In the 1950s, when computers were the size of rooms and the data they stored housed on punch cards, MSOE alumnus Thomas Anspach ’59 was a curious student eager to learn at the dawn of a technological revolution. Today, at 91 years old, he reflects on how his experience as an MSOE student helped him generate a promising future through a tangle of wires, a computer and blinking lights. 

Born in Sterling, Illinois in 1933, Tom’s parents moved to Indiana to begin sharecropping on farms. The family purchased their farm in Winamac when Tom was a junior in high school. While the family business centered around agriculture, Tom’s interests and passions focused on electronics and travel. In high school, he attended a technical USPS correspondence class out of Chicago, where he learned how to build a small working radio. After graduating high school in 1951 he pursued this even further while serving in the U.S. Navy. For four years he used radios and direction finders at various military stations in California, Maryland and Japan.  

That experience in the military and his passion for electronics ultimately led him to MSOE. “I selected MSOE in 1956 as my first choice after visiting it once and reviewing a few other technical colleges.” Tom attended the university on a G.I. Bill and worked local part-time jobs starting in July 1956.

One of Tom’s favorite memories as a student centered around his calculator. “I had my 10-inch Slide Rule which I used for multiplying, dividing, exponents, etc. I wanted a 6-inch and could not find one; I recall seeing them when stationed in Japan.  My brother Johnny was in the Navy and his ship was going to Japan, so I asked him to get me one. When he came home, he took the train up to Milwaukee to deliver it to me. We went out on the town one night and had fun; I didn’t have much time to do that because of my studies.” 

It was also in Milwaukee where Tom met and fell in love with his wife and started a family before graduating with his electrical engineering degree in 1959. 

Tom’s first job out of college was at Bell Labs in Whippany, New Jersey, designing a time code generator needed for an anti-missile testing station in the Pacific. The device was being built in North Carolina, so Tom made several trips to and from the area. Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis happening at that time, he said traveling with this classified information could sometimes be hazardous. “We couldn’t carry sensitive materials with us due to the risk of being hijacked. It certainly took a lot of my MSOE learning to get the job done.” 

Three years later, Tom joined the Honeywell Space Division near Clearwater, Florida where he spent the bulk of his career. For over thirty years he worked designing radiation-resistant satellite and ballistic missile guidance system computer memories. “My projects used new ‘state-of-the-art' technology. We had to have some of them tested in underground nuclear explosions at nuclear test sites to ensure they worked.” Later in his career, he was also responsible for organizing and guiding advanced technology groups before retiring in 1995. 

As he reflects on his career, Tom says he’ll never forget being involved in the beginning of the integrated electronics age. “I have had a very interesting life as a result of going to MSOE.” 

He also credits MSOE for giving him a technological advantage during his career because he was able to work on a personal computer as a student. “I learned so much using it, and it was clear to me that this was going to be the future. As an engineer at Honeywell, I was one of the first to get a desktop computer, because I was one of the very few who had an understanding of it. I have been using computers all my life because of MSOE.”