FRANCE
RODE
1934-2017
SILICON VALLEY PIONEER
Rode working at Hewlett-Packard . Private Archives .
Electrical engineer and inventor , entrepreneur , hobby woodworker , and avid tennis player .
Born on 20 November 1934 into a farming family in the small village of Nožice about fourteen kilometers from the country ’ s capital , Rode graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in Ljubljana and continued his studies in the U . S ., drawn there by his secondary school sweetheart Mija , who was living with her family in Chicago and would later become his wife . In 1962 , he was awarded a master ’ s degree from Northwestern University in Illinois , whereupon he and his wife moved to Palo Alto , California , where he worked for Hewlett-Packard for almost twenty years . In 1979 , he started the company Sielox with a partner , and in 1990 took a position at a satellite navigation company in Sunnyvale , CA . Nine years later he joined two colleagues in founding eRide Inc . He retired in 2008 and lived in California until his death on 7 June 2017 .
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