A Snapshot of My Life

Abstract

I was born on 30 March 1949 in Osaka as a son of my father Masukichi and my mother Fusako. My parents influenced me largely, since I had neither brother nor sister. My father was an electrical engineer, and thus I also liked making or designing various functional things. My later research style may be affected by such an activity. When I was a high school student, I started to make electrical and electronic circuits as a hobby. As many hobbyists in those days did, I first assembled a radio from vacuum tubes and some other components. I also composed digital circuits, such as logic gates and flip-flops, out of transistors, diodes, resistors and capacitors. Around the end of 1960’s, TTL (transistor-transistor logic) ICs became available. So, I made several logic circuits for digital apparatus, for example a digital clock, using ICs also as a hobby. At that time, I dreamed to assemble a small digital computer out of TTL ICs, but, of course, it was not possible for me.