JOHN PIERCE: Two people vie for the title of father of the communications satellite: Arthur C. Clarke and John Pierce, who died on April 2nd 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's orbit. But it was John Pierce, also in his time a science-fiction writer, who put the theory into practice. He used the 100-foot 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 John Pierce's team to build Telstar, the first commercial spacecraft. Put together and operated by Bell, 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.
John 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 J.J. 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, on March 10th, 1910, John Pierce grew up in California, graduating from the California Institute of Technology in 1933 with a degree in aeronautics and electronics, and taking his Ph.D in 1936.
He went to work for Bell, 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 John Pierce electron gun, which produced high-density electron beams.
During the second World War, John Pierce and his colleagues, J.O. McNally and W.G. 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, he 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 10th), and was then the largest object to go into space.
John 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, John 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 John Pierce's ability with words, one of its creators, Walter Brattain, asked his advice for a name. John 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.
John 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 and a son and daughter from a previous marriage.
John Robinson Pierce: born 1910; died, April 2002