"One of the activities at the Corvallis-Bention County Library's first Makers Festival event was a programmable computer chip attached to red, yellow and green lights.
"Ken Olsen, a software technician at Hewlett-Packard Co. who brought the device, let visitors to the festival try to program it to flash in time, like a traffic light. While he was away, someone not only programmed the light, but also pulled up images in the software of a car and programmed it so the car moved on screen when the light was green.
"Olsen said he didn't even know who programmed it, but "that's the kind of thing I live for." Ken said the boy who did it came back the next day and told him he was the one.
The second day Ken brought his train and let kids play with that.
He had lots of charts and visual aids set up. Plus he answered lots of questions.
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| Ken showed off his pinewood derby entry! |
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| The bubble making machine was popular. |
The end of the GT article quotes him again:
"Olsen, who brought some of his personal projects to the Makers Festival, will be working with the "Make it!" teen program in its May 6 event. Olsen brought a few other homemade creations, such as a motion-sensing bubble blower.
"Olsen said seeing kids excited to learn makes participating in programs like this worth it for him. Olsen's dad was an industrial engineer at Oregon State University, and Olsen said getting to do things like play games on the mainframe in the university's lab were influential to him when he was younger."
4 comments:
Ken, you are very quotable. You make a great "science guy" with your nieces and nephews as well. Dad
We know a local celebrity from the paper! Very cool!
Great photos. Thanks for coming both days! That was a lot of work, but great fun. There are some sharp kids out there!
Ken is my new hero. Wondering if he wants to adopt (or borrow) a 16 yo male/sidekick (aka WonderBoy)???
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