“Bill” Mensch, Jr
........ Computer • History Museum Oral History of William David “Bill” Mensch, Jr. Interviewed by: Stephen Diamond Recorded: November 10, 2014 Mountain View, California CHM Reference number: X7273.2015 © 2014 Computer History Museum Oral History of William David “Bill” Mensch, Jr. Stephen Diamond: OK, it's November 10, 2014, here at the Computer History Museum. I'm Steve Diamond, and we're doing in oral history of Bill Mensch. Thanks, Bill, for joining us. William David “Bill” Mensch: Well, thank you. Diamond: We'll be talking about a variety of subjects and your perceptions of what's happened in the past and, perhaps, where things are going in the future. Why don't we start out by talking about your youth and your education, and then we'll follow that up into your transition into the semiconductor world? Mensch: All right. Well, thanks for inviting me. It's an honor to be here right now, and I will enjoy telling you what I know about my life, how I got here. And we'll start, then, with my growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania, Bucks County, about 35 miles north of Philadelphia, very rural. The dairy farm had like 26 head of cattle, and I was a middle child of eight children I grew up with. And as a result, I got to explore because it was more fun being outside of the house rather than inside the house. When I was probably about 10 years old, we may have gotten a TV. We had a radio, liked to listen to the Lone Ranger.
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