Random electronics history: a common logic primitive in electronics is the Schmitt trigger, a comparator with hysteresis: rather than switch between logic low/high at the same threshold in both directions, the threshold for low-to-high transition is higher than that of the high-to-low transition. This is nice for cleaning up noisy inputs, among other things.

Why's it called a Schmitt trigger though?

Predictably, it was invented by grad student Otto Schmitt in 1934, while he was studying the electrical properties of squid nerves. He published it in his PhD dissertation as a "thermionic trigger", which let's be honest is a much cooler name and sounds like a component of a doomsday device.

He also made significant contributions to the invention of the differential amplifier, again as part of studying neurobiology.

It's a nice sort of immortality, to give your name to a fundamental and ubiquitous piece of circuitry. That you invented while pursuing a completely unrelated field.

(also I'm going to assume that "invented by" is likely an oversimplification, and that many of these ideas were in the zeitgeist of the time, but history likes simple stories where ideas spring fully formed in the mind of a single genius)

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