Robert Eugene Haas was born on January 27, 1947 in Omaha, Nebraska to Robert Leonard Haas and Irene Elvira Segerstrom Haas.    Bob’s father returned from Europe after his enlistment in the Army Signal Corp to a position with the Omaha Public Power Distract charged with installation and maintenance of  their 2-way radios.   He was part of a group of friends who were all Ham Radio operators.  It was in this group that he met  Irene, the friend of a sister of one of the guys.

Bob was given his first soldering iron for his fifth birthday and by age eight was building his own radios first with vacuum tubes, but then with the first GE transistors.   He used a war-surplus 3BP1 CRT from his Dad to build a simple oscilloscope. That was the beginning of a life-long romance with oscilloscopes. He built two kit scopes, a 5-inch EICO 425  and a 3-inch Heathkit IO-10 DC coupled.  His parents had to buy the $95 Heathkit on time because family finances were tight.

Bob earned his first Ham License as a Novice from the FCC when he was 10 years old.  He upgraded to Technician one year later in 1958. His call sign was KOKQG.   In Junior High he found a magazine article on the Tektronix 321 portable scope which included the schematics.  He studied the design and got a version of the sweep circuit to work. It must have had 10 transistors, all leaky germaniums.  However, he learned how triggered sweep circuits worked from this project.

Bob’s first exposure to computers came at the beginning of his sophomore year of high school. It was an NSF summer science program for high-school students. The program at the University of Oklahoma was one of few that accepted sophomores. The subjects were computer programming and nuclear physics.   Although he only lasted one of the two weeks, he kept his love of computers.

The  next summer, Bob’s high school teacher, Roy Busch was running a summer program for high school teachers to teach them PSSC Physics at Nebraska Wesleyan in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Physical Science Study Committee at MIT  was one of three science education programs that grew out of the fear that America was falling behind the Russians in the Cold War. There was also a biology and a chemistry program.  Mr.  Busch arranged for an unofficial place for Bob to help with the classes, including teaching the teachers to use oscilloscopes. Wesleyan was the first place Bob came into contact with Tek scopes.  Having built a triggered-sweep circuit from scratch, they were easy for Bob, but a mystery to some of the teachers.

With the encouragement of Mr. Busch, Bob applied and was accepted to California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.    During his undergraduate years Bob had a few what he liked to call ”Forrest Gump Moments.”  He had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with several famous people and mentioned two, one a Nobel Prize winning physicist, Barry C. Barish, who was Bob’s Physics Teaching Assistant his Freshman year at the California Institute of Technology.  The other was Edward C. Stone, his Physics Teaching Assistant his sophomore year, who went on to lead the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1991-2001.   He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1969.

During his college summers in Omaha, Bob worked at the University of Nebraska Medical School maintaining mainframe computers. He also worked with a team of Cardiologists to design equipment to collect EKG’s remotely and provide analysis using the computer.  If he had been as well off as the Cardiologists and other physicians he worked with instead of a minimum wage student intern, he might have been in Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Bunch investment group like Bill and Carol Angle.   Bob also met Merrily Smith mid-way through their freshman year at a CalTech/Scripps College Mixer (CalTech accepted only men in their undergraduate program at that time.)

Upon graduating, Bob returned to the University of Nebraska Medical School. He spent some time learning how to fly and achieved his first solo flight. He also  spent those two years getting up the courage to ask Merrily to marry him.  Even if he had to give up his job and move to Oregon, he felt it was worth it not to have to shovel snow every winter.  However,  he did give up flying as Oregon had mountains.

Bob and Merrily were married, September 25, 1971, in Eugene, Oregon.  His first Oregon job was at U.S. Plywood, which became Champion International.  Using a mainframe computer with large tape drives and punch cards he helped track the board feet of plywood being loaded into railcars throughout Oregon.    Bob had stopped renewing his FCC license when he was in college, but he decided to renew it in 1975 to communicate more easily with his Dad.  At first his new call sign WB7BJM was at the General level, but soon he was able to upgrade to the Advanced level as W7LQS which he kept until it his death.

His first daughter, Marjene, was born in Eugene in 1976, but they soon moved to Tualatin as Bob had finally landed his dream job of working for Tektronix at the new Computer Graphics Campus in Wilsonville.  He worked on several projects including:   Tektronix 4052, 4041, TMC 510 and Unicorn. Bob was responsible for evaluating and selecting the display monitor for the Unicorn project. He finally chose Panasonic, which began a 17 year partnership between Tektronix and Panasonic/Matsushita.  Bob called himself the “6 million dollar man” because the annual volume was 10,000 at $600 per monitor.

During this time Bob had two articles published. The first was “KIM-1 Memory Expansion,” in Kilobaud Magazine, April 1977. The second was “Single Chip Video Controller,” in Byte Magazine, May 1979.

Their second daughter Robin was born in 1980, right after Mount Saint Helens erupted.  The Panasonic/Tektronix partnership was not going well. So Bob took a class in Japanese to improve communications.  He was also part of a small Tektronix team who went to Japan in the summer of 1982 as the guests of Panasonic for 10 days. This was his first and only international trip.

Also in the Summer of 1982 he took an interest in the City of Tualatin’s noise ordinance as he was concerned about a new industrial building proposed a few hundred feet from his home.    After attending a few City Council meetings, he filed to run for the Council that Fall.   He served on the Tualatin City Council two different terms from January 1983 –December 1986.  Then again from January 1989 to December 1992.

By  1984 Bob was growing restless  again and set up his own computer based consulting business.  Among his clients C-COR Labs, Tektronix,  and Merchaid.  When consulting jobs dried up he paused his business and went to work for a start-up called Microfield Graphics in  1985. He was designing computer interfaces for their new hardware  products including their SoftBoard a whiteboard scanned by lasers and linked to a computer. He was considered the resident PC hardware/software compatibility expert.

In 1987 he returned to his business as a consultant.  This time his clients were: In Focus Systems, Tektronix, Merchaid, PADS Software, OrCAD, ETEC, nCube, Intel, Lattice and Logic Modeling (now Synopsys). One of his consulting jobs got him listed as co-inventor of a patent, 5,101,197 “Electronic Transparency method and apparatus” for his work with InFocus Systems.   Bob had one more article published.  “Turbo C, standard DOS Tools assist in generating ROMable code,” in Personal Engineering & Instrumentation News, September 1989.

In 1994 he moved to OrCAD (now part of Cadence) doing computer aided design software and testing. He stayed in this position about 5 years.   By 1999 he moved on again, this time to Maxim Integrated Products.  They had 2 Campuses, one in Hillsboro and the other in Beaverton.    He worked in Hillsboro for a few years, but finally told them they needed to find him a project he could work on at the Beaverton location because he was tired of the commute.  Bob retired from Maxim in December 2013 and shortly after Maxim was acquired by Analog Devices.

Although he was an amateur musician playing oboe in community orchestras for several years, he decided he most enjoyed recording the music rather than playing it.   He opened his own business called On Scene Digital.   He was turned on to Mini-disc recording by his younger brother Dave Haas.    He especially enjoyed finding the best placement of microphones (some he made himself) to get the best blend of sounds.   He felt that his recordings would live on well beyond his life.  Indeed they do with his youtube channel :   https://www.youtube.com/@robeughaas    Some recordings from his favorite groups (Oregon Symphonic Band, Portland Wind Symphony, Oregon Sinfonietta and Big Horn Brass) are located there.   He also recorded other things like the swifts that roosted in his chimney each year and the hummingbirds that frequented his heated feeders.

In his retirement Bob got very involved with the VintageTek Museum.  He helped in inventorying and  repairing various Tek instruments and recorded several videos for the Museum’s webpage:  https://vintagetek.org/vintagetek-repair-videos/  He also played a major role in moving the Museum to the Tektronix Campus when their previous lease was up.    Over the years he served as Board Chair, Board President, equipment repairer, tour guide, product demonstrator, ebay store manager and  product shipper.

In September 2021, Bob and Merrily celebrated 50 years of marriage with friends and family at a small party.   They then left with 5 of their cousins for a tour of Oregon spending 2 nights each at Timberline Lodge (Mount Hood), Adobe Resort (Yachats on the Central Coast), and Crater Lake Lodge. Although not a fan of travel, Bob managed to take at least one trip a year.  In  2023 he took two trips, a driving trip to see some of Merrily’s cousins in California and an airplane trip to see his brother Dave in Omaha, Nebraska.  While in Omaha,  he spent time looking at family photos and exploring familiar places from his childhood.  He even had a Cheese Frenchee from Don & Millie’s.

His brain cancer diagnosis came suddenly and unexpectedly in June 2024.  When scans showed there was no chance of a cure, he went  immediately into Hospice at home.    About 6 weeks later on August 21, 2024, he passed peacefully while sleeping.

Bob leaves behind his wife Merrily, daughters  Marjene (and son-in-law Doug) Freiley and Robin Haas, grandchildren Jess Freiley, Alex Freiley, and Brooklyn Haas, all of Tualatin and his brother Dave Haas of Omaha, Nebraska.  The family acknowledges the care and support of Providence Hospice and his private caregivers Kirby and Katie who encouraged his sense of humor to the end.

A Memorial Concert arranged by Big Horn Brass is being planned for next Spring (March/early April).   Specific date and details to come.  Check the Big Horn Brass calendar   Memorial gifts may go to VintageTek Museum  or a charity of your choice.