IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022 - 17

few of these removable-ROM cartridge
coin-op machines in arcades to test the
market, Joseph ended each of his games
with the first few notes of the blues song
After You've Gone and Left Me Crying. As
he told his daughter, engineers always put
their initials somewhere on their designs.
They sneak them in, often working something
into the circuitry where it's too
hard to take out. This song was his signature,
how he established his brand.
It was a good fit with his microprocessor-based
arcade game, which
was the only intelligent machine in
the arcade, he told his daughter with
a smile. " After everyone else had gone
home and left you alone what would you
do? You'd sing the blues. Every video
game needs a catchy jingle and it's in
the public domain, " Weisbecker explains.
Joseph enjoyed coming up with the
joke and knowing it would always be
there, like an Easter egg. " Here was an
opportunity to give it some personality,
to create the illusion that people
want for themselves that the computer
actually feels things and knows
you're there. As a magician, if you
can do little things to reinforce that,
people who are already thinking that
way will believe in it, "
says Weisbecker.
Weisbecker's
After Joseph
mother J e a n
Ruth was a third
grade teacher,
one who went
into teaching
to make a difference.
Her
passion was motivating
children
to learn more about
a subject. " She wanted
to explain things and see
their eyes light up when it was
clear, when they suddenly didn't understand
why it had been so hard before, "
Weisbecker says. In her teaching program,
Jean Ruth may have been discouraged
when she was told that her sole job
was to present material, grade papers, and
make sure no one fights, cheats, or steals,
but she forged ahead with her plan to
build compelling, successful lesson plans
and find innovative ways to reach struggling
students. " It was a big deal to her. If
they fall behind in third grade, what hope
have they ever got of finding happiness
and making a good living? " she shares.
invented FRED,
a few people in RCA
were interested in its
8-bit architecture, and
soon after, RCA became
interested in competing
with other companies
that were selling
microprocessors.
Jean Ruth and Joseph
were both such
natural teachers,
Weisbecker remembers,
that
one night, out
at a restaurant,
when they
overheard one
young child say
to her parents,
'I don't know why
they say the barometer
is falling,' " they
both had to resist the urge
to get up, get a glass of water
and a straw and go over to the table and
show them how a barometer works and
explain why. "
They were kindred spirits, something
Weisbecker's father once explained
to her like this: " We get along
so well because we're interested in exactly
the same thing. We're interested
in presenting things to kids. The difference
is your mother wants to make
things so clear that at the end the child
has an a-ha moment. I love magic so I
want to present things in a way that's
so convoluted that at the end they
think they know where I'm going and
they're surprised when they have an
oh-wow moment. "
Weisbecker and her sister grew up
in this intellectual, creative, and loving
environment. Jean Ruth encouraged her
to find things she was excited to learn
more about and then to not let anyone
stop her from learning as much as she
could about it. Joseph spent the early
1970s designing and building the Flexible
Recreational Educational Device (FRED)
in their home basement with his own
money and many trips to Radio Shack,
often accompanied by his daughter.
" I didn't realize how strange it was
Weisbecker's father Joseph spent the early 1970s designing and building FRED in
his home basement with his own money.
DECEMBER 2022
to some people until my mother mentioned
to us that we probably shouldn't
say 'my father made that game' because
our friends and even their parents will
misunderstand and think that our father
IEEE WOMEN IN ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
17
IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Women in Engineering Magazine - December 2022
