Willis Whitfield: Creator of clean room technology still in use today (2024)

I had no idea this was the man who was responsible for the cleanroom where I spent thousands of hours working in right after college. To get in a Class 10 cleanroom, there was the laborious routine of gowning from head to toe and then taking the air shower and passing through the airlock before entering the place that looked like it belonged in science fiction. It was a strange environment trying to recognize anyone because all you can see are people’s eyes through goggles. After awhile you remember their gait as the first tell. There was even a belief that exposure to the air inside made people, say for lack of a better word, amorous. Myth or true maybe some can chime in.

Thanks for sharing the article.

Quote from his son:

> From a personal point of view, I would say to myself ‘I am working in something my dad made.’ Every time I would walk in, I would say, ‘Thanks Dad.’”

As a dad, I should be so lucky as to create something my son will appreciate like that.

Also, Whitfield lived to the age of 92. What a blessing that must have been to his son, to have such a great role model and to have him still in his life for many decades. Maybe it’s just something I think about a lot because I lost both of my parents young.

Growing up on a farm with access to minimal technology provides a perfect setting for producing finest minds. It provides beautiful challenges, minimal resources and full of freedom.

And the reward (or punishment) would be to move to city life or to Western countries. That's a pity. Modern life puts you into a grove to move in. You are a caged animal or a micro-managed worker. There are no problems and no freedom. Can't even have the option to use or not to use AI at work. We are cells in a larger creature. Cells are not supposed to do thinking.

Oh wow! I was just thinking the other day about a similar design to build for my second-hand clothing stores where we have a lot of lint that is constantly clogging HVAC systems that I maintain.

I'd like to create laminar-flow across the floor so all the dust travels to one wall for easy sweeping and also capture dust in a vortex system tucked away in the basement.

I love how they call his engineer’s notepad a “tablet.”

It reminds me of the aquarium filter I had as a child in which a plastic grate was placed underneath the gravel and connected air bubblers would create enough of an upward water flow in the corners that anything on the gravel surface would gradually get pulled beneath the plastic grate.

Interesting article, and he sounds like a clever (and, as the article says) humble guy.

> On the way home from one of those trips, Whitfield had an idea. “He was on an airplane, and he whipped out a tablet and basically drew out the whole schematic of how the clean room should work,” said Whitfield’s son Jim, who was 6 years old at the time. “It was just a simple sketch. It just took a few minutes, and it’s the basic principle that is still used today.”

This was in 1960 and he clearly drew it on paper. So is/was "tablet" a common term for a pad of paper? I've never heard it used in any context other than a slab of stone or a derivation of such.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablet#Inscription,_printing,_...

Minor point but struck me as odd.

Link (pdf) to the issued patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cb/4f/c5/d10b79e...

Is there a vague idea of what percentage of each country's nuclear arsenal would be duds? Prior to or after clean rooms got cleaner?

The handwriting in that drawing is beautiful!

Hey, the magic mushroom grow tech credits goes to sir.

Slightly off topic but that lab book made me a bit envious.

I doubt my mental bandwith could cope without org mode and digital formats in general. But that penmanship and the general neatness really shows a focus and an intentionality that makes me feel that something has fallen off the wayside in this digital transition.