Graduated from Clarkstown Senior High School, New City, New York, in 1965.
An Honor Roll student and member of the National Honor Society, placing 11th
out of a class of 300.
During my Junior and Senior years of High School, in addition to required
academic courses, also completed the course in Instrumentation Technology at the
Rockland County Board of Cooperative Educational Services in West Nyack,
New York. This course concentrated on the study of Physics (in my Junior year), Drafting,
Hydraulics, Pneumatics, Electricity and Electronics. Lab techniques and design work were
also included.
During the summer after graduating High School, completed a course in Calculus
and Analytical Geometry at Rockland Community College in Suffern, New
York, followed by one semester of Electrical Engineering at Stevens Institute of
Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Even with student loans, money was tight. I was
commuting from New City, N.Y. to Hoboken, N.J. every day. Class scheduling made it difficult
to work enough part time hours to keep up with the costs. Lost the left rear wheel on my
1947 VW Beetle commuting to Hoboken for my last mid-term exam and flipped over on
the Palisades Parkway. Missed a couple of weeks of the next semester and couldn't afford
tutoring to catch up in addition to another semester's tuition. Had to discontinue going to
SIT and figure out another way to pursue my education in Electronics where I would be
able to work more hours while attending school.
Continued engineering/technology courses at RCA Institutes of Technology, 320 West 31st
Street, New York, N.Y. 10001. RCA (ie Radio Corporation of America) semesters alternated
between morning and afternoon sessions throughout the program and payments could be made
weekly. This made it possible to work enough hours to pay for school.
Currently, TCI (Technical Career Institutes) has replaced RCA Institutes, Inc. at this address.
The RCA T-3 program included college accreditable courses in
math, physics and Electrical Engineering. Courses included technical writing and mechanical
drawing as well. Engineering courses covered virtually everything from basic DC and AC
circuits to analog and digital computer circuit design, analysis and programming. Maintained
Dean's List standing throughout the program. Graduated RCA in November of 1968 placing
third in a graduating class of approximately 90 students in 2 classes. The program started out with
approximately 270 students in 6 classes.
Upon graduating from RCA, was recruited by Bell Labs, Parsippany and was bid upon by three departments.
All seemed to be going well until I went to the AT&T Building into NYC for a prerequisite physical.
Before Bell would hire me I was instructed to lose about 30 pounds. I weighed 255 since sophomore year of HS.
I was into weight lifting during HS. Height was 5ft 11in. I've shrunk a couple of inches since then.
I got my weight down to 209 pounds in one month existing on a diet consisting mainly of cottage cheese,
lettuce, tomatoes and tuna fish. At this point I was told they wanted me to weigh less than 200 pounds.
Continued dieting lead to fatigue and lack of energy. Was checked for "mono". Results were negative.
Needless to say, did not end up working for Bell Labs.
Began working for CELCO (Constantine Engineering Laboratories) in Mahwah, NJ in
March of 1969.
While working for CELCO:
In 1972, completed two accelerated courses (1 week each) at the DEC (Digital Equipment
Corporation) school in Maynard, Massachusetts for programming their PDP8 line of
Mini-Computers. One course was "PDP8 Paper Tape Software" and the other was
"OS-8 Software".
In December of 1990, completed the Mil-STD-2000 Soldering Technology Certification
Course at U.S. Army AMCCOM, Picatinny Arsenal, NJ. I have been certified as a
Mil-STD-2000 Soldering Technology Category C - Instructor/Examiner. This means
I can train personnel for broad or specific soldering tasks as well as inspect
solder work as part of a Quality Control program. Recertification was every 2 years.
Completed recertification courses in January of 1993 and January of 1995. This standard
(MIL-STD-2000) was eventually replaced by ISO-9000 and courses were discontinued.
Work Experience - General
Started working for First National Stores in New City, NY in 1963 at the age of
16. Worked as a cashier and retail clerk responsible for ordering and maintaining
stock in the grocery department. Worked part time while attending Clarkstown High
School. Worked full time during summer vacations while in High School. Worked part
time while attending Steven's Institute and RCA. Continued to work at Finast (First
National Stores) part time after starting to work for CELCO in 1969. In 1973 CELCO
offered me extended hours (overtime) to work in both the Engineering/Testing Department
and their relatively new Computer Department consisting of DEC PDP8 and PDP11
mini-computers (see Work Experience - Engineering/Computers). After a few more years
I became a salaried employee and continued to put in a 50 hour work week (more when
required) throughout my career with the company.
Work Experience - Technician / Engineer
Started working for CELCO (Constantine Engineering Laboratories) as an Electronics Technician on
March 17, 1969 in the field of Electromagnetics (specifically in the field of "Electron Beam Control").
Eventually the titles of "Design Engineer" and "Software Engineer" were bestowed upon me by the company.
Copies of CELCO issued business cards may be viewed from the list of documents and photos at the left.
CELCO manufactures high speed, high resolution Cathode Ray Tube Display Systems and components.
Custom components include deflection coils (deflection yokes), static and dynamic focus coils, static
and dynamic astigmatism correctors, centering coils, flooding coils, and convergence coil assemblies for
delta gun and in-line gun color CRTs. In the 1970s I had the privilege of working on the Star Tracker Vidicons
used in the Voyager Space Probes (NASA/JPL).
CELCO also manufactures the printed circuit boards for controlling these electromagnetic
components. PCBs include deflection amplifiers, electronic linearity correctors,
electronic astigmatism correctors, focusing supplies, high voltage and general purpose
power supplies.
In addition, CELCO provides system drawers and rack mounted devices such as deflection amplifiers,
ramp generators, raster generators and other waveform generators and Multi-Output-DC Supplies for static control.
Precision mounting and alignment of CRTs and components are achieved using CELCO Micropositioner Assemblies.
Precision positional measurements are made using CELCO manufactured X-Y Traverses.
While working for CELCO, I have been responsible for the following:
1. Design, quality control mechanical inspection and electrical testing of electromagnetic components
manufactured by CELCO for use in high speed, high resolution Cathode Ray tube display systems.
Designed and built switch panels to improve through-put in the electrical test department.
These panels eliminated the need for the operator to manually plug and unplug coils under test.
Eventually replaced the switch panels with computer driven test stations.
. . . QC mechanical inspection involved measuring and comparing physical dimensions to engineering drawings
. . . using vernier calipers, micrometers and other gauges to determine "pass" or "fail" status.
2. Research, development, design and installation of electromagnetic
components for use in Color Display Systems and the Photo Typesetting
Industry.
3. Prototype construction and documentation of resultant construction techniques devised
to build custom electromagnetic components per customer specifications. Documentation
included photos, sketches, design drawings as well as verbose instructions and notes.
One such application involved designing and fabricating fixtures for building custom components
for Lucent Technologies' SCALPEL program.
4. Troubleshooting, repair, maintenance and calibration of test equipment
(electrical and optical) and maintenance of calibration records and Standards.
Eventually set up calibration records and scheduling on computer.
5. The electrical design and implementation of test circuits, panels and power
supply configurations required by the testing department.
6. The mechanical design of various parts and machine shop fixtures.
. . . One major contribution in particular was the design of an X-Z table and assorted
. . . fixtures for mapping magnetic fields produced by various components. This was done,
. . . initially using an external plotter. Eventually a few of us got together and fabricated
. . . an electronic means of tracking the positions of the X and Z tables. With the interface
. . . that already existed on the computer assisted test stations, I was able to feed the
. . . table position and magnetic probe output signal values to a program I wrote in C/C++.
. . . This data was read and stored on the fly and the program formatted the data for direct
. . . loading into spreadsheet and 3D graphing programs. The program also produced a graph on screen
. . . as data was being collected. (See 8A below for a link to the Celco-NJ website where you can see
. . . the Field Plotting Test Set Up and sample output.
7. Drafting.
8. Technical writing in the form of lab reports, research and development notes,
project management records and production processes as well as engineering and
technical procedures for manufacturing and testing. Have also written and illustrated
several instruction manuals on how to use various lab test setups and CELCO produced
Software and Hardware. Here's a few examples:
. . . . A. CELCO COMPUTER ASSISTED TEST STATION USER'S MANUAL (~1997)
. . . . . . Conceived and blocked out this project which uses a National Instruments LAB-PC-1200
. . . . . . DAQ board and SC2070 General Purpose Termination Bread Board. Wrote all
. . . . . . of the software, contributed to some of the hardware construction, built and
. . . . . . configured 4 test stands. One of these test stands may be viewed at
celco-nj.com along with other
. . . . . . test stations I designed, built and programmed. Just click the [TOUR] button at the website.
. . . . . . Did all of the carpentry except for some special cuts we did not have tools for.
. . . . B. CELCO FX-VIEW SOFTWARE USER'S GUIDE (~1996)
. . . . . . A User's Guide to using the software I wrote for operating CELCO Color Film Recorders
. . . . . . from PCs. The software was used by customers operating business slide presentation
. . . . . . bureaus. For example, American Express in NYC used this software package. As mentioned
. . . . . . elsewhere, I wrote all the original equipment software on several platforms. The C/C++
. . . . . . routines developed here in NJ were transported to SGI work stations and further enhanced
. . . . . . by CELCO, Pacific Division to accommodate the Film Making Industry. At the time, PCs weren't
. . . . . . fast enough for movie production and we had to use more expensive hardware with greater
. . . . . . data storage and handling capabilities.
. . . . . . This software was written to allow the customer to optimize the Film Recorder's electronics
. . . . . . to utilize their film's full dynamic range over a desired gamma function, usually linear.
. . . . . . I wrote the manual initially to assist David Scharf of Scharf Photo (Scanning Electron
. . . . . . Microscope Photography, Video, Motion Pictures, Stock Images, Fine Art Prints and R&D by
. . . . . . David Scharf). You can visit his very interesting website at
scharfphoto.com.
9. Installation and calibration of optical components and assemblies required
to manufacture CELCO precision X-Y traveling microscopes and CRT spot
analyzers.
10. Photographic records of various components, systems, display and test
results used for reference and in CELCO advertising campaigns.
Work Experience - Computer
Since 1972, have been actively programming and operating CELCO's in-house
DEC PDP8 and PDP11 computers under such operating systems as PS/8, OS/8, RSTS/e,
RT-11, RSX-11 and UNIAPT. I have written programs using BASIC, PAL-8, PAL-11,
MACRO-11, FOCAL, FORTRAN and BGL.
Early work included writing original equipment software for the development of CELCO's
Digital Color Film Recorder, the CFR4000. Initially the CFR was used by Slide Presentation Bureaus
and customers that needed to put there "still" digital image data on film. Eventually the CFR
was put to use producing animated film footage. MAGI Synthevision used the CFR4000 to produce
a major portion of the computer animation in the Disney movie "TRON" released in 1982.
In addition, I have been responsible for the following:
1. Designing, writing, proving out and debugging of UNIAPT programs. UNIAPT
(United Computing's Automatically Programmed Tools) is a Geometric-Mathematical
language designed to produce N/C (Numerical Control) tapes for various
programmable machine shop tools such as lathes, drills, millers and 3-D
contouring machines. Machines I've programmed using UNIAPT include the Monarch
Pathfinder Lathe and the Milwaukee-Matic II 3-D Contouring Machine. I have
manually programmed the Kierney and Trecker Tape-O-Matic drill press. Later
wrote a program to assist in programming the K+T providing storable and
editable files which were used to punch paper tape for the machine. UNIAPT also
supported a graphics video storage terminal which was used to prove out
dimensional and geometric statements in a given machine program which has been
modified to access the video display.
2. Using assembly language and operating under the PS/8 and OS/8 operating
systems, designed and wrote all of the original equipment software required to
operate a Font Scanner and Printer manufactured by CELCO for the Photo
Typesetting Industry. Our primary customer was Mergenthaler Linotype on Long
Island. The final software package was a stand-alone operating system complete
with diagnostic aids and a Software User's Manual.
Have also designed and written both operating system compatible and
stand-alone software routines designed to drive computer test stands used in
CELCO's Testing and Quality Control Department. This applies to both PDP11 and
PDP8 computer oriented systems.
3. On the PDP11, programs written in BASIC-Plus under RSTS/E provided
engineering design assistance, tabulated data, graphic analysis, customer data
sheets etc. . .
4. Programs written in BGL (Business Graphing Language) were used to generate
slides on the CELCO CFR-4000 Color Film Recorder. These slides have been
rendered to film on the CFR-4000 for use as sales samples, in advertising and
to illustrate the technical paper
ELECTRON OPTICAL TECHNIQUES FOR AN ULTRA
HIGH RESOLUTION COLOR FILM RECORDER delivered by John M. Constantine Jr. to the
Society of Photo Optical Engineers at their 1984 symposium. Also used BGL to
create a slide sequence which produced a one minute 35mm movie on the CFR.
5. With respect to the CFR-4000's software requirements, I was primarily
responsible for the programming of:
. . . . a. All RT-11 based Device Drivers.
. . . . b. RT-11 based Job Control Processors designed to retrieve data from
. . . . . . disc and magnetic tape.
. . . . c. Specialized data reformatting and processing routines.
. . . . d. IEEE-488 Interface software which has involved working with the
. . . . . . following interactive MAC and PC work stations:
. . . . . . . . 1. Artronics System 2000
. . . . . . . . 2. HP2700
. . . . . . . . 3. Florida Computer Graphics BEACON
. . . . . . . . 4. Graphx Raster Plus, and many others.
. . . . e. PDP11 Com-Link data transfer and processing routines.
In addition to the above, it was also my responsibility to:
. . . . a. Create and maintain various image and program libraries and to
. . . . . . maintain back up systems for all in-house operating systems.
. . . . b. Flow Chart and document software and write the CFR-4000 Software
. . . . . . User's Manual.
. . . . c. Assist customers with any questions regarding the operation and
. . . . . . programming requirements of the CELCO Film Recorder.
. . . . d. Conduct several short classes of instruction on programming the
. . . . . . CFR. In addition to in-house courses of instruction, this included
. . . . . . an on-site class at Nasa, Langely.
6. When the DEC VAX-VMS computer came out, I wrote a Text Menu Driven program
in FORTRAN to control the retrieval and printing to film of digital image data
from Mag-Tapes and Disk. One such system was used by Baltimore Space Telescope
Institute to process their digital image data.
7. Wrote CFR Operating System programs for PCs using C/C++, as well as driver
modules in assembly. Slide presentation companies, such as American Express,
used this software. The program modules essential to operating the Film Recorder
were utilized by CELCO, Pacific Division on SGI Work Stations where software
was further developed to service the movie making industry. In 2002, CELCO won
the
ACADEMY AWARD for technical achievement. Since 1931, the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences has given the Scientific and Technical Award, an
Academy Award for scientific or technical achievements.
8. With respect to the Color Film Recorder's hardware, I have been involved
with the development and optimization of various logic circuits incorporated in
the system.
. . . . a. Programmed microchips to control Oxberry and MSM cameras from
. . . . . . the Color Film Recorder.
. . . . b. Modified programs for controller chips in the CFR itself.
. . . . c. Wrote DOS stand alone programs using C/C++ to test and develop Linearity and
. . . . . . Astigmatism Corrector boards.
Miscellaneous
1. Created and maintained the CELCO-NJ website "celco-nj.com".
2. Created, maintained and constantly upgrading my own personal information
website "jodocoplanet.com".
Software
Programming DEC Machines
PDP8 Machine Code, PAL8 Assembly, PDP11 Machine Code, PAL11 Assembly, Macro-11,
BASIC, FORTRAN, UNIAPT III
Programming PCs
Assembly, Basic, Pascal, C/C++
. . . For CELCO design and test applications as well as the Color Film Recorder,
. . . I wrote a GUI generating program in C which is basically a template that
. . . is easily modified and augmented to create customized virtual interactive panels
. . . with buttons and display windows (numerical as well as graphical).
. . . Wrote math intensive programs to aid in the design of magnetic components to
. . . produce magnetic fields with required field density distributions (field shapes).
. . . Wrote software required to collect and tabulate magnetic field data (using the Field Plotting
. . . X-Z Table) for use in spreadsheet and 3D Graphing software.
. . . Programs written for CELCO applications were DOS level stand alone routines.
. . . Business programming (i.e. Accounts Receivable) for PCs written in C/C++.
Software - Operating Systems
DEC Operating Systems: DEC PS8, OS8, RT-11, RSX-11, RSTS-E, VAX-VMS.
SGI Operating Systems: IRIX.
PC Operating Systems: DOS, Windows: 3.1; 95; NT; 98; XP; Vista, MAC OSX.
Software - Applications
Drafting and Mechanical Design: Design CAD, AutoCad2000, Solid Edge
Spreadsheets: QuattroPro, XCel
Word Processing: Word Perfect, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher
Forms and Data Sheets: Form Tool Gold
Flow Charting: Smart Draw
Photo Processing: JASC Paintshop Pro, Micrografix Picture Publisher, Aldus Photostyler
. . . Adobe Photo Shop, Micrografix Suite, GIMP
Publishing (for Advertising): Aldus PageMaker, Quark Express
Web Design and Maintenance: HTML, GIF Movie Gear
Graphical Data Analysis: Harvard Graphics, Quattro Pro, 3D Grapher, GIF Movie Gear
Hobbies and Activities
Model Rocketry Original designs as well as pre-fab models
Photography (Film and Digital)(3-D)(Special Effects)(see Photo Processing software above)
. . . Initially, we used my basement photo lab to process black and white and Ektachrome films to evaluate
. . . CELCO Color Film Recorder performance and to calibrate color tables. Eventually we built a dark
. . . room at CELCO.
Videography (Movies and Slide Shows)(Windows MovieMaker and MAC iLife (iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD))
Astronomy (Schmidt-Cassegrain Celestron 8 Telescope)
Microscopy (Boreal 57900-03 Digital Research Microscope)
Avid Tennis Player USTA Member, former AATA (Amer-Asian Tennis Assoc.), Waldwick Covered Courts, NJ
Avid Bowler Cresskill Gardens Men's League, O&R/Monday Night Mixed League (Montvale Lanes, NJ)
Woodworking
Current Status
. . . Product obsolescence and the poor state of the economy is seriously hurting CELCO's business.
. . . Many standard CRT display applications have been replaced by LCD displays and the like.
. . . There are still many special applications and "projects under development" that still require CRT technology
. . . for it's high energy output, speed and resolution. Also, there is still a need for electromagnetic components
. . . in charged particle control applications, but the current state of the economy is responsible for the
. . . reduction and/or suspension of many of these projects.
. . . Basically, I am currently unemployed and seeking a full time job in the field of Electronics or Instrumentation.
. . . Several employees at CELCO, Mahwah, myself included, were put on 3-day work weeks from May '08 thru March '09
. . . to cut costs. On March 19, 2009 we were "furloughed". I have made myself available and have gone back in to work
. . . for CELCO on several occasions in 2009 for a couple/few days at a time to help keep remaining production jobs and other
. . . processes going. Prospects for ever returning to work "full time" at CELCO are very dim and unemployment benefits
. . . are running out.
. . . Most currently I can only report that my online resume submissions to prospective employers seem to go completely ignored.
. . . I have applied and have been interviewed for more than one position at an electronics company in Rockleigh, NJ.
. . . I was convinced I had a chance. I received compliments on my work history, Resume and application. I was even told by
. . . the supervisor that last interviewed me that he wanted to get together with HR and see if they could find a better fit and
. . . pay scale for me. I was applying for a job as a Product Tester which entailed far less responsibilies than my former job.
. . . Nobody ever got back to me. After a week or so I called HR to see if they had any info for me. Had to leave a message on
. . . their answering machine. Even after that, no one ever got back in touch with me.
. . . At this point, I can't help feeling there is some age discrimination going on as I am now almost 63. Hopefully I am not having
. . . a problem as I did with Bell Labs back when I graduated from RCA as well.
