John Robinson Pierce

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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 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. At the request of another colleague, Walter Brattain, he also 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 had invented the traveling-wave tube;<ref>Kompfner, Rudolf, The Invention of the Traveling-Wave Tube, San Francisco Press, 1964.</ref> Pierce worked out the math for this broadband amplifier device, and wrote the book on it, after hiring Kompfner to Bell Labs.<ref>J. R. Pierce, Traveling-Wave Tubes, New York: van Nostrand Co., 1950</ref> 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, Sept. 21, 1963.

Pierce is widely credited for saying "Nature abhors a vacuum tube," but Pierce attributed that quip to Myron Glass [1]. Others<ref>Frederick Seitz, Norman G Einspruch, Electronic Genie: The Tangled History of Silicon, Univ. of Illinois, 1998</ref> say that quip was "commonly heard at the Bell Laboratories prior to the invention of the transistor."

Other famous Pierce quips are "Artificial intelligence is real stupidity," "I thought of it the first time I saw it," and "After growing wildly for years, the field of computing appears to be reaching its infancy."

He did significant research into satellites, including a leadership role in the development of the first commercial communications satellite, Telstar 1. In fact, although Arthur C. Clarke was the first to propose geostationary communications satellites, Pierce seems to have arrived at the idea independently and may have been the first to discuss unmanned communications satellites. See 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 these were 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 much 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."