Of Miles and Oscillators: Reflections on Miles A. Copeland

When I started writing this article, I realized that I have never watched Miles Copeland give a lecture to a class or a technical presentation at a conference. Also, I never experienced Miles as a graduate student supervisor or as a professor. On the contrary, this article is about the Miles I know best?Miles the consultant, the engineer, the friend for over 21 years. During most of those years, especially in his retirement, Miles has been meticulously investigating the large signal and phase noise operation and design of the Colpitts oscillator whose differential IC version he introduced for the first time with his graduate student Leonard Dauphinee at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in 1997 [1]. Copeland and Colpitts are a perfect fit. Few people are aware, and I am sure that not even Miles knew at the time, that although universally known as an American scientist and engineer, Edwin Colpitts was born, raised, educated, and buried in New Brunswick, Canada.