Everything about John Robinson Pierce totally explained
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
Sunnyvale, 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. He supervised the Bell Labs team which invented the transistor, and at the request of one of them,
Walter Brattain, 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'd invented the
traveling-wave tube; Pierce worked out the math for this broadband amplifier device, and wrote a book about it, after hiring Kompfner for Bell Labs. He later recounted that "Rudy Kompfner invented the traveling-wave tube, but I discovered it." According to Kompfner's book, the statement "Rudi invented the traveling-wave tube, and John discovered it" was due to Dr. Eugene G. Fubini, quoted in
The New Yorker "Profile" on Pierce,
September 21,
1963.
Pierce is widely credited for saying "Nature abhors a vacuum tube", but Pierce attributed that quip to Myron Glass
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).
Many of Pierce's technical books were written at a level intended to introduce a semi-technical audience to modern technical topics. Among them are
Electrons, Waves, and Messages;
An Introduction to Information Theory: Symbols, Signals, and Noise;
Waves and Ear;
Man's World of Sound; and
Quantum Electronics.
Besides his technical books, Pierce wrote
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."
Further Information
Get more info on 'John Robinson Pierce'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://john_robinson_pierce.totallyexplained.com">John Robinson Pierce Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
