George Goble died recently – known for first dual-CPU-Unix and fast BBQ lighting
by finaard on 4/2/2026, 6:21:08 PM
https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/wlfi/name/george-goble-obituary?id=61144779
Comments
by: finaard
His obituary or wikipedia page are well worth a read for what he was involved in - though he probably is best known for lighting a BBQ in under 5 seconds by use of liquid oxygen, and getting into trouble with the local firedepartment for that.<p>He used to have that video on his website - which I've discovered via a Usenet discussion not too long after it happened. It was one of the first videos I've downloaded via a web browser, and almost certainly the first video made with a digital camera I've ever seen.
4/2/2026, 6:21:08 PM
by: nullbyte808
"A striking example of his forward-thinking occurred years ago on a beach in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, where George-sitting on the sand with a laptop connected via his cell phone-became one of the first people to read email over a mobile connection to a computer at Purdue. As a friend noted, "This was a real bit of history… At the time Apple had a whole engineering team trying to do this and here's George on the beach making it happen.""<p>Amazing. RIP.
4/2/2026, 7:58:32 PM
by: tantalor
Lighting a charcoal grill with liquid oxygen: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjPxDOEdsX8</a>
4/2/2026, 6:34:38 PM
by: sponaugle
Sad to hear! I worked for George for all of my undergraduate time at Purdue. He was an amazing boss with such a passion for all things unix. For a while he had the UNIX license plate on his minivan.
4/2/2026, 6:43:46 PM
by: thesuperbigfrog
George's personal home page (seems to be a mirror: <a href="https://www.bkinzel.de/misc/ghg/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.bkinzel.de/misc/ghg/index.html</a>) with the grill lighting video and the TWINKIES experiments (original site gone, but archived: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060101093459/http://www.twinkiesproject.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20060101093459/http://www.twinki...</a>) were amazing web sites in the late 90s.
4/2/2026, 7:35:08 PM
by: runjake
For you youngsters: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Goble</a>
4/2/2026, 7:42:37 PM
by: davidbjaffe
When I was in junior high school and high school, I would hang out at the Purdue University chess club. He was a regular, prone to laughter, a funny guy. We would play double speed chess (which we called "p'dorky") and other silliness. I had no idea he went on to do the cool things that he did.
4/2/2026, 8:18:23 PM
by: SirFatty
He was great in "The Birds and the Bees".
4/2/2026, 6:47:20 PM