Duncan Miller

Duncan Miller was absolutely instrumental in Dendritics from the very beginning, through to the very end. I met Duncan in 1983. At the time he was a metalsmith and gearhead in general, and his practical model making skills complemented my much more theoretical bent. Initially we were up on the 5th floor in the Watch Building, sharing a space with two other jewelers (Charlie Crowlie and Steve Hyer) which we called Top Dog Studios (named after Charlie's dog Allie, who was not top dog material).

Duncan and I (and our growing collection of Stuff) soon outgrew the shared space (and the screeching of Charlie's lathe), and in 1984 we moved to a larger space (1700 ft²) in the same extended building, our main first floor location to this day. He was responsible for many of the early Gemscale 50 housing models as well as a copious amount of tooling and jigs used in prototype development of Gemscale parts. Most of the robot custom tooling was his handiwork.

Once we got into production, Duncan switched back to jewelry-making, but he returned for the final research work which produced functional sensors for the Millicarat and D500.

Duncan with the six-shooters

Two very early Polaroids of JB and Duncan

Fred - Duncan - Leonid

Duncan's father Fred Miller joined us for a couple of years in production, and his brother Alexis helped out one summer as well.

This cutoff saw which we found in an auction for virtually free gave us endless hours of amusement. Duncan would be using it to (slowly) saw through a steel bar of some sort, and (being on wheels) it would dance its way around the lab, occasionally strangling itself and/or pulling out its own plug. Hilarious. But it worked well and patiently.