IP: Comm pioneer John Pierce dies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

I had the privilege of knowing John  djf

Communications Pioneer Pierce Dies

By MATTHEW FORDAHL
AP Technology Writer

April 5, 2002, 7:11 PM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- John Robinson Pierce, an electrical engineer who
pioneered satellite communications and coined the word "transistor," has
died. He was 92. 
Pierce, who died Tuesday in Sunnyvale, also was a musician and science
fiction writer. He recorded some of the first synthesized music and wrote
under the pen name J.J. Coupling.
But he once said his greatest contribution took place in 1948 while he
worked at Bell Laboratories, then the research arm of AT&T. Colleagues had
invented a solid state device that amplified electrical signals.
One of the inventors, Walter Brattain, knew of Pierce's ability with words
and asked for advice for a name. He suggested it be called a transistor.
"It was supposed to be the dual of the vacuum tube," he said in a PBS
interview for the program "Transitorized!" "The vacuum tube had
transconductance, so the transistor would have 'transresistance.'
"And the name should fit in with the names of other devices, such as
varistor and thermistor," he said. "And ... I suggested the name
'transistor.'" 

The name stuck and transistors would be used to develop everything from
small radios to computers, ushering in the digital age.
In 1954, Pierce said satellite communication would be possible by bouncing
signals off an orbiting object, an idea first proposed by science fiction
author Arthur C. Clarke in 1945.

Pierce's ideas were proven in 1960 with the launch of Echo, a giant balloon
that bounced phone calls across the country from the Bell Labs facility in
Crawford Hill, N.J.

In 1962, he played a key role in the development and launch of Telstar, the
first active communications satellite. In addition to carrying phone
traffic, it relayed the first live television images between the United
States and Europe. 

Pierce won one of engineering's top awards, the Draper Prize, with fellow
satellite pioneer Harold Rosen in 1995.

Pierce retired from Bell Labs in 1971 as director of research in
communications. He returned to his alma mater, the California Institute of
Technology and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as an engineering professor.
Later, he was a music professor at Stanford University and wrote books on
theories of music and sound.

He is survived by his wife, Brenda Woodard Pierce, as well as a son and
daughter from a previous marriage.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-obit-pierce0406apr05.sto
ry?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnationworld%2Dheadlines

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