Curt Gridley Shrine and library

Curt was a unique individual, with many interests over the years. I wanted to find a way to honor his memory, bring his spirit out of the Maker Labs into the rest of the building, and share some of his knowledge with the Groover community. It’s hard to convey all the things Curt was, but reading his obituary will give you a sense of him. I tried my best anyway, though I missed some things.

Bringing this memorial to fruition was a team effort. The bookshelves were adapted by Chris Tonn and Jeremiah Burian from shelves Curt built for his books. The Groover team had a hand in selecting the books, and I’ve brainstormed with everyone, including my kids, about what should go on the shrine. My eternal gratitude to you all for helping to make it a reality.

This memorial is a small part of my very long love letter to him.

Tracy

The Shrine

In no particular order:

  • Dunkin - Having lived in New England for so many years, Dunkin became part of our religion. There was a store on every street corner it seemed and he got coffee there a LOT. He was partial to hazelnut coffee and chocolate frosted donuts.

  • Pilot logbook - Curt got his pilot’s license after graduating from WSU, mostly as a vehicle to get into soaring. He finally got his soaring rating sometime in the early 2000s, and we owned our own plane, a Mooney Eagle for 20+ years. In addition to his soaring rating, Curt got his instrument, multi-engine and commercial ratings.

  • Photo album - Curt traveled in the plane by himself a lot when the kids were young, and he kept this in his flight bag.

  • Paper items - 

    • Acceptance letter to Dartmouth, which he said changed the trajectory of his life. 

    • Advanced Woodworking grade card showing he failed shop class that year. According to a classmate, Curt was a more skilled woodworker than the teacher, and Curt mentioned that the teacher treated students badly. I can only think he refused to accede to the teacher’s unreasonable behavior and the teacher failed him as a consequence. He was quite proud of that F.

    • Fortran compiler performance improvement output. The result of his bet with the MASSCOMP VP of Engineering, showing how much he’d improved compiler performance. He bought a new car (a VW Jetta – his favorite car) with the stock shares he won. (Back then we both had VW Jettas. Mine was red – my first red car.) The neighboring article was in the MASSCOMP employee newsletter, and the paper he wrote is in the USENIX proceedings on the shelf.

    • Business cards for almost all of his jobs since graduating from college. Missing is one from his brief time at Boeing after graduating from WSU, where he did CNC programming.

  • Block plane - Curt loved working with hand tools.

  • Stirling Engine - Demo version. Part of his interest in 19th c. technical innovations.

  • Bronze plaque - Curt took a bronze casting class at the WoodenBoat School in Brooklin, ME the summer before we moved to Wichita, where he made the plaque.

  • Nametag - Curt’s original ham call sign (I think).

  • Forklift - When we were brainstorming about Groover Labs, he really wanted a forklift so Santa put this in his stocking. We ended up with two actual forklifts. I sold one to pay for the scissor lift Groover really needed.

  • Guitar - Curt started playing guitar at a young age, due to the influence of Glen Campbell. He originally went to WSU to study jazz guitar but realized he wasn’t meant to spend long stretches of time in the practice room. He moved on to engineering and then mathematics and philosophy. He had a lifelong love of jazz, which was what we often had playing at home.

  • Multimeter, magnifying headset and circuit boards - On Curt’s last day at Groover, I went to the Maker Labs to get him for his CT scan appointment. I found him with the headset on and his head in the CNC router control box, trying to solve a problem. (I wish I’d been fast enough to get a photo - it was so emblematic of who he was. He designed the various boards as part of his work with Maker Labs members Peeq and Greenfield Robotics.

  • Highlighter - Curt frequently annotated books and always used this style of highlighter.

The Stuff on the Top

In addition to old books, Curt collected a bunch of old test and measurement equipment. I’m not sure why, but I thought some of it  would look great on top of the bookshelves. Do not plug any of these things in – it’s not safe! Included is an Amber Switch, which is the output of our startup; and a TotalSwitch - the revision of the Amber Switch after Amber Wave was purchased by US Robotics.

The Amber Wave Vignette

As I’ve mentioned, Curt decided he wanted to be a hardware engineer and taught himself hardware design. (He had lots of electronics experience from his ham radio days.) Without academic credentials, he didn’t think anyone would hire him for a hardware job, so he started Amber Wave Systems, to develop a low-cost ethernet switch. The Amber Switch was the result. The early months of Amber Wave were funded by savings Curt built up from consulting work. (My software engineering job at HP paid the household bills.) Then we got venture funding from VenRock and Battery Ventures, two top-tier venture firms at the time (mid 1990s). And within two years of founding, we sold Amber Wave to US Robotics. We used some of those proceeds to establish the Gridley Family Foundation, and it was Foundation funds that bought the Groover building and paid for the renovation. I found this stuff among Curt’s treasures, and thought it ought to be on display.

The Library

You are looking at a very small subset of Curt’s library, which originally numbered 13,000-15,000 volumes, almost all of it technical non-fiction. I want to share Curt’s love of knowledge and learning with the Groover community, so they are here for you to enjoy. These books belong to me now, but are on semi-permanent loan to Groover. You can take books to your office or desk, but please don’t take them out of the building, and return them when you are done so others can enjoy them too. If you find highlighting, it’s highly likely Curt did it. He never claimed to have read all these books cover to cover, but he dipped into them to learn what he needed.

Curt’s library encompassed his wide and varied interests over his lifetime. Not all of these are represented here, but most are, including:

  • Compilers and Optimization - Curt’s first job after graduate school was with Masscomp, where he wrote a new optimizer for their Fortran compiler. 

  • Computer System Architecture - At Masscomp, Curt began working with the hardware team to design the next generation computer system. Thus began his interest in hardware.

  • Computer Languages - With his interest in compilers came an interest in programming languages, particularly interpreted languages like LISP and Smalltalk. He worked in C during his career as a software engineer, and loved Objective C from his time at Lotus working on the Improv project (spreadsheet application for the NeXT Machine).

  • History of Computing - A good reminder of how we got here.

  • Aviation - In addition to his interest in flying, Curt was interested in the engineering behind it, and pursued a master’s degree in aeronautical engineering when we first moved to Wichita. He only lacked completion of the final project to get the degree, but grew disillusioned with academia and didn’t finish.

  • Mathematics - Curt’s undergraduate (WSU) and graduate (Dartmouth) degrees are in mathematics. It was at Dartmouth that he really got into computer science.

  • Electronics - During his time at Masscomp, Curt decided he really wanted to be a hardware engineer. When the hardware guys brought a bunch of chips glued to cardboard to meetings with upper management, they got a much better reaction than the software folks with their complete release on a floppy. So he taught himself hardware design. That is the genesis of Amber Wave, and the Amber Switch.

  • Boatbuilding - Curt really embraced some aspects of New England life, including a love of wooden boats, Shaker furniture, and Windsor chairs. (And Dunkin of course!) He attended several classes at the Wooden Boat School in Brooklin, Maine over the years.

  • Outside the Box - Curt heard a completely different drummer than most folks, and I tried to pick books that reflected his interest in alternate ways of thinking and problem solving.

  • History of Science - Curt had a strong interest in 19th c. technical innovations. He was especially interested in Maxwell’s Equations and the work of Michael Faraday. Our first major gift from the Gridley Family Foundation was to establish an endowed chair at Wichita State, the Curtis D. Gridley Professorship in the History and Philosophy of Science.

  • How It’s Made/General Science - Curt knew a lot about a lot of things. He spent most of his free time reading and watching YouTube videos (no sports on TV for the OG Groovers!). He could synthesize information from disparate sources to come up with unique ways of looking at and solving problems.

  • Old Books of Various Topics - Curt went on a book-buying spree in the early 2000s, collecting old technical books being deaccessioned by libraries and sold on eBay for little of nothing. Most of them just look old and the information is wildly out of date, but I chose ones that have charming illustrations, great fonts on the cover, hilarious titles (“Trigonometry for the Practical Man”, “Radio for the Millions”, etc.), or something like that. Take a look at “The Kidwell Two-Flow Ring Circuit Boiler” from the 1920s, which I find particularly charming. Several of the volumes from this part of his collection have been accessioned by the Linda Hall Library.

  • Stirling Engines - Curt didn’t know a lot about cars but had a strong interest in Stirling engines. We had a demo version at one time that would run when you put ice water in the bottom. In very simple terms, it worked on the heat differential between the ice water and the ambient air. It made a very satisfying thwump-thwump-thwump sound.

  • Vintage Computer Systems - Goes with his interest in computer architecture. We have various PDP-11 parts and kits, waiting to be restored. 

  • NeXT System Manuals - Curt worked at Lotus Development in the early 1990s, on the spreadsheet application for Steve Jobs’ NeXT Machine. (The OS for that system is the basis of Mac OS X.) Curt loved working on that system, which is on display in the business services area.

  • Telescope Building - Curt was interested in grinding the lens for a telescope, and we even have glass blanks for that!

  • Ham radio - Curt got his ham license long before I met him, and his setup is still in a box.

  • Woodworking - Curt was a skilled woodworker, and especially loved working with hand tools.

  • Tube Amps - Curt was really interested in vacuum tubes, and guitar amps is where (I think?) they are most widely used today. Maybe vintage audio equipment as well, which was also an interest.