Saperstein, Bill oral history | 102792803

Description

Bill Saperstein has had an exceptional career, making major contributions to a wide range of companies from Hewlett Packard to Apple to Barnes and Noble to Google, and many others. His eclectic range of interests showed up early in life as he grew up in Florida and later Washington DC. He enjoyed surfing, music, writing, literature, and in high school developed a great interest in physics. He also tinkered with projects, building a telescope, a GPS system, etc.

He went to Georgia Tech for college where he signed up for aerospace engineering, which served as an entré to a coop program at Cape Kennedy, where he worked on many of the Apollo programs. He eventually graduated with an applied physics degree, having also taken a number of engineering courses. Bill found his way to Stanford, and through a circuitous path began doing research in solid state devices.
After bouncing from one research project to another, he eventually was connected with HP Labs in the neighboring industrial park. While at HP he moved from research in solid state devices to the design RISC microprocessors. He loved the HP culture and the ability to work on a variety of projects. From that experience he decided he loved designing chips and was an early adopter of Verilog and logic synthesis technology.

This interest led him to a company called Force Computers where he used these tools to design three chips – all of which worked the first time. He followed this up with a long stay at Apple Computer, where he made major contributions to their microprocessor development programs with partners IBM and Motorola. He designed the Macintosh DOS Compatible product which was named “System of the Year” at Comdex. This was one of three products he designed with three different companies which won this honor.

His several years at Apple was followed by successful ventures with multiple companies. Products included imaging products, video games, and the Palm personal assistant (which yielded another CES award). After a first pass at retirement, he was hired by Barnes and Noble to develop the Nook family of digital reading devices. He recruited the team, defined and developed a full family of products, lined up Far East manufacturing suppliers – a complete turn key product for B&N. The Nook generated his third CES product award. He then moved to Nest and then some independent engineering.

Bill continues to design and innovate and bring great products to market.

Date

2022-12-14

Participants

Fairbairn, Doug, Interviewer

Saperstein, Bill, Interviewee

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Mountain View, CA

Duration

02:29:56

Format

MOV

Collection Title

CHM Oral History Collection

Credit

Computer History Museum

Lot Number

2022.0175

Artifact Details

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