How My Father Helped Me Become a Maker

I was born in the early 1950s, and our first family home was in a rural area of Lehigh County in Pennsylvania. My dad, Karson Albert, worked as a sales representative for a pharmaceutical company, but during WWII he served in the Merchant Marines as a Midshipman on the Liberty ships.

At the start of WWII, the US did not have the capacity to ship goods and people at a level needed to support the war effort overseas. Liberty ships were built at a breakneck speed and became the essential cargo lifeline to foreign ports. However, because of their design, they also split in half on numerous occasions, and “crack arresters” were an essential part of each ship’s supplies.

You have to be resourceful if something goes wrong and you’re far out at sea, lumbering along at 8 knots. I heard many a tale of problem-solving through repurposing and reconfiguring engines to make more speed (against what the operation manual allowed), and improvising fixes on the spur of the moment. After all, 1943 saw the boom of duct tape! 

I watched my dad continue those hard-learned lessons as he repaired cars, lawnmowers, plumbing, and just about anything that went wrong. If he didn’t know how to do it, he would take time to learn the ins and outs of what was needed. I still have his 12′ aluminum fishing boat, complete with a “crack arrester” to repair a split in the transom!

Early on, my interests turned to electronics. This was an area that my dad was familiar with, but not the emerging transistor and radio developments. This turned into a lifelong hobby of building and designing electronic devices – a natural extension of my Computer Science and Engineering degrees. It even led me to be part of a team that created the first dual-chamber synchronous implantable heart pacemaker!

And before I retired from my technical college professor role, I served as part of the team that brought a complete Makerspace to The Pennsylvania College of Technology. It remains a vital meeting place for students to experiment, tinker, and both fail and succeed without worry about grades!