Maybe I did downplay a bit. But the key takeway was, he was involved with all of that, not because he was assigned to it, but because it was interesting to him,

Maybe I did downplay a bit. But the key takeway was, he was involved with all of that, not because he was assigned to it, but because it was interesting to him, and he wanted to do something with it. His work with digital circuit design arose out of him playing with making maze solving robots. He, of all people, clearly embodied the idea of, "Get a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life." Of course, it doesn't help that he had an extremely tolerant employer, one who realized that letting him do things like play with the robots, would lead to such breakthroughs.