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*************************************************** John Pierce (1910-2002) *************************************************** The New York Times reports that John Robinson Pierce, electical enginer and author, died on Tuesday, April 2, 2002. Pierce was born in Iowa on March 27, 1910. After finishing his graduate degree at Caltech, he began working at Bell Labs in 1937. While working at Bell Laboratories, he coined the work "transistor" while heading the team that invented it. Because of his work designing and launching Telstar 1, Arthur C. Clarke called Pierce one of the fathers of the communication satellite. Part of his early inspiration came from science fiction stories, particularly the works of H. G. Wells, who Pierce met in 1944. From 1943 through 1971 Pierce published at least 40 essays, poems and SF short stories. Most using the pseudonyms J. J. Coupling and John Roberts. Posted April 5, 2002 |