Remembering Dr. Ben Dawson

I first met Dr. Ben Dawson on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1985. He took me into a room where there was one of the latest computers from Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), a company fondly remembered by all those in "high-technology." It was a VAX 11/730, a bit slice implementation of the VAX architecture that ran at the incredible speed of 3.7MHz.

Dr. Dawson took me to the machine and showed me how he had implemented some space invariant filters on images that he had scanned. I was really impressed. It only took a few minutes to perform a Sobel filter on a large image! After meeting him, I always called him "Professor."

He was so talented he found later positions as Director of Research and Development at Imaging Technology and then as Director of Strategic Development at DALSA. I will always remember his gentle demeanor and willingness to talk to others less-proficient in developing image processing and machine vision software. Ben was a great teacher, family man and friend.

I will miss him.

I would like to convey my condolences to his family on behalf of myself and the staff of Vision Systems Design magazine.

Andrew Wilson
June 5, 2017