(this is a reproduction of my original sketch in mid 1978)
I started at Kilkenny TAFE (Technical And Further Education) campus in Adelaide SA in 1977, we were transferred to the unfinished Regency Park campus later that year. I was looking forward to learning something new after the Radio Club I was in years before at Mitchell Park High School, I was disappointed. The School of Electronic Engineering and Jewelry were the first courses transferred to Regency Park, everyone quickly discovered the enormous electrostatic generation properties of the carpet installed there. The charge was so high, if selective clothing and footwear was used, that it would arc more than an inch. It didnt take long, at the beginning of every lesson my bag was searched for anything remotely conductive, so I was stashing what I needed ahead of time in the classroom. I wasnt even allowed a pencil, graphite is conductive, and I was only allowed plastic pens.
Everything seemed pretty basic to me in the first 1/2 year and then the mid year exams came around, I scored well but the exam itself seemed familiar. I put that aside and the remainder of the year was just as boring. Boredom set in and I started targeting other students and teachers. I left Magnet Man, my teacher that taught magnetic theory, out of it. I liked Magnet Man, he was the only teacher that I never had to correct and he accepted my distractions because he saw that at least I tried to make them educational. Like the time I led the class into a "mythbusters" type investigation into claims made in the 1978 movie "Behind Enemy Lines",that HDDs and data can be irretrievably destroyed within milliseconds.
Then the end of year final exams came around, I was first finished yet again. The exam was so familiar that I went home and searched my old exams from Radio Club, mum was a bit of a hoarder. When I found the corresponding exam, they were identical right down to every question. The teacher in Radio Club had taken the entire course direct from TAFE, I had done the entire apprenticeship course 5-6 years before.
When I discovered the duplication it explained why they werent teaching me anything new. I didnt want to sit through all that same stuff I already knew all over again. So I looked for something else. At that time in 1978 the base at Antarctica was advertising for a radio operator, 2 year contract, 6 months on, 6 months off and they did not recognize TAFE qualifications. That meant I could get the job based solely on skills in exams they gave. Well I passed everything, the exams, the medical and the psych evaluation for living in isolation. They told me I was accepted and to be on the dock with baggage, and a medical certificate to state my appendix had been removed. Bastards didnt tell me the appendix thing until last minute, I hate hospitals and needles. I didnt turn up.
At this stage I had missed the first half of second year TAFE. To top that off the day I walked back in was mid year exams, I was also late. The teacher said "You missed all of this but do the exam anyway, its 2 hours". So I breezed through the questions and told the teacher that I was finished in 15 minutes, he told me to check my answers, I said I didnt want to, he demanded. So I sped read and wanted to hand it in within a minute or two. He forced me to do that twice more before he would accept my answers. So in less than 25 minutes I was out of there heading to the pub, I told the other students to meet me there. I found the exam easy but they were complaining about how hard it was over drinks.
I got 98% in the mid year exams, every other student in my class failed and had to repeat the exam on the Saturday if they wanted to pass. Then I got expelled for cheating, along with a restraining order preventing me from accessing any Education Dept computers anywhere in the state of SA. I had been playing games on the TAFE mainframe and they thought it gave them the right to boot me. The teacher that ran the Radio Club had since died so it took me a bit over 2 months to find enough students that had also done the Radio Club with me to make Dave Murphy, the senior lecturer of the School of Electronic Engineering, satisfied enough that I had not cheated and let me resume TAFE. He resisted all the way, even trying to use the minimum attendance requirement of 63% to try to keep me out, my attendance rate was 53%. I was even given an IQ test, another 2 hour exam, which I finished in 20 minutes and refused to double check my answers. I told Dave "you accuse me of cheating partially because of the speed of my answers in exams, so mark me on this as is", I got 147.
A few weeks later Dave told me they wanted me to do another course while doing my apprenticeship. They jumped me about 11 years of pre-requisite schooling ahead of where I was, Dave wanted to stop my boredom being such a distraction for everyone else. The course was Large Scale Silicon Wafer Device Design and Manufacture, I was still 17. To make me feel a little more comfortable they sat me next to the next youngest student, he was 43.
The course was intense, fluid dynamics at the atomic level. The specific portion of the course was listed as a 2 week course. The first week was about laying the first single atom layer of a 10 atom thick junction of doped silicon. The maths was way above my head but I was able to visualize the patterns and plot answers from that, my answers were wrong but the teacher said they were exceptionally close for someone that did not understand the math.
What they were doing at the time was using magnetic fields to "press" the molten silicon as flat as possible. But they were using magnetic coil heads with AC signal. This created waves and whirlpools which had to be laser etched between each single layer applied. The math was to calculate the height, depth and frequency of these waves and whirlpools so that it was guaranteed there was enough doped silicon to have full coverage after laser etching. It was the Tuesday of the second week when the teacher said "Ok thats a 1 atom layer, now to do the other 9 recalculating everything to compensate for the affects created by the previous layers", in my head I said "Fuck that" then drew the sketch.
After drawing the sketch I put my hand up and asked "Why dont you just use DC, press it flat and fuck all this shit off?". The teacher responded quickly with "Cant be done!" which stunned me, surely I wasnt wrong. I double checked everything in my head then put my hand up again to ask "Why the fuck not?" sitting there with a smartass grin on my face. I didnt tell him all the parameters that needed to be changed. The teacher then started drawing on the blackboard, stopping every now and then to look at me still grinning. It took him 1 hour 45 minutes to finally concede, saying "Well i'll be fucked, you can".
My way was to use electrostatic pressure from a laser etched flat plate with high voltage DC applied to press it flat, no waves or whirlpools, my sketch. This dramatically reduced wastage of expensive doped silicon and dramatically reduced the number of steps to create the junctions. I got up and walked out.
A few weeks later Dave approached me again, this time to tell me that the government wanted me to work for NASA and become Australia's first astronaught. Well, I burst into laughter so hard I tore ligaments in my ribcage. It hurt so much that I collapsed on the floor in front of Dave trying to stop laughing. I was clutching my ribs with one arm and I was on my hands and knees, tears running down my face but I couldnt stop laughing. Eventually the pain exceed the humour and I managed to stop laughing, Dave was looking at me perplexed. Took me a little while to get my shit together and I was as perplexed as Dave seemed to be, why didnt he get the funny bit. Anyway I had to remind Dave that he was unable to stay in the same classroom with me for a full 2 hours lesson without going outside to punch, kick lockers or count to 10 when we clashed, which was often, and he wanted me to get in a sardine can with others in a vacume. I said "I hope they have shitloads of oxygen for the spacesuits coz someone will probably be out there a lot, probably me". Then I said "It takes more than brains to be an astronaught, you have to get along with others", Dave said "Yea, good point". My ribs were sore for 3 weeks.
TAFE didnt go much longer for me, I quit. I averaged 98% for the course and they gave the apprentice of the year award to someone else with lower scores. I was told the Premier wanted to talk to me backstage at the awards, that made me panic, that was John Bannon then who I didnt want to see. Luckily Bannon had a funeral to attend so he sent his Deputy instead. He blew sunshine out my arse wanting me to continue TAFE. No public acknowledgement for what I had done at all, why continue. I could have done so much more, later the same day I made that course redundant in 1978 I saw another possibility which still has not eventuated anywhere else.
About 2-3 years later Magnet Man died in a freak accident. He was laying on a beach between his twin daughters in a northern suburb in Adelaide when a summer storm cloud rolled in. He was struck in the chest by lightning and killed instantly.
