Oral History of Jon Rubinstein Interviewed by: Dag Spicer Recorded August 15, 2019 Mountain View, CA CHM Reference number: X9139.2020 © 2019 Computer History Museum Oral History of Jon Rubinstein Spicer: Thank you for joining us today, Jon. We’re here today with Jon Rubinstein. It’s August 14th, 2019. Jon, we’re so happy to have you here today. You’ve been a friend of the museum for many years, and thank you for sitting with us today. Rubinstein: Hey, it’s my pleasure. You know, my history at the museum goes back. Dan'l and I were talking about this at dinner. So I don’t think he realized how far the museum goes back, because I got here in the Valley in ’86, and Gordon used to drag me over here to, like, not here but to Moffett Field to, like, haul boxes around when they’d get shipments from the Boston Computer Museum to here. So that must’ve been in, you know, ’87 or ’88, something like that, and-- Spicer: I think that was more around ’96. Is that possible, that-- because I started in ’96 and-- Rubinstein: No. Spicer: --and Gor-- really? Okay. Rubinstein: You know, I mean, I’m pretty-- I don’t know. Mean, maybe I’m confused. I got to the Valley in ’86. That I’m sure of, and I worked at Ardent, was my first job. So, you know, that was from ’86 to ’90, something like that, in ’87. Maybe, yeah, no. Was ’86 to ’90, and I’m pretty sure that in that time frame we were hauling stuff around over there, so... Spicer: <laughs> Okay. Well, we can come back to that. Rubinstein: Yeah, it’d be interesting to find out. Spicer: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, let’s start at the beginning. Tell us about where you were born, what your parents did, and did they shape the way you looked at the world? Rubinstein: So I was born in New York City. I grew up on the-- I was born and started off on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and then when I was a little kid we moved to the Lower West Side of Manhattan. My mom was-- interesting history. So she’s Israeli, and my dad had been over in Israel sort of helping out before the war, and my mom was, like, a Nursing Corps Second Lieutenant in the military, and also a member of the Stern gang, so she was sort of doing lots of different things while they were trying to get their independence, and so they got married and came to United States, and then a few years later I was born, so-- Spicer: What year would that have been? Rubinstein: I was born in ’56. Spicer: Okay. CHM Ref: X9139.2020 © 2019 Computer History Museum Page 2 of 133 Oral History of Jon Rubinstein Rubinstein: So the war was in ’48, so they probably, I think they wandered around Europe for a couple years trying to get a visa, and then once she came to the U.S., you know, I was born a couple years later. So she was a nurse originally. She worked as a nurse, you know, at, you know, in the hospitals in New York and my dad was an engineer, had a chemical engineering company, and basically, she started going back to school and ended up becoming a sociologist and ended up teaching at the Fashion Institute of Technology for 50-something years, teaching the sociology of fashion. My dad started a business and it was doing electroplating, sort of brush plating for repair of aircraft engines or, you know, cylinders on any kind of cylinder where the tolerances have to be tight or, you know, later on electronics, printed circuit board repair, that kind of thing. And so I grew up in an environment where my mother was at school, you know, going to school all the time, because she, when she came to the U.S. she didn’t have a-- she didn’t really even have a high school degree, so she lied to NYU to get into do her undergraduate, because she’d gone to high school, or hadn’t gone to high school in Jerusalem, and because of the war, the records had been all destroyed during the war and so it couldn’t be proved one way or the other. So she just told them she had a high school degree and they accepted her to NYU and then she, you know, she went on to Rutgers to get her PhD and so she was in school a lot and my dad was doing his company, he was traveling a lot, and so, you know, I grew up on, initially on around 19th Street and First, Second Avenue, and I had couple aunts from Israel come over to take care of me when I was little kid. I went to public school. Think it was P.S. 40,which was across the street, and, you know, that was kind of my first couple years. You know, when I got a little bit older, around first or second grade, we moved to the Lower West Side, 26th Street and 9th Avenue, and I went to P.S. 33, so I continued public school, and, you know, from very little kid, I mean, you know, I sent you that Dilbert video [cartoon -- called "The Knack."] I mean, that was me, right? I mean, I was, you know, two years old, I was taking shit apart. Spicer: The Knack. Rubinstein: I got the knack, right, and by, you know, it took until six or eight or whatever to put stuff back together, but, you know, but I had the knack so-- Spicer: That’s great. Rubinstein: Went to public school through elementary school. I did one year at the local public school for junior high school, whatever it was. It was intermediate school, and that place was a disaster. I mean, it was-- the New York School system was bad anyway, but that place was really awful, and so my parents decided to send me to private school and I applied to a variety of places. I don’t really remember any of this but I know it’s what happened, and so for junior and high school I ended up going to Horace Mann, which was a fancy private school in the Bronx that you’d have to take the train an hour each way. Now they have buses for the kids, but in those days you took the subway, and so I took the subway up there and back every day. Spicer: Can I ask, did you have a lot of spare time? You were an only child; is that right? CHM Ref: X9139.2020 © 2019 Computer History Museum Page 3 of 133 Oral History of Jon Rubinstein Rubinstein: I was not an only child. Spicer: Oh, you’re not an only child? Rubinstein: I am not. I have a brother. Spicer: Oh, okay. Can you tell us a bit about your siblings then? Rubinstein: My brother is-- I have a younger brother and a younger sister. The sister’s the youngest. My brother is also an engineer, but mostly he’s a doctor. So he did his MD/PhD in Bioengineering and now runs the Bloedel Hearing Institute at the University of Washington Medical School and he does cochlear implants. He’s one of the world’s leading cochlear implant guys. So he did his PhD in, you know, nerve response to electronics and ended up doing cochlear implants. So he’s, you know, he helps people hear again. I mean, it’s really remarkable to watch the videos of people being able to hear all of a sudden, and of course it’s a lot of digital, you know, digital stuff. They implant the electrodes and then they stimulate the electrodes with, you know, using digital signal processing, and so it’s a constant software evolution and, you know, improving the algorithms to-- Spicer: We’re going to get to this later but I wanted specifically the iPod ecosystem, but what do you think about, as you’re speaking with this I’m reminded of hearing aids now are Wi-Fi enabled and you can actually control them through-- Rubinstein: Yeah, I think Bluetooth-- Spicer: Or sorry, Bluetooth. Yeah. Rubinstein: --enabled, but yeah, yeah, yeah. In the old days they had plug-in things so you could actually plug your-- Spicer: So that’s really-- Rubinstein: --iPod into the hearing aid. Spicer: Oh, okay. I didn’t know that. Rubinstein: No. Yeah, yeah, so-- Spicer: But so we’ll get to that later, but-- Rubinstein: Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Spicer: But it’s interesting that what the two Rubinstein brothers did, that’s kind of <laughs>. CHM Ref: X9139.2020 © 2019 Computer History Museum Page 4 of 133 Oral History of Jon Rubinstein Rubinstein: Yeah. Yeah, and my sister’s useless. So she grew up as a, you know, basically useless and continues to be useless, so... Spicer: Oh, dear. Okay. Rubinstein: Yeah. Yeah, she’s got-- nothing to talk about her. But any case, my brother is, you know, he’s done a great job and so any case, that’s... Spicer: Tell us about Horace Mann. So we’ll just step back to where we were and what that was like for you. Did they encourage science and that kind of thing or more arts? Rubinstein: You know, they really didn’t.