About the Author: Otto Bischof is a mathematics teacher and physicist at Laney College in Oakland, Ca. He is interested both in the physics and technology of electric vehicles and their promise to man as a sustainable transportation technology in the present climate crisis. Otto Bischof has dual masters degrees in physics and mathematics.
He currently works for the Gateway Program at Laney College teaching high school students college math. He has taught math, physics, and astronomy courses at Peralta Community Colleges for 23 years. He and his co-author, Ted Tanaka, worked consistently and diligently over a span of 6 years to prepare the final manuscript. This book was a joint project between the two authors, who were colleagues and friends, and the illustrator, David Akawie, a friend of Mr. Bischof. Please visit the author's book website: electriccarfuture.com. Ted Tanaka was a car mechanic and mathematics teacher at Peralta Community Colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area. After receiving a masters in mathematics from Cal State East Bay, he taught for about 20 years at the College of Alameda. He, like Mr. Bischof, believed in the promise of electric vehicles to mankind. He and Mr. Bischof worked for six years, meeting on average for two hours twice per week, until this project was over. Unfortunately, shortly after the first printing, he died of a stroke. It is good that he had a chance to see the book in finished form before he died. He was proud of what he helped create. David Akawie studies traditional technical illustration books from the 1940's to the 70's, a time before elite planners transferred the sacred knowledge and skills from human illustrators to exorbitantly-priced and centrally-controlled computer software. Mr. Akawie also believes that if you have to rent your tools (i.e., illustration software) then you are a slave and not a skilled craftsman. Learning and practicing the laws of projection and having physical illustration tools/instruments are the keys to emancipation for this occupation. Technical illustration is a crucial component of a modern society. Without instructive and beautiful drawings, our jungle of machines becomes unmanageable, its denizens become savages, and the landscape becomes ugly. One has only to look at the modern cookie-cutter box-like apartment buildings foisted on us (designed with CAD software) to see the proof of this!