Howie Baum

Zierler:

This is David Zierler, oral historian for the American Institute of Physics. It is January 14th, 2020. I am delighted to be here with Howie Baum. Howie, it’s great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Baum:

Thank you, David. It is very nice to meet you and be with you on this interview, as well.

Zierler:

To start, would you please tell me some of your current titles and institutional affiliations?

Baum:

I am retired. I taught at the University of Cincinnati for sixteen years, part time, and taught four different classes there, but the two main classes I taught for the entire time was about materials science and manufacturing processes and Ergonomics which they called Human Factors Design. I taught part-time for thirty-two years in addition to working as a mechanical engineer as my main background, at companies around or in Cincinnati.

Zierler:

In your retirement, what are some of the ways that you've remained involved in the science and tinkering?

Baum:

Before the virus came in mid-March and changed a lot of the things that we do, I was volunteering at three different places. One was the Cincinnati VA Medical Center, working in the Research Department there, helping with different projects. Otherwise, I taught computers in another department for veterans and set up a computer lab for that. I have a whole set of presentations for an introduction to computers and it gets into involved things with all the stuff on the internet, using it safely, how to do email, and all the different ways to do that. Volunteering at the VA has been neat because I was able to reconnect with them a few months ago to offer to create and edit documents for the Voluntary Services office. I did a fifteen-page quarterly newsletter that I was working on when I was there, but I'm able to do it from home now, and send it in to them. So that’s good, fun, and it works out well. Also, I just started several weeks ago to teach a course, an Introduction to Computers for veterans there and doing it all with Webex online meeting software. It took a lot of communicating with a staff person there to get everything set up and its working out very well. The veterans are using laptop computers and I teach two classes a week, for an hour and a half, and it will go for several months, to cover everything. It will give them tools to write a resume, a cover letter, and get more familiar with a computer too.

Zierler:

Howie, this is such tremendously important work, to be a part of helping veterans’ transition back to civilian life and having an income that’s viable for them.

Baum:

That’s what I thought. When I was doing in-person classes before March of last year, when the Pandemic started, many of the people were there were in a program to help them get back into society because they had different kinds of issues from their military work so many of them were older, and they might not use the skills they learned to get a job but they could still feel more comfortable to use the computer for communicating with others and entertainment. My real goal was, which is happening with this new set of classes, is to teach the younger veterans to use this material to be able to get a job by knowing how to type up correspondence such as a cover letter and a resume, and also to be able to find where job resources are. There are a tremendous amount of resources over the internet that are really great.

Zierler:

Howie, before we take it all the way back to the beginning, I’d like to ask sort of a general question, and that is, you have so many different fields of expertise in science. Overall, if we had to pigeonhole you, what would you say you are professionally? Is it a mechanical engineer? Would that be the best way to describe the core of your career?

Baum:

I would say yes, as far as my work career I was a Mechanical, and an Industrial engineer. It was neat that each place where I worked, they had interesting uses of new types of materials, so I was able to learn more about them at each company, all the way from my co-op job, through my forty years of working, which just fascinated me. This is why I ended up teaching about all of the types of materials and Manufacturing and courses about Ergonomics at the University of Cincinnati as well as another local University and at Wright State University, in Dayton, Ohio, for a total of thirty-three years. I've got a lot of interest in a big variety of science subjects. One of the things that I've volunteered for, for about four years, is a local organization, they actually have them around the country, but it’s called OLLI, and it’s the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. It’s actually part of UC Continuing Education so they have people who are moderators - instructors who teach courses about all types of subjects that they are interested in or they have knowledge about. I'm getting ready to start my sixth series about all of the types of New Technologies, which is an eight-week class, and it covers everything that has come out, and all the Emerging technologies too. Doing a lot of research on the internet and putting the presentations together, is what gives me a very happy life, after my family life, which is number one, of course. But doing the research, finding out these things, ranging from high-tech things, dinosaurs, all of the things with the new spacecraft and, Elon Musk and the new products his company is creating, etc.

Zierler:

Speaking of family, let’s take it all the way back to the beginning. I’d like to start first with your parents. Tell me a little bit about them and where they're from.

Baum:

It’s sort of an interesting contrast, as far as where they lived when they were young. My father was from a very small town in Indiana- Rockport. It’s in the southwest corner. My mother was from Brooklyn, New York, so I don’t think you could get too much farther apart than that. Sometimes we would really enjoy going on vacation down to Rockport and had a wonderful time there. Abraham Lincoln lived there for quite a while, so it has a lot of Lincoln history.

Zierler:

Now, Howie, your family is of a Jewish background?

Baum:

That’s correct. We are.

Zierler:

What is the story? How did the Jews get to this little town in Indiana?

Baum:

I have no idea but I have been working on a family history for many years, and the best information we have right now is back to around 1830, when one of the persons in the Baum family came over from a small town called Tiefenthal, Germany. I don’t even know if the town is there anymore. But my grandfather on my father’s side of the family, came over here, and he got into the clothing business and had a store in Rockport. As far as my mother, her father- as with many of us, a lot of people in America have relatives from Europe who came to this country as immigrants. So my mother’s father, my grandfather, who I loved dearly, came from Poland. It was interesting with name changing, but he came through Ellis Island, and they changed a lot of people’s names from longer names to easier-to-remember names. His last name was Leibowitz, and they changed it to Libby, as he came through.

Zierler:

Small town Indiana, I don’t know much about, but I do know a little bit about Brooklyn. What neighborhood is your mom from? Do you know?

Baum:

No, I do not. I never heard too much about her life there- we still have some relatives that were from there but I didn’t get the chance to go there, over the years.

Zierler:

Where did your parents meet?

Baum:

I assume in Cincinnati, but I don’t know. It was interesting that they did get along very well, even from such wide different backgrounds.

Zierler:

Now, you grew up in Cincinnati?

Baum:

Yes, I lived here all my life and it’s a great city.

Zierler:

What neighborhood did you grow up in?

Baum:

Different ones. When I was little, we lived in South Avondale and it was a wonderful time to grow up. When you look back on it, to grow up through the late forties and into the fifties, it was a very safe time that I don’t think could ever happen again.

Zierler:

What were some of the big industries in Cincinnati when you were a kid? Some of the big employers.

Baum:

Procter and Gamble was the biggest. There were also companies who did a lot of meatpacking. Cincinnati was called Porkopolis a lot of years ago but there was a lot of machine tool companies, too. After I attended a two-year Engineering Technology program at a small college there, some of my friends who I went to school with, got jobs working in machine tool design at the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company as it was called in the beginning, and later it was named Cincinnati Milacron. There were others too - LeBlond, Lodge and Shipley, and others. There were a lot of companies here started by German immigrants years ago, including a lot of breweries. I think at one time there were thirty-five different breweries here, that were started because of the German excellent skills for brewing. They liked the area because it was very hilly, and it reminded them, I've heard this story at least- of places they lived in Germany. And so, there was a lot of people of different nationalities who settled here.

Zierler:

What was your father’s profession? What did he do?

Baum:

He did really a number of things. He worked as a gas station attendant, for a number of years, sold life insurance, and also worked at the Cincinnati Milling Machine Co., as a machinist during World War two. One of my special things is a micrometer he used at that time. During most of his later years, he worked for a company that was in downtown Cincinnati that imported all kinds of combs and brushes, and accessory things like that. Then for a period of time, he actually went out and did selling for them. He traveled to different states selling to small ten-cent stores and other kinds of stores. That was his last type of work he did.

Zierler:

Did your mom work outside the home at all?

Baum:

She did, as my brother and I got into our teenage years. She had a lot of good training as a typist, had very good English skills, and took shorthand classes so she was really fast at it, and so she became a secretary to Rabbis at different temples, at different times. She did that for really quite a few years and I think she enjoyed that a lot.

Zierler:

Howard, were you Jewishly connected at all growing up? Did your family belong to a synagogue and go to High Holiday services and things like that?

Baum:

We did, generally. We belonged to Rockdale Temple, and it was in South Avondale. My brother Bruce and I went to Sunday school all the way through our senior year in high school, which not all the kids did at that time. My brother was two years younger than me, and he did go through training for his Bar Mitzvah, but I just didn’t have an interest in doing that. We did participate, went to services, and were involved with some of the things. When I was younger, they had Hebrew classes—and it’s interesting to think back, but the incentive for us to be there was that you could get either a regular or an almond Hershey bar which we really enjoyed. It’s fun to remember things like that.

Zierler:

Howie, looking back, did you get interested in science and electricity and things like that even before you were exposed to these subjects in school?

Baum:

I did. Like a lot of people, I was always interested and curious about everything in nature. I loved to be outside and just learning things, watching the different types of animals and insect life. That was, I think, the beginning of being curios about everything, which is usually why a lot of people might go into science because they want to learn new things.

Zierler:

What about big international events like Sputnik or the Space Race or the nuclear arms race? Were these the kinds of things that captivated your attention?

Baum:

They were interesting and yes Sputnik, particularly. Because I think it was 1957, it sort of changed everything in the country here, with our direction about getting into space, as you know. I didn't hear it myself, but as a lot of people might know, there were many ham radio operators who were able to hear the beeps as the satellite passed over, for its time that it was orbiting the Earth. When I got into high school, you had different choices then of different courses so in the eleventh grade, I knew that I wanted to get into something scientific at that time, and took physics and in my senior year and then took chemistry in my senior year, as well as three years of drafting because that’s the type of work that I wanted to go into drafting and design.

Zierler:

Howie, when you were thinking about colleges, what was available to you? What kind of opportunities were you considering?

Baum:

I got married early, when I was twenty-one. And so right before that time, anyway, I finished a two-year associate’s degree in mechanical engineering technology. I received some scholarship money to go to the University of Cincinnati. Since I was married, I figured, “Well, I'll go to the evening college there, which was very good then, so I started taking all engineering courses and Liberal Arts courses there. It helped me realize, it’s a time of your life that you're out of high school and into more serious things, and now you're in charge of your own destiny, to study and do well in college, you either do it or you don’t. I got much better grades when I was studying for my associate and bachelor’s degrees, than I ever did in high school. You finally mature and get to a time in your life when you want to do it on your own.

Zierler:

Howie, was the draft for the Vietnam War, was that something that you had to contend with?

Baum:

No. I was married in 1963 and it happened to be when President Kennedy was president. There was a U.S. Government ruling that people who were married didn't have to go so I felt lucky with that. If I had gone in, I would have preferred to have something that was not direct combat, because that probably mentally would have just destroyed me because I'm a sensitive person, so it would have been different. But you never know, of course, when a person’s drafted, what they're going to go into. Most of my friends and I were all in the same boat with getting married around the same time, so none of us had to go into the service then.

Zierler:

As you were taking classes in college and you were refining your ideas and being exposed to new areas of science, what were you thinking as you wanted to develop a career ambition?

Baum:

Well, I thought that it would be towards engineering. It was interesting back then that there were no calculators. The first ones that came out were $250, and I was getting a $4-a-week allowance or making a small amount of money working at a part-time job. I got through almost just about all the engineering classes at UC - thermodynamics three levels of physics, Calculus I, Calculus II, and then there was one more math class, differential equations, that I said, “I don’t think I can do this anymore” (laughter). Luckily, I found a counselor at UC and they told me about another college on campus called industrial design. I didn't even know that it existed, and they had evening classes too, so I was able to switch over, use all my engineering classes as a physics minor, and be able to go into the Industrial Design program. These classes were about visual design and doing things with artwork and things like that, and I was able to get straight A’s in that. I didn't know I was able to draw or paint, so it was a nice revelation.

Zierler:

What major did you ultimately declare in college?

Baum:

The major was Industrial Design once I switched over. I was in that area of campus about four years and it took me a total of ten years, at night, to get my bachelor’s degree. After I was taking courses there for five years, I said to myself, “Well, I can’t stop now.” You know, it wasn’t easy, because I was married and helping to raise two kids. It was definitely difficult during the nice weather when other people would be outside enjoying themselves, and you'd have to be inside trying to discipline yourself to work on studying.

Zierler:

What year was it when you finally graduated?

Baum:

1971. Just one little comment about the engineering classes back then- I enjoy sharing what it was like to be in college then, with some of the students I taught over the years, so they know difference between then and now. Every kind of test or exam that we did in all of the engineering classes, were done with slide rules to do the calculations. You could get very accurate with them, once you used it a lot. My computer class at that time was Fortran so we had to develop a set of punched cards to solve a formula. From there, why, I just sort of somehow kept up an interest in computers and just slowly learned things on my own.

Zierler:

Was there a senior project required to attain the degree?

Baum:

I don’t believe there was. They just had some different kinds of projects each semester, making things out of paper or cardboard and sometimes sheet metal. For a detailed toy design project that I made with colored paper, it was a three-dimensional Noah’s Ark with many kinds of pairs of animals - I wish I still had it. We also had to make a chair out of corrugated cardboard that was sturdy enough for a reasonably heavy person to sit in and that was an interesting challenge. One other toy project I made, which my instructor wished we had patented, was the first use of Scratch n Sniff pieces of paper that had just been developed by the NCR company and I was able to get some samples from them, to use when I wrote an adventure book for young children that used the smells for different places a young girl went- grass smells for being outside, a natural gas smell for a skunk that she saw, etc.

Zierler:

Howie, a bit of an intellectual question- with the physics minor, was your sense that having those extra classes in physics were useful for industrial design, or did it work the other way, that your classes in industrial design helped you understand physics better?

Baum:

I don’t know that there was a direct sort of, just thinking in that way, but I think that taking those engineering classes at least gave me an idea of the fact that all of that information was so quantitative, versus the artwork and the design work and the creative thinking that you would get into or learn about how to do, which was subjective. It was a good combination of things, because there was always that interest in, again, about how things work, and all the things that a lot of the people who get into engineering need to understand, if they are going to design a product. There have been some things that are very fascinating, to find out how they work and then it sort of turns a light on in your head. And somebody- if a person takes a look at a hard drive in a computer, a regular hard drive, not a solid state hard drive and if they read about what it does, how fast it does it, how it will write or read the zeros and ones of your files from the magnetic disks while it is spinning at 4,800 or 5,600 RPM, and find your file a year later and bring it back- those people deserve my complete respect. Because it’s really a phenomenal thing.

Zierler:

And it’s something we take for granted entirely, every day.

Baum:

We do and the fact that all it’s putting down in there is zeroes and ones- that’s the biggie.

Zierler:

That’s right.

Baum:

To me it is so amazing that people have the knowledge to be able to create these kinds of things. And even Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and so many other people who originally came up with it. Just the idea of computing and using zeroes and ones, as an On or Off kind of a sequence, to be able to use memory and so on. It’s quite amazing.

Zierler:

What were some of the exciting technological developments in the 1960s and early 1970s in the world of industrial design?

Baum:

Well, I think there was a lot of work with improving the design of the front and outside design of train locomotives. They were very industrial looking in the past. So there were people who were very knowledgeable in this area, who became pretty famous, that changed the views of that. And even like buildings, like the Chrysler Building, and just different enhancements of things, where people became more aware that people would want a product even more if it had more of a visual appeal to it, and what kinds of things constituted that visual appeal. That’s a very interesting aspect of our psychology, as to what each of us thinks is beautiful, or what colors we like, and all that type of thing.

Zierler:

Did you come into the program with well-defined artistic sensibilities? Was that part of your interest in pursuing this degree?

Baum:

I did not at all. I had no idea, as I mentioned, that I could paint, or that I could make things out of paper and art materials, but I was able to get straight A’s in there and I really enjoyed doing it. It was a great learning experience, too, about the kinds of things that define what design is, and what kind of things sell. The concepts of visual balance, color and shade, and the aspect of a product’s design that people like but they don’t always know why. I told some of the industrial design students that I taught, “I've got a secret for you.” And I gave a presentation about the golden rectangle with a discussion about the length of the short and long sides of a rectangle, that people like the best. Instead of a thin rectangle or a fat rectangle, they like the one that has the short and long sides, to a ratio of 1.618. It helps products sell like that, and people don’t even know why they like them. Some of the cell phones have these kinds of ratios to them and many other products, including almost all of the logos used by the car manufacturers. People who design things know that there’s certain things like that, that people like. So, I just found a lot of that very interesting, psychologically.

Zierler:

Howie, what was the job market like when you graduated? What kinds of opportunities were available to you both locally and if you were thinking about searching more farther afield?

Baum:

When I graduated from the two-year associate degree program, there weren’t even any drafting opportunities. That was 1961, so I ended up getting a job at a company that made chemically resistant valves with Teflon liners in them, and first I was doing basically valve assembly. They found out I could type, so I got into the shipping department which I enjoyed. I learned about the different kinds of Teflon, about Monel metals, the different grades of stainless steel, and other materials too. It was one of the beginning things where the materials world just was always interesting, at each place wherever I worked. I have enjoyed teaching the aspects of the different properties that materials have, and how parts are made with it, how are they molded, how are they cast. What’s the best property for each kind of material to make it the best? So, as I learned these things, I remembered them and always shared as much of the practical kinds of things with the students. It didn't take them until they got out of the college a year or two to realize how important the materials things were and how much they really needed to understand it (laughter). But then they did.

Zierler:

Howie, looking at this first job after your degree, what were some of the things that you learned in school that were really important in this job, and what kinds of things were only available as a result of on-the-job training?

Baum:

When I got my bachelor’s degree, I was working at the time. I would go two or three nights a week for my night classes and during the day I worked at the Trailmobile Co., and they were one of the biggest manufacturers of truck trailers, in the country. I was doing drafting work there, for a long time and then eventually, as happens I think with a number of people, as they learn drafting, then they progress into learning how to design products and processes. I worked on making the drawings for the trailers and then went to a company that made conveyor systems that were used all around the world and learned about those. So each place I worked I learned a variety of things from where I worked in the Cincinnati area, except for one job I had for two years up in Dayton, Ohio and for that, I traveled sixty miles, back and forth each day and also went to Evening College some of those days, which made for a long day. For that job, it required for some to have a good working knowledge of Thermoset plastics and reinforced plastics that could be used to make epoxy trough units and sinks for chemical laboratories. I was in charge of a big project that took a year to make an entire set of 116 reinforced epoxy trough tabletop sections, and the processes to make them were very involved. They were all made to specified dimensions for a new dentistry building at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. It all had to be done right so we came up with ways to put little holes into the sections where water and gas lines would connect to, using magnets that would take high temperatures and applying a special release compound on them so they would come of the molded part easily, and many other construction details.

Zierler:

Howie, drafting, at least in the way that you did it, in the 1970s, has become a bit of a lost art. Can you explain exactly what that meant, and what it was useful for in the overall business operation?

Baum:

I would say it was very important. It was essential to know how to do things at the time to make either part drawings, and then you would usually have- once you knew what the part drawings were, you'd make an assembly drawing, with the different parts together. Again, the whole purpose was a means of communication for other people to build what you had designed. And my last position for seventeen years, I worked at the Clovernook Center for the Blind, here in Cincinnati. The reason that they needed an engineer was because they had some very high-speed machinery making eighteen million file folders a year for the U.S. government.

Zierler:

I was a federal employee for a long time, and I remember seeing their products.

Baum:

Right, and the folders have a logo on there with that company’s name

Zierler:

Yeah!

Baum:

The company wanted to make colored labels with the numbers zero through nine on them, to be used by the VA Medical Centers to apply to file folders so they could identify each person by the last two digits of their social security number. I learned about what kind of machines were out there, and talked to a lot of the companies, and after recommending a good type to the Management there, I arranged to buy a label-making machine and learned about all the materials and the inks and the printing plates and all that type of stuff, with help from people from around Cincinnati, too. So, we were also making labels by the millions, too, to go on those folders. It was a very neat job experience, because besides that kind of work, I did get into- really getting back to your question, they wanted to do and make a special machine that would glue a certain kind of a folder, and wanted to find out, instead of going out and buying it for $55,000, what I could do to design one for less money. I hadn’t designed a machine or anything like it in probably twenty years, but with the help of an outside company here, I was able to do it for $35,000. And once we got some tweaking done to it, it worked like a dream. I was very proud of being able to get back into that, with gears, sprockets, chains, motors, a special paper feeding machine that connected with the other machine parts and a $10,000 automatic gluing machinery with photoelectric eyes so the glue system would dispense just what was needed and only at the right time. It was fun and challenging to do. That is an example of engineering work that I did there. I was also in charge of safety and security for four different locations and all the building and grounds maintenance. I also learned about all of the OSHA regulations to set up a good safety program.

Zierler:

Howie, I'm not sure if you know, but I've always been curious how this organization got this contract for the government. Do you have any idea how that came about?

Baum:

I do. I was actually involved with that directly, there. There is a publication- I believe it’s called The Register - a U.S. government publication that comes out either every week or every two weeks, on a very- it’s interesting- a very thin paper, which probably was for keeping the publication at a reasonable cost. It listed everything that all of the office and other types of products that government agencies were interesting in buying so companies could bid on them. Examples besides folders and labels are erasable marker boards, calendars, pens, and other office supplies that used at the Cincinnati and all of the other VA Medical Centers. These kinds of products are all made by different agencies for the blind around the whole country. I had that government Register paper sent to me and I would look up- I still know the numbers of the sections, even though it has been maybe twenty-five years, but I had the classifications, number seventy and number seventy-five were for file folders and labels and things like that. I knew how to go right to those numbers and look them up, and if there was something that seemed like we could make, then I would recommend it to management to have them consider, so we could bid on it.

Zierler:

Howie let’s back up just a little in the chronology. Tell me how the opportunity at Senco Products came about for you.

Baum:

Basically, that was interesting, because before that, I worked at the Campbell Hausfeld company. They're a company out in the sort of western side of Cincinnati, a little town called Harrison. It is a company that made a variety of air compressors and air tools. With the knowledge I learned while working there for ten years, I was able to carry it over to the interests in making air compressors at Senco Products so the knowledge of all the kinds of air compressors and air tools on the market, from large to small, was really helpful. At the time, the Senco Products company made pneumatic, air-operated nailing and stapling tools for construction and all kinds of bedding, mattresses and more, as well as other kinds of devices, so they were looking for somebody that had some air compressor experience, and I was really lucky to be able to get into that. They wanted to actually get into trying to market their own air compressors that would go with their air tools, so that was a very good fit, and I enjoyed that, too.

Zierler:

Howie, I'm curious if you ever got involved enough in the business side of things, if you ever considered pursuing that track in the industrial world.

Baum:

I really did not, that much. The only thing that I did get into was how to price parts made for different products, such as when I worked at the Campbell Hausfeld company, designing two small compressors that they wanted to produce which were the length of a standard monitor screen, just to give an idea of size. They both involved special motors with a “C-face” that had four threaded holes for mounting to a die-cast aluminum part, as well as many other parts such as a piston, connecting rod, ball bearings. One of them was described as oil-less and used a special carbon sleeve and carbon piston rings so it could be lubricated but operate without any oil, for certain applications. To design them, I had to talk to a lot of people from different companies that made metal die-cast metal, plastic and parts made of other materials and then I gave them drawings of everything, to get prices at different quantities because part of our job was to submit an estimated manufacturing price for the compressors we designed. I worked with people who either owned the company or who were responsible for purchasing directly so that helped me to learn some excellent product education from them.

Zierler:

Howie, I’d like to ask a sort of broad historical question. Of course you grew up in a time when American manufacturing was at its zenith. During your Senco years, from 1978 to 1988, this is really a period of transition for industry in the United States, with more and more factories relocating overseas.

Baum:

Mmhmm.

Zierler:

I'm curious, from your perspective, if you saw this as a gradual process, if it happened suddenly, and if you were ever concerned about your career and the opportunities that you might not have going forward.

Baum:

I was aware of it on a gradual basis. You were immersed in your work and only certain people might know what the competition was doing. I did have a little idea of that because part of my job requirement was to take a look at foreign tools that were made in other countries and to check out how they were made and try to get an idea of their quality compared to the Senco tools. And so, it was an interesting thing to see that some of them were designed very well, even though the Senco tools were great. But there was a concern about the lower labor rates in other countries, such as Japan and China, which gave Senco a lot of competition. Towards the end of the time I was there, which was about ten years, you could see that there was a lot of change. I was sort of saddened and offended when some of us were laid off, especially for a company that was a $120 million international company, going from that to bankruptcy. And you can’t go too much farther down than that. So, it was a time of, I think for a number of different companies, doing that. And as you know, all kinds of products were sent to be made overseas, because of the lower labor rates. And then after that time, people found some problems from doing too much of that and it took time to get the manufacturing control of the parts, back to the U.S. Sometimes the quality wasn’t good, so you didn't have enough control in making your products. And so that’s why I think a lot of business came back to the United States on that basis.

Zierler:

Howie, who were some of the key consumers and customers of Senco Products?

Baum:

They were people that made a lot of the mobile homes, were one of their biggest customers. I went to a number of those on different business trips. If a tool wasn’t performing and we didn't know why, some of us would go out to see where they were, in different places, a lot of them down South, Southeast and to a lot of furniture manufacturers in North and South Carolina, because the supplies of wood was really good there. It was interesting to see the different products and how they were assembled, such as how a mobile home was made as it moved along slowly on an assembly line, on a set of tracks, where everybody installed things as it was moving along, and then it came out finished at the end of the line, like Henry Ford did on his first set of cars his company made but on a slower basis. The wiring was all done, the insulation was in, all the appliances were installed and plumbing finished. People could custom order the mobile home design too.

Zierler:

So, Senco did not sell directly to consumers. There were no staplers and pneumatic nailers that you could buy in a hardware store as an individual?

Baum:

Not at that time, right. Senco had product distributors all over the country and they worked with the end user of the tools. If the distributor found that there was a problem, then they would contact somebody back at the company to have one of us, usually somebody from engineering, come out to find out what the problem was and try to fix it as quickly as we could. If it was a problem with a fastener not being strong enough, the metal quality, or something with the tool not working just right, we would take that information back and write a report about it, to get it fixed. It was always fascinating for me to see how types of products and manufacturing changed over the years. When I started working at my first job, assembling valves, they asked me to go to a company near us, to get some parts. The people who worked there were some of the highest skilled German machinists I've ever known in my life. When I went there, I was able to see a beautiful part which was top secret at the time, and they made the mold for making the metal ball with all of the letters and numbers all over it, for a new and big improvement to the Remington typewriters. I wasn’t allowed to say anything to anybody at all, but it was amazing to see that. Cincinnati was, as I mentioned, had a lot of machine tool companies. I worked as a co-op at the Lodge & Shipley Company that made very huge machines, such as shapers for machining big metal parts and they also made very large lathes. There was a lot of just knowledge at these companies for how to design the big machines and a lot of people also had tool and die experience and now all of that is gone. All the people who had these beautiful chests with tools in them, for measuring things very accurately, gauge blocks and all these kinds of calipers and things like that, that they had done all their life to make parts and everything, so precisely, and there are very few people who do that kind of work anymore.

Zierler:

Now, were you involved in safety issues during your time at Senco, or that would only come later on?

Baum:

It would mostly come later on, but one of the interests that I've had and that I've taught about for a lot of years was ergonomics. And so, I became interested in it very early during my work career. It was fun to learn about the guidelines for how to design things that are safe for people to use, minimizing problems with keyboards to minimize problems from carpal tunnel syndrome, learning about things with displays and how computers work, how to minimize eye fatigue, and just all these varieties of things. I did some reports at Senco about proper tool and proper handle design to minimize fatigue and things like that. I became very interested in it and also attended some classes up at the University of Michigan and ended up teaching it for quite a few years.

Zierler:

What prompted you to switch over to Clovernook from Senco?

Baum:

Part of the reason, of course, was Senco had a layoff of about eleven of us from the engineering department, who were mostly older persons and we were out of work some period of time. They did provide some job search counseling for us. Fortunately for me, I was doing volunteer work at the Clovernook Center for the Blind, reading mail and other items, for some of the persons who actually lived in a separate building there, for several years. I knew a little about Clovernook but not very much about the products they made so I called them and at that time, they said they were interested to hire a person who could work initially for a half-time position so I actually ended up working there half a day and then going another place during the lunch hour to work there for the other half a day, for about a year, which (laughter). got a little hard to do. Eventually they were able to find me a full-time job there and I learned a lot about appreciation of our sight, and everything that we have, there, of course, too. I got into adaptive technology and was teaching that, about designing for people who are disabled and the elderly. So, I've taught a lot about that as well.

Zierler:

What were the opportunities or circumstances that allowed you to become more involved in safety regulations?

Baum:

I think that basically the company had grown a lot and they needed a person to be in charge of safety, and so my actual title when I was hired, was Industrial Engineer and Safety Officer. I had to get some education on my own to find out what was needed and learned how to set up a whole Safety program and wrote all of the documents for it that were in several notebooks around the facility. I also developed a detailed calendar for the schedule to do safety training for persons in the different departments. I also worked with the nurse there and we set up first aid and CPR training. I also arranged for a company to come in, in a van, to do hearing tests for people who worked in the loud noise areas, to check their hearing and talk to them about wearing the right kind of hearing protection. The bigger issue was that they also had three other locations, with a lot of people working at each one. They had one in Dayton, Ohio, another in Woodlawn, a northern suburb of Cincinnati, and a whole manufacturing facility down in Memphis, Tennessee. So, I was responsible for the safety and security of those places, and I would travel around to just check things on them, and that everything was going well with all of that and I found it very interesting. There were two times when an employee filed a complaint with OSHA and alleged that something was not safe there, even though it wasn’t true. I learned, under trial by fire, how to go out and meet with the OSHA people and explain to them that we took care of these things and to get the fines reduced by quite a bit, but always with the goal in mind that we wanted to do everything right.

Zierler:

What kind of training did you need to do in order to familiarize yourself with all of the different government agencies and their different areas of jurisdiction and interests?

Baum:

I guess just hearing about them, particularly the issue at Clovernook, to see that there was the Register out there that listed all of the items that the government wanted to buy such as furniture, things that would go into bathrooms, to machinery, and for floor cleaning tools, etc. The little publication just covered everything. So, looking through it, it gave you a perspective that the government was really interested in buying things. There were some laws that had been put in place, encouraging the government employees to buy from agencies for the blind, and also from agencies of people who were disabled. So that was at least a good kind of a thing for those people to have work to do and to know they were doing it for the government, to help things, which gave them a sense of pride. And there was an organization- not really a parent organization, but one that all of the agencies for the blind were affiliated with, called the National Industries for the Blind. It was an organization that helped us get work and find out if we could do certain kinds of jobs. They were a liaison between ourselves and the government. So, I went there for some training things a few times, to learn how to do time studies and other things like that, to be able to do that to see how long it took to do different things and assemble certain products.

Zierler:

Howie, what would be a good example of all of this safety regulation from the government really being necessary? It was something that actually was useful in protecting people. And what might be an example of just too much bureaucracy, just too many agencies, with too much redundancy in their expectations?

Baum:

I didn't feel really a negative aspect about that from my perspective. I felt that the local OSHA office in Cincinnati was doing a great job as their goal was to make sure that companies made their work areas safe. Part of my education in the Safety area was to join the American Society of Safety Engineers and after several years I became President of it. There were people in the organization who worked on much bigger projects than I did, in nuclear cleanup work around Cincinnati, and others who worked for huge companies that do garbage disposal and they have safety personnel who specialize in fire safety. At each monthly meeting, we would have a professional speaker talk about their safety experiences and those were very educational to me. All of the members were sincere and dedicated in their Safety work, so I didn't really feel a lot of redundancy out there, with things.

Zierler:

What personal satisfaction did you have working with this organization, given the people that it helped?

Baum:

As far as the Clovernook Center?

Zierler:

Yeah.

Baum:

Just the general kinds of things, the personal relations. I actually still volunteer over there, too. Before the COVID situation came up, I was doing volunteer work there for a few years, helping them find a lot of historical information that they needed. They've been probably in business for about 115 years, and so they had a lot of photographs. They had a lot of different kinds of beautiful paintings that were done by one of the women who started Clovernook back in the 1800s, when it actually had a farm there that raised the food for all the people who lived there, and it was like a whole sort of self-sustaining type of a place but it just had an interesting history through the years. All of the land that they had- I think it was twenty-seven acres, was donated by William Procter of Procter & Gamble. He was good friends with the women who wanted to start basically a home for women who were blind at the time, back then, so it has some interesting history. I enjoyed the work there because of a real personal connection with all the employees. One little side issue is that every place I've worked there has always been many funny things that happened. We had to have fun some of the time, to balance with the responsibilities for our jobs. As an example, at the Clovernook Center of the Blind, I am remembered as the Safety Officer who put a bag of microwave popcorn in the microwave oven and forgot that it was in there, and it all started to smoke and burn which set off the fire alarms so everyone had to exit the building. To make it worse, the fire signal called the local Firefighting station and then we heard the sounds of sirens from fire engines that came there to see what the problem was. I get chided for that, every time I call. They say, “Have you burned any more popcorn?” And that was twenty years ago!

Zierler:

Of all the things you've helped with over the years, that’s what people remember (laughter).

Baum:

That’s right and it’s been neat that there have been funny things that happened at every place I worked. Most of the time, I took everything pretty seriously as far as getting the work done.

Zierler:

Howie, what did you learn or what perspective did you gain working in this organization, working with blind people, and their perspective on things?

Baum:

I think just the fact that they appreciate things. They appreciate people just saying hi to them and being cordial to them, and talking. We had just a lot of funny things that we would talk about, just little kinds of stuff. But the aspect that- some of these people were so happy and enjoyed their lives and they didn’t feel any limitations from their disability. They were able to do everything. They were happy during the day and they made other people happy too. And so, if I would go there to do any volunteering work, and if I would see them again, why, we would just say hi to each other, and we would remember each other and so on. A lot of years have gone by, so some of the people have passed on, but it was a good experience, for me, altogether, and helped to keep things in proper perspective for appreciating life and appreciating each day.

Zierler:

Howie, these were years more broadly of American society being more accepting with people with disabilities. Did you see the Clovernook Center as part of that larger story, of working to ensure that blind people are better understood and better accepted in society?

Baum:

I would say yes, definitely. When I went to do volunteer reading for persons who lived on the campus there, it was in a large and safe building that was in the front of the grounds, and probably thirty to thirty-five people, mostly women, lived there, and they had all their meals there. Sometimes they would have somebody come in and play piano or have other types of entertainment and that was all the mode of life. It was sort of more of a protected living kind of a thing, even on the outside. And at some point, the outlook changed for the persons there to have more independence. The people in charge of the Rehabilitation department developed a whole process for having people help these people find a place to live, help them with living skills, finding ways to mark their clothes as to what color they were so when they put on clothes to get ready for work or go out, they didn't have something that was pink and chartreuse on, that didn’t match. They were taught how to buy and cook food, learned about the different tools and things to use in a kitchen, etc. They also had very highly skilled mobility people who would teach them how to use the cane, and how and where it was safe to walk and how to safely cross at a traffic light, where there was a lot of traffic. It was a lot of challenges, but they were able to place a lot of people into apartments around there. Some of them maybe might have two persons living in one place at a time, who were friends and wanted to live together. That was the types of changes that went on and I believe all around the country, with an increased awareness that more independence was better than being dependent on others for your Life.

Zierler:

Howie, tell me a little bit about your own continuing education courses. What were some of the things that you took, and what prompted you to go back to school to gain more proficiency in these areas?

Baum:

I got my bachelor’s degree for the ten years at the evening college at UC, that I mentioned. It’s not anywhere near the same now as they only have a few evening classes. After that I wanted to learn things that I could from either reading or from a lot of the stuff, eventually, from the internet, to learn about new things. If I was working on a project where I worked and I didn't understand how something worked, I would definitely ask people to understand how it worked. So, it was mostly myself doing things. As far as like my interest in computers, my children, my daughter, Sara, my son, Mike- I have other daughters, they're both skilled in using computers, like a lot of the young people. I just wanted to sort of not get behind and everything (laughter). So I kept the interest of being able to put a three-page outline and the class presentations together to be able to teach about computers so it’s a lot of details covering how to use the internet properly and safely, how to buy something online safely, how to send emails and proper etiquette with emails, how to be careful on there with so many things. Still today, I get an email that the heading says it’s from one of my daughters, but I always look carefully at the whole email URL address, and when I see it’s not from them, I delete it immediately. It’s amazing and somewhat scary as to how somebody can set these things up and make you think that it’s something legitimate, and if you click on it, you might get a bad virus. You have to be careful online, and you sort of learn these things a little bit the hard way.

Zierler:

Howie, for you, you didn't start teaching at the college level after retirement; this actually happened while you were still working full-time?

Baum:

Right, yes.

Zierler:

What was the inspiration for you? What was it about teaching that was inspiring to you, to go back to the classroom as a professor?

Baum:

I think just to share things that I knew. I started off, I guess, just teaching the courses about Ergonomics, because I enjoyed that so much, and felt that I had a pretty good knowledge of it, so I wanted to share that. And there was interest in that, in a number of the different colleges around, colleges and universities. So, I got into that first, and then was able to also get into teaching classes about Materials and Manufacturing, like I mentioned. I also taught courses that I created in PowerPoint format about Design Research, and another one about User-Centered Design. Why do we buy what we buy, and why do we like what we like? What are the reasons, and the psychology behind it? So that when a person designs something, you could design something that could be just a different kind of a size or something small, but it has to be manufactured, such as a shaver and hair-trimmer. It has to have enough structure inside the case to be strong, and it has to support a motor and bearings. You have to understand about the design of these things, and how an injection machine even works, and how it makes parts, so that you can know how to make properly design parts, and what kinds of materials you want to make it out of. Just like toys, things like that, and a lot of appliances, are made out of ABS plastic, because it’s tough, it’s glossy, it looks good, it takes impact well, it has just a lot of good properties to it. But there’s a lot of other materials, too. You've got seventy-six choices of plastics. And so, I try to maybe talk about ten or eleven of them, that we can manage when we talk about things. And others are more very high-performance things that are used in aerospace applications, for high temperature or for very chemically resistant kinds of applications.

Zierler:

It has been said often that the best way to learn a subject is to prepare to teach it to others. I wonder if that resonates with you.

Baum:

It does. That has been my motto. It really has. Other people I know have said it too, but that was my motto sort of way back, that there were some things that I had nothing- no knowledge about at all, particularly some of these new technologies that are out today, the Hyperloop, the 5G phone network, all the new things that all keep coming along, a lot of medical things that I find fascinating as could be. I'm blown away by the amazing human body. I've done a number of presentations about the DNA in every cell in our bodies, and what it does. When you think about how it’s all operating, all the time, doing what it’s supposed to do, what is the powering effect behind making it all work so smoothy. Is it divine? What is causing all of these kinds of things to do what they do, and to know how to do these things? The more you get into it, the more amazing it gets. So that’s where I get my enthusiasm and excitement with things.

Zierler:

What have been your most favorite courses to teach?

Baum:

I would say the ergonomics and the materials classes, primarily. With the materials classes, I had a whole room of samples. Everybody might teach these classes in different ways. I felt always that if you could hold and feel something, when somebody was talking about it, it gives you a better idea of why they’re talking about, that then you would have it in your mind from that time on. If I talk to somebody and I'm starting them off in the early game of teaching about computers, I want to tell them what a hard drive is. I’d like them to hold a hard drive in their hand, with the cover off, so they can see what kind of parts are inside as well as strips of RAM memory, so that if somebody talks about these things at a future time, they can picture it in their head, and they know that it’s not as big as some kind of a machine; it’s not so small as a ball bearing but it’s got a certain size range, and it does a certain kind of thing. So, I think that that type of thing just helps to try to, again, keep things practical, too. Over the time of working in a career, you get to learn things that are more practical than theoretical, and those are the things that I want to share with the students, so they can go on and use them, and not have things just about theory about atomic structure with atoms and electrons that give you some basis, but not enough sometimes, to design something with.

Zierler:

Howie, you've taught students from all different kinds of backgrounds and life stages. What have you learned about that, in terms of the different kinds of people, the different motivations they have, the different ambitions they have in coming to class and wanting to learn from you?

Baum:

There have been, I guess, a number of different perspectives. Some are more humorous than others. But mostly, they're there, of course, because it’s part of the degree requirement, to take the class. The two main ones that I taught, again, were the ergonomics, which at UC they called it Human Factors Design, so it was about designing for people, and the other was the materials classes. But usually the students were interested. And you always had this thing where you could tell by a student’s attention and different kinds of things that some were really a lot more interested than others. That’s bound to happen, of course. But then you would have a student really interested and you had better eye contact with, and they would ask good questions. And then at least you know you would get into things. I’d try to make it more personal, too. But just deviating a little bit about my teaching at the University of Cincinnati, sometime back, with one of my many sorts of varied interests, I saw a little article in the newspaper that a person could take a class to become a clown, in four weeks. It was near Cincinnati. So I took that class. I really enjoyed that. I ended up with about five different kinds of outfits with different clown names, and ended up being a baby concept, Baby Boo. And so, what I would do at the University of Cincinnati, two thirds of the subjects for the Materials classes were all about all the materials other than plastics, and the last third was all about plastics. So, I said, “Why don’t I take everything that I use, everything that I wear as a clown, almost ninety-six percent are all plastic and give the students a clown show, just for fun and a little material learning too?” So, I actually would get dressed into my clown outfit- I would have it hidden away, before they ever got into the auditorium, and then I would take it out and I would get dressed into my whole clown outfit in front of them, and then start off with the whole thing with magic tricks and some crazy jokes and stuff like that, that I built up over the years. It was fun, to just do something different than the regular rote classroom kind of thing.

Zierler:

Howie, tell me about some of the decision-making around when you were thinking about retiring. Did you hit a magic age number and it was an easy decision, or did you have other interests at that point that you wanted to pursue?

Baum:

The real thing that happened was that in reality, that I was working at the Clovernook Center for the Blind at that time, and I had these various different kinds of things I was doing. And I was in charge of the maintenance personnel. Part of the issue was that I was getting everything else done, but they wanted me to do more management types of things. And I basically have realized I'm not a manager person. So there were just some problems there. So, it ended up that they gave me a retirement package. Anyway, that was maybe nine, ten years ago. So it worked out very well ever since. After that I just sort of concentrated on the teaching things, because I had time during the day that I could go over and teach classes during the middle of the day at UC and at other places, to be able to do that. So that worked out well, and my Wife and I were able to get by with that and it worked out very well.

Zierler:

Well, Howie, we started the beginning of our conversation talking about some of the current and ongoing interests. And so for the last part of our talk, I’d like to ask a few broadly retrospective questions and then a few looking forward. The first is, I’d like to hear your thoughts on technology in general. You started your career and even your education when computers were very, very primitive, and of course we know where they are now. Looking over the course of your career and the things that you've done, in what ways have computers allowed you to do things that would never have been possible without computers? And alternatively, what are some areas where computers really have not made that much of a difference, because it’s still the human labor, still human ingenuity, still even human artistic sensibilities, that a computer cannot replicate?

Baum:

I believe that part of it was that I did have an interesting type of a- we’ll say a journey, going from, again, back to, like I said, Fortran, punch cards for the memory, and then just learning from there, after a period of time. But I was given some time at the Clovernook Center for the Blind, by my supervisor who was very knowledgeable about computers and the history of older ones. He gave me time to look at some of the older kinds of computers such as those with different types of processors with the numbers 286, 386, 486. I was able to look at those, learn some basic things about them, and get into them and understand sort of where things sort of had progressed from. But I guess more of the real value is the kinds of things that—the totally amazing things you can get by doing research on Google and other places, other sites, to find out the answer almost to any question you have. Anything at all. If a medication is bothering somebody, why is it doing it? What are the aftereffects or the other effects of it? But the fact that you can go and do this, and it’s relatively- basically it’s free. Things happen with (laughter)- everything changes, but if you go now and you want to enjoy listening to music or learn how to fix something, they have a video on almost everything, on YouTube. But now, if you go to a video, they've got six- and eight-hour of what they call relaxing videos, of all different kinds of music, and all kinds of things, and meditation and all that. And then you get into it, and you're just enjoying things in the background, while maybe you're doing something else on the computer, and now, an advertisement pops right in, in the middle, destroying any kind of nostalgia, any kind of peace that you might have had, and so on. So you have to go through usually two either- I just found out, just recently, just two days ago, that if you pay thirty dollars, you don’t have to have these advertisements on Google. So all just in the last month or so, it has been this kind of change. But basically, if I ask questions, I always get good answers. I also was able to find a computer program that only cost me thirty dollars, and so I can copy any video that comes across on there, and I'm able to take the music from it. That’s the main reason I copy it, because I love music of every type that there is, and I'm able to use another program to copy that music onto a CD that I can play in my car or play at home. So, there’s a lot of all these things that I do. And then on volunteering, I read articles from Wired magazines about computers once a week. And they have a twenty-eight-minute session, it’s for another agency for the blind here in Cincinnati and then they post it onto a special phone system that people can call in anytime, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and listen to things being read from every newspaper, all the magazines, everything like that. So again, it’s using technology because it’s involved, to be able to set up the process. I had to learn a new computer program called Audacity, how to use that to record things. And then I had to learn another process of how to take that file and save it and send it over the internet because it was a large file over to the Cincinnati Association for the Blind. So over a few weeks, I learned how to do that. So you can teach old dogs new tricks! (laughter)

Zierler:

(Laughter) Howie, in reflecting over your long and varied career, as an engineer, what would you say is your most proud accomplishment, either in terms of safety, in terms of innovation, in terms of problem-solving? What sticks out in your memory as something that you're most proud of?

Baum:

I think the thing, again, that I am most proud of is the machine that I designed. I did all that- it was, you might say, before the era of computer-aided design, CAD. So, I did it all on paper, drew the shapes of all the parts as well as a large assembly drawing of the entire thing and planned it out. I had to learn the size of the different kinds of bearings and sprockets, what they had to be. There was a company here in town that sells all those kinds of things, and so part of their business, which of course is a good way to market things, is that they would have somebody help you if you told them what you were going to do, they would tell you about what you might need to do that such as certain types of sprockets, metal chains, bearings and ways to mount things onto metal frames, and how to put things together, so I felt I got a good education that way. And once, I drew up the whole thing, I found a man who had his one machine shop who I could work directly with, to make all the parts for it. And once some of the people in maintenance were able to adjust a few things on the machine, we had a $10,000 glue dispensing machine alone, that went with it. So it was involved to buy that and help to get that set up and have it work with electric eyes and everything. But there were about three different things you hooked together to make this whole machine work. You had to buy a feeder that actually fed pieces of paper on an automatic thing that never had a jam. And so, the whole machine worked really well for about four or five years and made thousands of special folders. So I just felt good about being able to go back from not doing any machine design for years and years, to relearning those kinds of things. It was a big challenge, but it felt awfully good when it was all done.

Zierler:

Howie, besides the popcorn incident, looking back, are there any do-overs that you wish you had a second chance at?

Baum:

I can’t think of really anything. Most of the places all were good experiences to do things. Again, there were just different kinds of things. The people were always so nice and varied, with different places. There was a lady, when I worked at the Campbell Hausfeld Company out in Harrison, Ohio, she was the secretary to the engineering department. And so each week, we were supposed to write a progress report. And I would always write these overdetailed kinds of things with everything, which she had to type. And she was just the nicest lady in the world and had a lot of patience. So, we ended up- when I retired from there, I sort of set up my own little fun lunch retirement party, I wrote this whole poem about all the funny things that happened when I was there. And then she wrote up a two-page poem that she read after I read mine. And so we just had a great time there, doing things. Even though we took everything seriously, we got everything all done. But just as a quick example, people used to like to play tricks on her, because she was just so nice and stuff like that. So, we had a little machine shop, and so the guys out in the machine shop would take a bar of round aluminum bar. They would cut off four little disks every day, off of that, and before she ever got to work, they would put one of those little disks underneath the legs of her desk. So every day, all of us would know it, we would walk by- her desk is going up and up and up, up, slowly, with just these little disks. And then we would unwind her chair, so it was getting higher as well. And we could all see this happening, and just wondering, “How long is it going to take before she knows this is happening to her?” And finally, once her feet left the floor, she says, “What did you guys do to me again?” So, I am still friends with her. She’s ninety-three years old.

Zierler:

Wow.

Baum:

I stayed in contact with her because we just had fun talking about things.

Zierler:

That’s so nice.

Baum:

She has written books about- she grew up with horses with her only transportation. So it’s just a lot of things. But just a lot of the people were really great to get to know. So, I think that was one of the focus- good things.

Zierler:

For my last question, I’d like to ask you one looking to the future, using your powers of extrapolation, given the fact that you've been involved in industrial design for so long. And that is, where do you see the field going? What are the things that the next generation of industrial designers are interested in, and what are the technologies that they have at their disposal that are going to keep this field relevant for society going forward?

Baum:

There’s a number of different things that are available that people are doing, even having started already at UC and places around here. But the use of the different kinds of the goggles and things like that, for the virtual reality, and creating things with that. To try to visualize what things might be like for people. And so much with computer design. When I designed a part using a regular- like in the machine itself, the philosophy basically, I’d try to explain it to the students a little bit; I don’t dwell on it long and I'll keep this quick, but the fact that everything that was designed in that machine, it had all kinds of shafts and rollers and chains and sprockets, things going all over the place- I had to go into that machine in my mind and walk through that entire machine to see if anything was going to hit something else. And so, I had to make a notch here, or a cut here, in the frame, so that a chain would pass through it properly and not hit. The students today learn how to design a computer-aided design of a part, and be able to take it, and just turn it around in any frame they want to, magnify it, make it smaller, so they can actually see what it’s like. They can put it together with other parts and make it all work together as an assembly. And they can demonstrate that. And so, it’s what the students do. And that’s the kind of things that- it gives such an advantage to a company to have people with those skills, to be able to do that. So they're creating new kinds of packaging. They’re creating new kinds of environments for people to be in and learn things from. New kinds of things for trade shows. There’s just a lot of stuff. The creativity, it seems like- the kids, the more they learn, the more they're able to do. So, it’s very inspirational to see it all. But when I just use the example of things like using, say, virtual reality, or using a set of googles for virtual reality or alternate reality, they have some very interesting things to them, but it’s hard for me to- I can’t accept, really, right now, the fact that we're all going to be walking around with goggles on. I don’t think there’s many people that really could, that really realize that that’s sort of a thing that has to sort of change. And it’s changing into more and more of smart glasses, like some of the different ones. Some of them have amazing capabilities now of doing all kinds of stuff, and having heads-up displays. They look like a regular pair of glasses. They don’t have any big electronics on them or anything like that. But people can get displays on what’s around them, where to go, if they need directions, what the weather is going to be, things like that. On the other side of things, I try to think about what is really going to make people happy (laughter). And getting more and more technologically involved in things may not- probably won’t do that. If the things can be made so that they adapt to our normal lives, and if the things change in a gradual basis, people will be able to accept it easier. But the real goal to me is to have people live happy lives, and to have things around them that make it happier, make it safer. And even it could be new kinds of creative things, but things that they really want to do, as opposed to being forced down some avenue that they don’t want to go in. I don’t know of anybody right now who would walk outside, and if the autonomous vehicle pulls up in your driveway and is ready to take you somewhere, I don’t know how many of us would hop in, at this particular point. Future-wise, yes, we probably will. But there’s five levels of autonomous cars, and we're only at about level three right now, which is actually quite sophisticated. So, we've just got things to do to make that and people have been working so hard at making them as perfect as they can, but driving is a really challenging thing.

Baum:

When people start driving, I think all of us know- when we started driving at sixteen or whatever, it was challenging to learn things, and how to look at things. It was a lot to do. So, I just think you have to always keep thinking practically about what we all like and what we all really want to do, and not make things too technical for everybody.

Zierler:

Howie, that’s a wonderful perspective to share, earned over a long and varied career. I want to thank you so much for spending this time with me. It has been so fun hearing your perspective on things. And I'm so happy we were able to do this. So, thank you very much.

Baum:

Thank you, David. It was a pleasure meeting you and thank you very much for your time.

Zierler:

Absolutely.