Jolitz Heritage

Jolitz Heritage Site - Chronicling the Legacies of the Jolitz Family of Silicon Valley, including the accomplishments of William Jolitz, Lynne Jolitz, Rebecca Jolitz, Ben Jolitz, and William Leonard Jolitz.

William Jolitz - Early Years

William Frederick (Bill) Jolitz was born in Michigan. He grew up in the midwest, east, and then finally western United States, as the family followed the aerospace business around the country. William Jolitz attended Lynbrook High School in San Jose, California, and worked at NASA Ames Research Center while a high school and college student. While attending the University of California, Berkeley he was part of the Homebrew Computer Club .

He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Computer Science and has been a member of the Berkeley Engineering Society.

Lynne Jolitz - Early Years

Lynne Greer Jolitz , formerly Lynne Greer Messner, was born in Fremont, California. Lynne received a Bloss Scholarship for outstanding achievement to attend Berkeley upon graduation from Merced High School.

Lynne remembers one of her fond memories of high school - appearing in the local high school musical:

I was in "Oklahoma" in high school. I was the Gypsy Fortuneteller - a really really blond gypsy fortuneteller, mind you. They had to use about ten layers of base and I still looked very very pale. I was supposed to be married to the sheriff in the town, so I guess I didn't have to worry about nonconformist issues like reading tarot cards. I had one line, "And to your house, a dark club man." OK, that doesn't really mean anything, does it, but that was the line.

I was in most every scene, though, because I was one of their strongest singers, but I got so bruised up getting up and down dancing to the theme song that I bought a pair of basketball knee pads and wore them under my skirt. After that, several people asked me how I could be so "bouncy" and "smiling" all the time. I kept the knee pads a greenroom secret.

Musicals are a great way to lose weight, let me tell you. I lost about 10 pounds during rehearsals because the dance routines were so rigorous, so my low-cut dress got lower and lower. So the director moved me to the front of the stage for the run of the play.

A student of natural history and anthropology, Lynne made a shift into "hard science" and following high school went to the University of California at Berkeley in the Physics department. Surrounded by Nobel prize winners, Lynne Jolitz graduated from Berkeley and applied her skills in business and technology pursuits, eventually finding a home in understanding how technology and people fit together.

William & Lynne's Excellent Operating System - 386BSD

William and Lynne Jolitz were inspired to work on 386BSD by the experience with Symmetric Computer Systems (see "William Jolitz and Symmetric Computer Systems") and the uses of BSD on a ubiquitous platform it inspired. BSD needed to jump to the 386. According to the website (see the_past() - name_origin):

Origin of the 386BSD name was with the first 16Mhz release by Intel, starting the architecture family. Most software vendors call all in this family, which includes strangely enough the AMD 64-bit version, the "386" architecture.
* There has only been one architecture, no matter how refined or redefined by others to suit peculiar needs.
* 386BSD is BSD on the 386.

In looking for the good, the simplest spanning name to grab mindshare was chosen. Just as Windows and UNIX have been named the same all along, saw no need in any different name. Others, in attempting to look for the bad, chose to narrowly view the name as applying to a specific chip to force an unearned claim of obsolescence. Inside all of them, the machine dependant names are all "386".

Benjamin Jolitz - Tech Stooge

Benjamin Torsten Jolitz is into robotics, science fiction, computers, and telescopes. Ben rebuilt a 30 year old telescope and hand-ground mirror from his Grandpa (see "Where Ben's Scope came from ... ") and used it to win a second place in earth / space science at the 2004 Synopsys science fair with a study of collimation techniques (see "Benjamin Jolitz Wins Science Fair Award "). Ben likes hanging around the SJAA ATM guys talking shop and grinding his own mirror. Ben also likes showing off his scope at star parties - especially to pretty girls who like science (see "Tech Trek 2003 Star Party").

Ben is an accomplished Berkeley Unix 386BSD system administrator, and also handles video production technical and support issues. Ben collaborates on short subject films and participates in film festivals - his latest work "Bots" (see "Jolitz Family Video - Bots" for web video and "Bots DVD by Benjamin Jolitz and Rebecca Jolitz" for a DVD) is a comedic exploration of the roles of robots in popular films. Ben says BSD is technically better than Linux, but thinks conflicting shared libraries, incompatible threading, and inconsistent program development makes BSD "run like crap". He thinks the Linux community is much more together because the BSD side is "too old, full of it, and doesn't want to learn python".

Rebecca Jolitz - Scope Gal

Rebecca Dawn Jolitz loves science fiction, filmmaking, and astronomy. At star parties for the public, Rebecca has showed people the planets and stars (her favorite double is Alberio, the blue and gold "Cal star") with her Celestron C-5 telescope. Rebecca has even taken her telescope to Stanford Tech Trek (see "Rebecca Jolitz Demos Telescope Techniques at Stanford Tech Trek") to demonstrate how SCT telescopes work, even though she wants to major in astrophysics at Cal. She loves going to Cal Day every year, especially to see Professor Shugart do his "Fun with Physics" lecture.

Rebecca is an accomplished video editor and producer, and has created movies for film festivals (see "Rebecca Jolitz Debuts Movie in Kids Film Fest"). She currently works on a research project on video serving for educational use using a modern version of Berkeley Unix 386BSD (Jolix). Rebecca likes needlework, playing the guitar, and collecting Breyer horses.

Items Published, Talks, Comments, Buzz, ...

Archive of published works of various kinds by Jolitz. An essential part of the Jolitz Heritage has been widespread publication, commentary, and opinion. Literally hundreds of these items that are slowly being assembled into this site. Check back soon both for missing older items and new ones as well!

William Leonard Jolitz

William Leonard (Bill) Jolitz, a native of Duluth Minnesota, made the transition from a boy from the "wrong side of the track" to esteemed chemical engineer, inventor, and aerospace engineer in Silicon Valley. Like so many other men of the time, he was recruited and served in the European theater of World War II, most notably at the Battle of the Bulge. After returning from the war and completing his engineering studies at the University of Minnesota, he wisely convinced Norma I. Westman, a Duluth Swedish beauty, to marry him. They had four children (Brenda, Marsha (dec.), William Frederick, and Kimberly), and remained happily married until his death in 1994.

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