What’s All This Spicey Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 2.5) 6

The late Bob Pease’s antagonism for Spice is legendary. In this lost chapter in his long series of tirades, first published in October of 1991, Bob explains why you always need to verify your circuit designs on a breadboard, not just in Spice.

What’s All This Splicing Stuff, Anyhow? (Part II)

In this recently unearthed column from 1991, Bob responds to reader advice about splicing. Of course, Bob has some of his own opinions.

What’s All This Critical Thinking Stuff, Anyhow? 8

The late Bob Pease knew the value of memorization. But he also knew that analysis trumps rote knowledge in all walks of life, especially engineering. In this lost column from 1991, he relates a few anecdotes about the role that critical thinking plays on the job.

What’s All This Brick Stuff, Anyhow?

From 1991, one of Bob Pease's lighter columns -- a double-barreled "fable" with a moral about project planning.

What’s All This Cottage-Cheese Stuff, Anyhow?

In this 1991 column, the late Bob Pease reflects on persistance, perceived and as actually practiced by real engineers. The "cottage cheese" reference is an amusing anecdote about submariners.

What’s All This Widlar Stuff, Anyhow?

What’s All This Perfection Stuff, Anyhow?

Whether you're writing a book or designing an amplifier, perfection may be a worthy but unattainable goal. Sooner or later, you have to settle for good enough.

What’s All This Spicey Stuff, Anyhow? (Part II) 2

Bob Pease recalls some of his struggles with Spice, answers some reader questions, proves a point to his marketing exec, and discusses the role of modeling.

What’s All This Spicey Stuff, Anyhow? (Part I)

Bob Pease is not a fan of using Spice to design. He prefers to get his hands dirty with some analog computations and breadboards.

What’s All This Last Column Stuff, Anyhow? 13

The Late Bob Pease' Final Column for Electronic Design

What’s All This Profit Stuff, Anyhow? 2

Back in 1960, Bob Pease observed a top secret project, the first solid-state operational amplifier, at George A. Philbrick Researches.

What’s All This Noise Stuff, Anyhow? (Part II)

Bob Pease continues his investigation of a high-performance, low-noise transistor project by building his own text fixture to measure its transistor base-current noise.

What’s All This Noise Stuff, Anyhow? (Part 1)

Bob Pease investigates a high-performance, low-noise transistor project whose transistors boast noise that's two to four orders of magnitude quiter than conventional transistors.

What’s All This Analog Stuff, Anyhow? 7

Originally published September 13, 1990, this is the first of a series of columns about analog and "linear" circuits by Bob Pease. In this inaugural edition, Bob tackles "analog synthesis" and the "hueristic approach," as explained by a young colleague.

Bob’s Mailbox: Audio Quality, A Crazy Rack, And The PE Exam 13

Bob responds to reader missives about a custom headphone amplifier, a brilliant but impractical rack involving multiple nested phase-locked loops, and why he never took the PE exam.