Meet the Engineer: Bob Stanton
Bob Stanton’s long career in miniature electronics began in the early days of silicon chip design. He spoke with Connector Supplier about his love of science and the importance of encouraging the next generation of engineers.
Curiosity, collaboration, and a willingness to try and fail were some of the key traits that launched the electronics industry we know today, according to long-time engineer and interconnect expert Bob Stanton. Bob has had an impressive career in the miniature electronics industry that began in the early days of Silicon Valley, working with electronics companies and connector suppliers along the way. He continues to make valuable contributions through mentorship and educational programs that inspire upcoming generations of engineers and scientists. Bob spoke with Connector Supplier about how his love of science and his two favorite questions led him to a career in a field that only barely existed when he was starting out.
Connector Supplier: Where did your interest in science and education start?
Bob: I grew up in the backwoods of Montana. My mother, being an avid teacher, taught me how to read in great depth and that was a really important first step. As I got a little older, even before high school, I started getting tutored by a neighbor who had retired from the university, so I got a lot of extra math and science as a young man. There just wasn’t much of that available where I lived out in the countryside. It became my personal passion to know a lot about science.
C.S.: When did you first start working with electronics?
Bob: I joined the Navy right after high school. I was 18 when they sent me to radar electronic school and immediately taught me computer technology. The computers were all vacuum tubes. I also took United States Armed Forces instruction courses that were mailed to me while I was on the USS Midway in the Pacific. Then I helped teach electronics to new kids coming on the ship.
C.S.: What was your actual job in the Navy?
Bob: I was responsible for maintaining and sustaining computers that would watch for an airplane (or a missile) coming at us, measure it, track it, and send the data to another computer that would do all the trigonometry to calculate where that plane was going based on the angle, the height, and the speed. We would figure out what angle and height and speed to send a missile and they would meet at the intersection. My job was to keep the computers running well.
There were times when they would put me on a helicopter and fly me to the other ships to help fix those computers too. I was a combination of electronic technician and fire control technician, fire meaning gunfire.
When I got out of the Navy, it was a new time. I knew my electronics but there wasn’t much to do with that in Montana so my wife and I moved to California where they were starting to make transistors. I got jobs instantly just because I was kind of an old-fashioned, hands-on, tech kid. I love to find out how to do things.
C.S.: What was it like working in Silicon Valley then?
Bob: The magazine articles that talk about how smart we were back then were wrong. We were smart about sharing and comparing notes and trading ideas. That was the most important part in those days. And we were willing to make a mistake. We would try something and then we had to say how it worked and why it worked. (Or why did it go wrong?) Everything we did we had to go through that process and it worked so well.
Most of us went to night school for specialty courses. I attended classes at Stanford University Research Center and the University of Santa Clara. As time went on, I went to about five other graduate schools, but always focusing specifically on the technologies I needed. I would travel to other places to learn what I’d call physics and the technology of what would become solid state sciences.
C.S.: While you’re doing all this, how were you making a living?
Bob: I had to work nights cooking in a restaurant. Eventually, I got hired to grow silicon crystals for transistors. We had studied crystallography, just like people study making diamonds for diamond rings, and we knew that you need certain faces to put the impurities inside the crystal to make it work like a transistor. I worked as a technician making these processes. Maybe you’d work for one company for six months or a year and then another guy would say we really need you over here to do diffusion technology, which is one of the ways they put impurities inside the silicon. And you’d go over there and start learning how to get the impurities down inside the crystal where you wanted them. Remember a basic transistor has one place that has too many electrons, another place that doesn’t have enough electrons, and the third place that’s exactly neutral. But it’s so small, you have to figure out how to do that. I’d work for a company and then after a while someone else would ask for help. I started doing this kind of work on the side, and I didn’t have to cook anymore. Nobody cared or was proprietary about their knowledge; there was a lot of sharing what we learned. That’s how America became a powerhouse as we were willing to share and work with others.
In time, I moved to Oregon where I helped make the equipment to test the new micro circuits. The key was learning to do things faster and smaller. You had to squeeze a lot into a small area, but that opened a whole new world of industry, as we all know. Fortunately, I’m a reader. I read every book I could on every topic I could find and then I’d try to figure out what hadn’t been done.
During all of this I kept taking night classes in other places. In Oregon, my whole career changed. Instead of making silicon chips, I wanted to know how to use them to solve problems, so I started going to classes on how to solve problems with them. We began making integrated circuit chips that offered us all so much. We then formed or worked with teams to design cardio-pacemakers and portable blood oxygen devices. Eventually we worked with numerous other medical devices as well as military and satellite circuits currently in the field and as far away as Mars.

Connector Supplier’s Bob Hult (left) and Bob Stanton (right) at Scott’s Seafood during DesignCon 2021
C.S.: Getting back to your favorite questions. Why do they matter?
Bob: To this day, I urge people to ask two key questions: “How does that work?” and, “Why does it work?” They are so simple but my life is all about thinking of the practical solutions for how things work. I don’t think we do this often enough.

Bob engaging a classroom of possible future engineers and scientists. “My favorite thing was to get them asking questions about nature and everyday things,” he said
C.S.: How do you use this approach to inspire kids?
Bob: I’m working up different programs, making slideshows, offering them to science teachers locally because I can hear the feedback — what kids were bored with, what they enjoyed. I do start with some really simple questions. To the lower grades, for example: “When I get on my bicycle and quit pedaling how come it keeps going?” or “Why is the sky blue?” I do a lot to get the kids curious. At a higher level, I have offered more text and support for the teachers and kids who want to go to the Science Olympiads and STEM classes.
I have sent data to NASA Kids’ Club for different age groups. I also taught classes in many other countries in high tech and science. That’s the fun stuff.
C.S.: That’s quite a legacy. What do you do for fun now that you are retired?
Bob: I am continuing to support young and hopeful kids that show an interest in sciences and offer my support. Another hobby of mine is wood carving and painting nature scenes. Ten of my pieces recently sold at a charity fundraiser. My personal studies continue on topics such as how etching and plating materials improve our ability to increase signal speeds on very small conductors. I continue to thank the many companies I had the privilege to work with and the many science societies that function in sharing data in the sciences from nature to high-speed technology.
See Bob Stanton’s archive of interconnect articles on Connector Supplier.
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