[HN Gopher] Willis Whitfield: Creator of clean room technology s...
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Willis Whitfield: Creator of clean room technology still in use
today (2024)
Author : rbanffy
Score : 139 points
Date : 2025-11-24 21:12 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sandia.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sandia.gov)
| zkmon wrote:
| Growing up on a farm with access to minimal technology provides a
| perfect setting for producing finest minds. It provides beautiful
| challenges, minimal resources and full of freedom.
|
| And the reward (or punishment) would be to move to city life or
| to Western countries. That's a pity. Modern life puts you into a
| grove to move in. You are a caged animal or a micro-managed
| worker. There are no problems and no freedom. Can't even have the
| option to use or not to use AI at work. We are cells in a larger
| creature. Cells are not supposed to do thinking.
| quietthrow wrote:
| Well said.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Density/proximity are far better incubators for innovation than
| people being bored and isolated on farms. Also not sure where
| the idea that 'freedom' is associated with farms comes from?
| How free are you if you must wake up at 4am and work for 12
| hours to barely make a profit?
|
| There are exceptions. They are notable for being exceptions.
| samplatt wrote:
| Independently-owned farms aren't slave factories. Sometimes
| you'll be doing consecutive months of 13hrs/day labour,
| sometimes you'll have 75% of the day free, every day, for a
| few weeks. Guess what those with a low budget and an
| engineer's mind tend to get up to in their free time.
|
| "Independently-owned farms" are the exception, these days,
| not the people. Every single one I've ever seen has at least
| one guy on there that performs miracles with PVC pipe, a TIG
| welder and spare bits of iron.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Sometimes you'll be doing consecutive months of 13hrs/day
| labour, sometimes you'll have 75% of the day free, every
| day, for a few weeks.
|
| That depends _greatly_ on the farm in question. I grew up
| on a dairy farm, and there was no such thing as a break
| from work unless we hired someone to take care of the cows
| for us. They are fairly constant in the amount of work you
| have to put in (I imagine other livestock are similar but
| that 's outside my experience).
| somenameforme wrote:
| Dairy farming is arguably the single most intensive form
| of farm/ranch work that there is. It's not really
| comparable to other stuff.
| zkmon wrote:
| Freedom as in randomness that was allowed and available in
| those settings and in those times. I grew up on a farm in the
| 70's. Observed how mills work. I could simulate and notice a
| gear error in a complex machine drawing in my engineering
| class. The teacher had to abandon the class to think it over.
| zkmon wrote:
| Also, constraints, survival struggle, a bit of wilderness
| (lack of regulatory reach), forced alertness, exposure to
| vast variety in the context - they are all ingredients or a
| green field for innovation. It's like a camping or trekking
| adventure every day.
| ErroneousBosh wrote:
| > Density/proximity are far better incubators for innovation
| than people being bored and isolated on farms.
|
| That might be the case for you.
|
| I do all my best programming when I'm driving a tractor. When
| I stop, I just need to type it all in.
|
| Or, driving my car, for that matter. I just need to get from
| here to way over there, it's maybe 90 miles, something like a
| two and a half hour drive, during which time no-one can phone
| me, no-one can come up and hand me something that's Clearly
| My Problem Because It Has An Electrical Connector, no-one can
| ask me what's wrong with the printer in the facilities
| office, and I can just sit and quietly think. I don't even
| have to put up with braying adverts on the local radio
| station.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Loneliness and boredom are good ingredients as well. Some
| physical isolation helps with that. I lived in a
| neighbourhood where I was the only kid. That made me bored
| frequently and drove me to habits that still serve me well.
| im3w1l wrote:
| The freedom of a farm is that you don't have a boss telling
| you what to do (if it's your own farm). It's also harder for
| the government to know what is going on in the middle of
| nowhere meaning they can't enforce the law as well.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| > There are no problems and no freedom.
|
| It's so telling that you have not even considered the
| possibility of starting your own business -- something that is
| much easier to do in a city, and which allows you the freedom
| to use AI as much or as little as you want.
| zkmon wrote:
| What problems are left for starting a business? I see only
| solutions searching for problems. Maybe come up with a
| competing solution to an already solved problem?
|
| As a technology startup your root goal would be an exit. So
| you would work on problem which is in the roadmap for a big
| company and your wish is, they are not agile enough to build
| it themselves quickly and would buy out your stuff to beat
| their competition. So it's kind of contract work, with
| contract coming after the work is done.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| You could attempt to produce crops or live stock for less
| than you can sell them for later.
| bitwize wrote:
| Farm work was grueling, lasted pretty much from dawn till dusk,
| took an enormous physical toll on the body, and you never know
| when a bad crop or unfavorable weather might mean you starve.
|
| I'm descended from farm folk. I have relatives living who still
| are. I'm proud of that heritage, but let's not romanticize
| things. There's a reason the song doesn't go "How ya gonna keep
| 'em down in Paree after they've seen the farm?"
| zkmon wrote:
| The song goes that way because Paris is attractive to young
| men compared to the American farms. But being attractive may
| not mean good. Candy is attractive too, to children. And that
| hard work in farms doesn't necessarily mean being less
| happier than your modern life, as happiness is more dependent
| on expectations than what you have. Paris experience raised
| expectations for army folks.
|
| Sometimes, I think that the modern education setup (schools
| and colleges) is a recruiting and training mechanism. Bright
| kids from all over the country side are filtered and sucked
| away to work in the modern factories. Same as army
| recruitment camps that go to rural side, conduct running
| competitions and take away all the strong youth from
| villages.
|
| Ofcourse, they sell education as knowledge or refinement as a
| person. But the real goal is to create a workforce.
| somenameforme wrote:
| > took an enormous physical toll on the body
|
| Just a nitpick, but our bodies are meant for labor. You grow
| ever stronger and more capable over time. Amish, for an
| extreme example, work exceptionally hard and eschew most
| modern medicine and healthcare options, yet live very long
| and healthy lives with substantially lower rates of cancer
| and various other disease than the general population. *
| Sitting at a desk for 8+ hours a day, for decades, is what
| takes an enormous physical toll on the body.
|
| * - I wanted to give a life expectancy here, but it turns out
| there is no particularly good life expectancy measurement for
| them. This [1] study is the closest I found, where it looks
| like the 50% survival rate for men/women who hit at least 30
| years of age, is a bit higher than 80 for women, and a bit
| lower than 80 for men.
|
| [1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3526600/
| phyzome wrote:
| As it alludes to in the first paragraph, farmers actually have
| to do a lot of engineering work.
| cyberax wrote:
| The handwriting in that drawing is beautiful!
| pilaf wrote:
| It looks pretty but it's so low resolution I can barely make
| out any words. Found a higher res version though (embedded in a
| PDF, page 7):
|
| https://www.sandia.gov/app/uploads/sites/194/2022/01/GIANTS_...
|
| It's interesting that all lines in the sketch are straight, and
| circles are perfect, so it seems Whitfield took a ruler and a
| compass on that plane.
| maeln wrote:
| > It's interesting that all lines in the sketch are straight,
| and circles are perfect, so it seems Whitfield took a ruler
| and a compass on that plane.
|
| Imagine trying to board a plane with a compass nowaday :)
| gc9 wrote:
| > ruler and compass
|
| Or a circle template (rectangular with holes of different
| sizes). That would aid drawing the small circles, as well as
| drawing straight edges and right angles. It can be kept in a
| notebook like a bookmark.
| havaloc wrote:
| On page 12 there's an ad for the cleanroom, and one of the
| selling points is that it would allow cigarette smoking!
| xp84 wrote:
| Quote from his son:
|
| > From a personal point of view, I would say to myself 'I am
| working in something my dad made.' Every time I would walk in, I
| would say, 'Thanks Dad.'"
|
| As a dad, I should be so lucky as to create something my son will
| appreciate like that.
|
| Also, Whitfield lived to the age of 92. What a blessing that must
| have been to his son, to have such a great role model and to have
| him still in his life for many decades. Maybe it's just something
| I think about a lot because I lost both of my parents young.
| lazyfanatic42 wrote:
| Losing a parent, especially, leaves its mark.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Recently, with my mom's passing, I realised I'm now an
| orphan.
|
| It really sucks, at any age.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I exist because my mom's mother died a year earlier. My
| brother exists because my mom's grandmother died a year
| earlier.
| imvetri wrote:
| Hey, the magic mushroom grow tech credits goes to sir.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Interesting article, and he sounds like a clever (and, as the
| article says) humble guy.
|
| > On the way home from one of those trips, Whitfield had an idea.
| "He was on an airplane, and he whipped out a tablet and basically
| drew out the whole schematic of how the clean room should work,"
| said Whitfield's son Jim, who was 6 years old at the time. "It
| was just a simple sketch. It just took a few minutes, and it's
| the basic principle that is still used today."
|
| This was in 1960 and he clearly drew it on paper. So is/was
| "tablet" a common term for a pad of paper? I've never heard it
| used in any context other than a slab of stone or a derivation of
| such.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet#Inscription,_printing,_...
|
| Minor point but struck me as odd.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> So is /was "tablet" a common term for a pad of paper?_
|
| In drafting it was a pad of drawing or tracing paper.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| Also, typically glue bound along the top edge and having a
| solid backing, as if you took a hardbound book (of blank
| pages) and ripped off the front cover and spine. Pages could
| easily be peeled off, if glued at the edge, or torn off if
| perforated.
| o1bf2k25n8g5 wrote:
| I picture it as a legal pad, more or less. If I really think
| about it, I imagine a "legal pad" as having that very specific
| paper (lined, with that nice margin), whereas a "tablet" could
| perhaps be any type of paper bound together in that same way.
|
| I'm not entirely sure where I got these impressions from over
| the years, though I certainly used to use a lot of legal pads.
| I still really like stumbling across a nice one in the wild,
| even if I usually just get them from Amazon nowadays. (Aside:
| Is it just me, or are legal pads not as good these days as they
| used to be?)
|
| Anyway, from this bit on Wikipedia about legal pads, it seems
| like that is one origin story for using "tablet" in this
| context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook#Legal_pad
|
| Notably, from the last sentence of that story:
|
| > ...he glued together a stack of halved sheets of paper,
| supported by a sheet of cardboard, creating what he called the
| "Silver City Writing Tablet".
| Brybry wrote:
| Looks like paper tablets even predate that 1902 use. This
| source has newspaper ads for "Pencil Tablets" and "Writing
| Tablets": bound ruled and un-ruled paper with and without
| covers from 1894-1895:
| https://www.kristinholt.com/archives/3205
|
| I wonder if binding at the top was necessary to be called a
| tablet? Or perforation to easily tear off sheets?
|
| I was looking to see how long ago marble composition
| notebooks (which are side-bound) were created and what they
| were called and it looks like they existed in the mid-1800s
| but I couldn't find any evidence they were called tablets.
| dmd wrote:
| Growing up in the 1980s in suburbs of NYC my elementary school
| teachers always asked us to get our "tablets" out to work on
| math.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I remember using "tablets" in math class, but those were
| small hand-held chalkboards.
| Archelaos wrote:
| Etymonline states: "The meaning 'pad of writing or blotting
| paper' is by 1880".[1] Also see the variety of meanings listed
| it the Webster 1913 edition, including: "1. A small table or
| flat surface. 2. A flat piece of any material on which to
| write, paint, draw, or engrave; also, such a piece containing
| an inscription or a picture. 3. Hence, a small picture; a
| miniature. [Obs.] 4. pl. A kind of pocket memorandum book.
| [...]".[2] -- No information on the frequency of use, though.
|
| [1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/tablet
|
| [2] https://www.websters1913.com/words/Tablet
| devilbunny wrote:
| It was.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Chief_tablet
|
| This exact product is referenced quite often in John Kennedy
| Toole's hilarious _A Confederacy of Dunces_ , set in New
| Orleans of the early 1960s. The main character, Ignatius J
| Reilly, is essentially a neckbeard stereotype.
| pedro_caetano wrote:
| Slightly off topic but that lab book made me a bit envious.
|
| I doubt my mental bandwith could cope without org mode and
| digital formats in general. But that penmanship and the general
| neatness really shows a focus and an intentionality that makes me
| feel that something has fallen off the wayside in this digital
| transition.
| pseudolus wrote:
| Link (pdf) to the issued patent:
| https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cb/4f/c5/d10b79e...
| eternauta3k wrote:
| I wish the article said what they did with the patent. Did
| everyone using this technology have to license it from Sandia?
| noduerme wrote:
| Is there a vague idea of what percentage of each country's
| nuclear arsenal would be duds? Prior to or after clean rooms got
| cleaner?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Too few to make a difference, the US and USSR built and
| designated additional bombs and missiles to targets to account
| for anticipated failure rates.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| It reminds me of the aquarium filter I had as a child in which a
| plastic grate was placed underneath the gravel and connected air
| bubblers would create enough of an upward water flow in the
| corners that anything on the gravel surface would gradually get
| pulled beneath the plastic grate.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is still one of the best forms of aquarium filtration. It
| encourages beneficial bacteria to grow throughout the substrate
| and they do most of the work. The air bubblers have a bonus
| side effect of aerating the water for fish an bacteria alike.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I love how they call his engineer's notepad a "tablet."
| bell-cot wrote:
| The form factor and usage go back quite a ways:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_tablet
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeah.
|
| I used those things (the paper ones) for most of my career. I
| had stacks of them.
|
| "Tablet" is a valid appellation, but we always called them
| "pads."
| analog31 wrote:
| It was definitely a term, though perhaps not as common as
| "pad." I only remember that the term was familiar, well before
| the "tablet" became a digital device.
| bananaflag wrote:
| The original "Tablet PC" announced by Microsoft in 2000-1 was
| meant to mean "PC in the form of a tablet".
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Interesting. I always thought about it in the sense of a
| "clay tablet" that could only "display" on a single
| surface, as opposed to a notepad that allowed you to freely
| flip through pages.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| Oh wow! I was just thinking the other day about a similar design
| to build for my second-hand clothing stores where we have a lot
| of lint that is constantly clogging HVAC systems that I maintain.
|
| I'd like to create laminar-flow across the floor so all the dust
| travels to one wall for easy sweeping and also capture dust in a
| vortex system tucked away in the basement.
| hbarka wrote:
| I had no idea this was the man who was responsible for the
| cleanroom where I spent thousands of hours working in right after
| college. To get in a Class 10 cleanroom, there was the laborious
| routine of gowning from head to toe and then taking the air
| shower and passing through the airlock before entering the place
| that looked like it belonged in science fiction. It was a strange
| environment trying to recognize anyone because all you can see
| are people's eyes through goggles. After awhile you remember
| their gait as the first tell. There was even a belief that
| exposure to the air inside made people, say for lack of a better
| word, amorous. Myth or true maybe some can chime in.
|
| Thanks for sharing the article.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| My first thought: "Wow. They let you breathe into the room
| unfiltered?".
|
| Second thought is that any amorousness would be linked more to
| the donning, and importantly doffing, of the extra clothes in
| view of your coworkers. Our culture has a nudity taboo, and
| thus hints of taking off clothes, or being relatively
| unclothed, in the presence of others of the opposite sex (or
| same sex for those so inclined) is viscerally linked to sex.
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