Just Who Is
J.R. Whipple?

From the age of five or six when the Whipple family got its first TV, a refrigerator sized 15 inch black and white model, I was simply mesmerized looking at all those glowing tubes inside that wonderful machine. Each time the TV repairman showed up, and it was often in those early TV days, I would look over his shoulder as he did those magical things that brought our television back to life. Those were the days when there was one TV station to watch for the five or six hours a day that they were on the air. My folks would say, "I spent more time looking into the back of the TV set, than looking at the side that had the pictures on it". Probably true. I had fallen in love with technology, and I could no longer live without knowing how it worked, than I could live without breathing.

By the age of seven I had quite a collection of old radios, toasters, vacuum cleaners and other broken appliances, donated by family and neighbors. My most prized birthday gift ever arrived on the anniversary of my 7th year. My father presented me with a professional “Weller” soldering gun, which I immediately employed in the disassembly of many of those small appliances.

By 14 I was working, part time, at a local TV shop. I had been hanging out at the TV shop for some time, sucking up knowledge like a sponge, when the owner offered to let me actually work there. He said something about fifty cents an hour, I initially wondered how I was going to afford to pay him a half-buck an hour to hang out with him, when I realized he was actually going to pay me to learn the basics of electronics. I was in seventh heaven! That was the start of my professional career that spanned having my own TV shop, then working in the commercial two-way radio business, designing and installing fire and burglar alarm systems, designing and constructing discothèques, and my involvement in nearly all forms of electronics.

Over the next twenty plus years I found myself involved with birth of the personal computer. As a member of the “Homebrew Computer Society”, a club composed of a bunch of us nerds who just loved high-tech, with the likes of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs (who later went on to found Apple Computer) and many others who became leaders in the computer industry, the club was the crucible that forged the personal computer from a handmade machine that only a nerd could love, to what it has become today.

Twenty-four-hour design and brainstorming sessions, fueled by pizza and colas were the norm. In those heady days, we just couldn't rest. We had a technology to invent! Steve Jobs, who was never much of a high-tech wire-head, matured into one heck of a business leader. Years ago, when Steve was courting John Sculley, (who, at that time, was the president of PepsiCo) as a CEO for Apple computer, Steve, after days of frustration trying to woo John away from Pepsi, stormed into his office and said one of the all-time greatest lines, “Do you just want to keep making colored sugar-water, or do you want to change the world?” That did it. John Sculley became the CEO of Apple computer company.