John Pierce
His ideas launched the global communications age
Pearce Wright
The Guardian, Tuesday 9 April 2002 12.19 EDT
Two people vie for the title of father of the communications satellite:
Arthur C Clarke and John Pierce, who has died aged 92. Although best known for his science fiction, Clarke trained as an engineer, and, in a classic paper published in the magazine Wireless World in 1945, predicted that rockets would soon be powerful enough to carry radio relay stations into earth orbit.
But it was Pierce, also in his time a science-fiction writer, who put the theory into practice when he used the 100ft Echo 1 balloon satellite, launched by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa), as a radio-wave reflector to bounce telephone calls across the United States, from the Bell Telephone Laboratories, in New Jersey, to California.
Success with Echo provided the impetus for Pierce's team to build Telstar, the first commercial spacecraft. Put together and operated by Bell Labs, the satellite was designed to amplify signals from one earth station and relay them back to another; it had 600 one-way voice channels and a television channel. Launched in 1962, it was the first active communications satellite carrying phone traffic, and it relayed the first live television images between the US and Europe. The development marked the beginning of global space telecommunications.
Pierce believed in popularising science, and was a regular contributor to Scientific American. He was also a musician, recording some of the first synthesised music and writing under the pen-name JJ Coupling. A pioneer in digital music, he wrote The Science Of Musical Sound (1983, revised 1992) and, with Max V Mathews, co-edited Current Directions In Computer Music Research (1991), which remains in print.
He combined an explanation of the physics of musical instruments with a review of the principles of psycho-acoustics, and, in revisions of his books, discussed the impact of the latest advances in the technological revolution by charting the emergence of computers in music, compact discs and digital recording.
Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Pierce grew up in California, graduating from the California Institute of Technology in 1933 with a degree in aeronautics and electronics, and taking his PhD in 1936.
He went to work for Bell Labs, then the research arm of the AT & T telecommunications giant, where he proved to be a prolific inventor. He improved the travelling wave tube, a broad-band amplifier of microwaves, and designed a new electrostatically focused electron-multiplier tube, used as a sensitive radiation detector. His many patents included the Pierce electron gun, which produced high-density electron beams.
During the second world war, Pierce and his colleagues, JO McNally and WG Shepherd, developed the low voltage reflex klystron oscillator, a strategically vital piece of equipment that was widely used in US radar receivers. In 1952, he became director of electronics research at Bell.
Two years later, Pierce began his work on the theory of communications satellites - three years before the Russians put Sputnik 1 into orbit. He expanded on Clarke's idea, and suggested how a platform like Sputnik might be used as a relay device for communications. His first concrete proposals were published in the magazine Jet Propulsion in 1955, but the response was lukewarm.
Late in 1958, he learned that Nasa was experimenting with large balloon satellites for measuring air resistance, and, in collaboration with Rudolph Kompfner, submitted a proposal to give the project a different direction. The balloon itself was produced by a company operated by an enterprising American inventor, Gilmore T Scheldahl (who died aged 89 on March 10), and was then the largest object to go into space.
Pierce's plan was to bounce radio waves off its aluminium coating to reflect them back to earth. The first direct American coast-to-coast television transmissions were done in this way; and Echo 1 remained in orbit for eight years.
Despite this success, Pierce felt that his greatest contribution took place in 1948, while he was at Bell Labs. Colleagues had produced what became a Nobel- prizewinning invention, a solid-state device that amplified electrical signals; knowing of Pierce's ability with words, one of its creators, Walter Brattain, asked his advice for a name. Pierce suggested they call it a transistor - the name stuck, and transistors would be used to develop everything from small radios to computers, ushering in the digital age.
Pierce retired from Bell Labs in 1971, as director of research communications. He returned to the California Institute of Technology, and its jet propulsion laboratory, as an engineering professor, and, later, was a music professor at Stanford University.
He is survived by his wife, Brenda Woodard Pierce, and a son and daughter from a previous marriage.
John Robinson Pierce, electrical engineer and writer, born March 27 1910; died April 2 2002.