Willem Adriaan de Kock
Lovingly known as “Wim”
23 May 1935 — 9 March 2021 · aged 85
Philips NatLab engineer, Indo-Dutch camp survivor and lifelong PSV season-ticket holder
Eindhoven, Netherlands Born in Bandung, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) Resting at Ashes scattered on the heath near EindhovenAbout Willem
At ten, in the weeks after the liberation of a Japanese internment camp near Bandung, Wim de Kock built a radio from a razor blade, a pencil lead and a coil of copper wire, and the barracks listened to the outside world for the first time in three years. He used to say his career began there and everything after was just better equipment.
He was born in Bandung in 1935, the son of a plantation chemist, and spent the war years behind wire with his mother and sister. The violent months that followed liberation were no easier, and in 1950 the family sailed to the Netherlands on a ship full of people who had never seen snow. They reached Rotterdam in February in borrowed coats. 'The cold,' Wim said, 'was the first honest thing anyone had told us.' He worked hard, won a place at TU Delft in 1954 and graduated as an electrical engineer in 1960.
He joined the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium in Eindhoven the same year and stayed thirty-eight years. His most important work, he said, was never in the newspapers: he was one of the forty engineers who taught the laser pickup of the compact disc to follow a track narrower than a human hair. Nobody remembers their names, and every CD in the world carries their work. In retirement he liked to point out that this was exactly how engineering should be.
He married Truus Smits in 1962 and they raised Annelies and Rob in a house in Eindhoven where Sunday meant rijsttafel, with sambal made to a recipe from a grandmother in Bandung, and where the garden shed was always full of half-built things. He held a PSV season ticket for sixty years, regarding the club, which Philips had founded, as a works outing, and he cycled everywhere until he was eighty-four.
In 2012 he took Annelies back to Bandung to find the house he had left as a boy. He found it, and a woman at the gate invited them in for tea and showed him a crack in the wall that he remembered making. Wim died peacefully at home on 9 March 2021. He leaves Truus, Annelies, Rob and five grandchildren.
“The cold was the first honest thing anyone had told us.”
- Faith
- Protestant
- Place of birth
- Bandung, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia)
- Resting place
- Ashes scattered on the heath near Eindhoven
- Passed away
- 9 March 2021, Eindhoven
Funeral Service and cremation
Tuesday, 16 March 2021 at 10:00 UTC
Add to calendarLife journey
Interned as a child in Japanese camps
Japanese internment camps, West Java1942 – 1945 · Bandung
Survived the war years with his mother and sister.
Repatriated to the Netherlands
1950 · Rotterdam
Arrived in February in a borrowed coat.
Research engineer
Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium (NatLab)1960 – 1998 · Eindhoven
Worked on laser pickup systems for the compact disc.
Married Truus Smits
1962 · Eindhoven
A marriage of fifty-eight years.
Chairman, Indo-Dutch heritage circle
Indische Kring Eindhoven1999 – 2019 · Eindhoven
Collected the recipes, songs and memories of the Indo-Dutch community.
Philips Long Service Medal
Philips1998 · Eindhoven
Presented on his retirement after thirty-eight years.
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Family & connections
Also remembered on Evermore
Willem is survived by
- Truus de Kock-Smits· Spouse
- Annelies de Kock· Daughter
- Rob de Kock· Son
- 5 grandchildren· Grandchildren
Tributes & memories
6 people have shared a memory of Willem.
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Sign in to write a tribute- DT
Former Sony engineer, Tokyo
In 1981 I was a young engineer sent to Eindhoven to work on the compact disc. Wim was kind from the first day. Years later, in a bar in Tokyo, he told me quietly where he had spent his childhood, and then said, 'And yet here we are.' It was the greatest kindness anyone has shown me.
- SH
Indische Kring Eindhoven
He chaired our circle for twenty years and made us write down every recipe, every song and every memory before it disappeared. His book of Indo-Dutch recipes is in two hundred kitchens. Every rijsttafel in Eindhoven is a little bit his.
- RW
Friend from childhood in Bandung
We met at nine in the camp; he built the radio and I kept watch. Seventy years on we still spoke every Sunday in the same mixture of Dutch and Malay we spoke as children. 'Tabik, Wim,' I said on our last call. 'Tabik, Ratna,' he said.
- JW
PSV season-ticket neighbour
Sixty years in the same seat at the Philips Stadion, row fourteen, right beside mine. He never shouted. When PSV lost, he said, 'The lens is out of focus.' When they won, he stood and applauded with both hands above his head. I will keep his seat empty.
- MB
Neighbour in Eindhoven for forty years
Wim fixed our radio, our bicycle and, once, our marriage, by suggesting we listen to each other as carefully as he listened to a faint signal. We did. Thirty years later we are still married. He charged us one plate of pancakes.
- PD
Colleague at Philips NatLab, 1962 to 1998
Wim once spent three weeks trying to make a lens do something it did not want to do, and when it finally behaved he said, 'Good. Now we know it was not stupid, just shy.' He treated every component with courtesy. Perhaps that is why his designs lasted.
