How Did Dilbert Get His Name? --- Dilbert the Pilot
"Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and
"Tech Topics Smorgasbord"
are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the
overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:
Do you know how engineering whipping boy
Dilbert came to be called by
that name? Per Scott Adams, while working at Pacific Bell he ran an informal name-the-comic-strip-engineer
contest from his cubicle. A guy named Mike Goodwin suggested Dilbert. "I
ended the contest immediately and declared Mike the winner," says Adams. It sounded
perfect. Years after the comic strip had become syndicated, Mike commented that
he believes the name idea might have come from seeing his father's old WWII aviator
comics with "Dilbert the Pilot." DtP was a screw-up, invented by Navy artist Robert
Osborn, whose purpose in life was to illustrate the wrong way of doing things so
that real pilots wouldn't make the same mistakes. The name was funny then, as it
is funny now. BTW, Dilbert
is a variant of Delbert meaning nobly famous. During the War, "dilbert" became
a synonym for "blunder" for Navy pilots. The Navy even produced an aviator safety
film titled, "Don't Kill Your Friends," featuring Dilbert the Pilot. "Don't
be a Dilbert!"
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail"
when a new message arrived...
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Do you know how engineering whipping boy
