John Robinson Pierce
Encyclopedia : J : JO : JOH : John Robinson Pierce
John Robinson Pierce (March 27, 1910 – April 2, 2002), was an American engineer and author. He worked extensively in the fields of radio communication, computer music, and science fiction. Born in Iowa, he earned his Ph.D. from Caltech, and died in California.
He wrote on electronics and information theory, and developed jointly the concept of Pulse code modulation (PCM) with his Bell Labs colleagues Barney Oliver and Claude Shannon. At the request of another colleague, Walter Brattain, he also coined the term transistor.
Pierce's early work at Bell Labs was on vacuum tubes of all sorts. During World War II he discovered the work of Rudolf Kompfner in a British radar lab, where he had invented the traveling-wave tube; Pierce worked out the math for this broadband amplifier device, and wrote the book on it, after hiring Kompfner to Bell Labs. He later recounted that "Rudy Kompfner invented the traveling-wave tube, but I discovered it." He is also widely credited for saying "Nature abhors a vacuum tube," but Pierce attributed that quip to Myron Glass [link]. More famous Pierce quips are "Artificial intelligence is real stupidity," and "I thought of it the first time I saw it."
He did significant research into satellites, including a leadership role in the development of the first commercial communications satellite, Telstar 1. In fact, although Arthur C. Clarke was the first to propose geostationary communications satellites, Pierce seems to have arrived at the idea independently and may have been the first to discuss unmanned communications satellites. See [ECHO - America's First Communications Satellite] (reprinted from SMEC Vintage Electrics Volume 2 #1) for some details on his original contributions.
He was also prominent in the research of computer music, as Visiting Professor of Music, Emeritus at Stanford's CCRMA (along with John Chowning and Max Mathews).
Besides many technical books, Pierce wrote much science fiction under the pseudonym J.J. Coupling. He seems to have been a firm believer in the connection between literary imagination and practical innovation. John Pierce also had an early interest in gliding and assist in the development of the Long Beach Glider Club in Los Angeles, California, one of the earliest glider clubs in the United States.
In 1963, Pierce received the IEEE Edison Medal for "his pioneer work and leadership in satellite communications and for his stimulus and contributions to electron optics, travelling wave tube theory and the control of noise in electron streams." In 1975, he received the IEEE Medal of Honor for "his pioneering concrete proposals and the realization of satellite communication experiments, and for contributions in theory and design of traveling wave tubes and in electron beam optics essential to this success."
External link
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.