Chartroom Chatter

Voyaging power innovator Dave Smead remembered.

- Casey Conley

I RECENTLY HEARD FROM RUTH ISHIHARA THAT HER BELOVED partner of 33 years, Dave Smead, died last April. Ruth Ishihara? Dave Smead? These are names that will be unfamiliar to most readers, and yet these two have played a central and critical role in moving onboard lifestyles from the days of camping out with kerosene lanterns and warm beer to our current enjoyment of the comforts of home.

Dave was a brilliant electronics engineer and software developer with a 50-year history of innovation. In the early 1960s, he built the world’s first portable digital voltmeter for the U.S. Air Force. Throughout the 1970s he was a pioneer in the development of early computers and integrated circuits. In the 1980s, he developed fiber optic and monitoring networks for uranium enrichment, followed by satellite communications networks for NASA.