The family of Ed Martin has just notified us former employees. It will be in the Washington Post.
This is a huge part of my own existence. It really all began at Western Electric with John Robinson Pierce. I'll never forget in 1970 when I first started using the words "Earth Station". It was the Andover Antenna. I felt I was living in sci-fi. I said to myself, Moses climbed a mountain, I can climb higher to speak to "god". I thought "god" then but now I KNOW it's even a greater concept, YHWH. That was the beginning of the 21st Century for me. It's seamless as far as universal honesty is concerned. The triumph of the human mind for all the Planet Earth.
COMSAT History Project
John R. Pierce - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is really, it turns out, the story that Joe White told me about J.R.Pierce that wonderful long distance telephone conversation which I then verified. I also wrote to him about a decade later at Stanford to thank him. I told him I thought he might have been hurt by the feds taking over his project. He sent me a post card saying he was "hurt". But he admired the people who appreciated it all afterward.
I was taking music in retirement at that time and had discovered that he was involved in computerized music at that time that I wrote him and also taking electronic composition. I didn't mention that though.
Another funny coincidence at the time after the telephone call to Joe White. I don't recall who it was, at COMSAT, but someone whispered to me in the midst of my own work that the Library was getting rid of books and I might like to look them over because they were going to be trashed. I found the Monologue of J.R. Pierce about the first International hookup by satellite that he participated in (and other data that is in this article) and it was so exciting to read this. Under the auspices of AT&T at Western Electric. What an exciting book.
This is what I might label proto-international satellite communications history.
This is what I read in his published monologue. I've been wanting this to be available to every one.
http://historyday.crf-usa.org/2709/d...rce_memoir.pdf