IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 54

HOMEGrOwN BESPOKE CaBLE
[Above] Thief River Falls native Mark
Larson [shown] joined Digi-Key
several years after it was founded
by Ron Stordahl, another local and
a childhood friend. At the start, the
company offered just one product:
a solid-state Morse-code keyer for
ham radio operators. Anticipating high
demand for his "digi-keyer," Stordahl
optimistically bought tens of thousands
of transistors and other components
for his design. But orders were slim,
so he began selling the components
themselves by mail order. "That proved
to be a much better business," Larson
says. These days, the company stocks
nearly a million products, up 50 percent
in just the last two years.
54

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feb 2014

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north american

[Right] Flex cables, like cut-tape reels, can be custom
ordered; you can specify the length, the number of pins
or other connectors, and the label, among other things.

FINaL FrONTIEr
[Far right] A stepper-motor control board designed
by Digi-Key engineer Shawn Rhen was added to the
Digi-Key catalog in the 1990s. One day, Rhen got
a call from someone who said he was with NASA
and wanted to use the board on the space shuttle.
"I thought it was a joke," he recalls. It wasn't: Mission
STS-95, which launched on 29 October 1998, took
Rhen's board into orbit as part of a microvibration
detection experiment. The experiment went off
without a hitch, and the principal investigator later
returned the board to Rhen.
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http://SPectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2014

IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 1
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 2
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 3
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 4
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 5
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 6
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 7
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 8
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 9
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 10
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 11
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 12
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 13
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 14
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 15
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 16
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 17
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 18
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 19
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 20
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 21
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 22
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 23
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 24
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 25
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 26
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 27
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 28
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 29
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 30
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 31
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 32
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 33
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 34
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 35
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 36
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 37
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 38
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 39
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 40
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 41
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 42
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 43
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 44
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 45
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 46
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 47
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 48
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 49
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 50
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 51
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 52
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 53
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 54
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 55
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 56
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 57
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 58
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 59
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 60
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 61
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 62
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 63
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 64
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 65
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 66
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 67
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 68
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 69
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 70
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 71
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - 72
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum February, 2014 - Cover4
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_0111
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https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/ieee/spectrum_na_1010
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