Stanfords CCRMA
Who did John R. Pierce work for from 1980 to 1981?
John R . Pierce John Robinson Pierce ( March 27 , 1910 – April 2 , 2002 ) , was an American engineer and author . He worked extensively in the fields of radio communication , microwave technology , computer music , psychoacoustics , and science fiction . As a sideline to his professional career he wrote science fiction for many years under various names : John Pierce , John R . Pierce , and J . J . Coupling . Born in Des Moines , Iowa , he earned his PhD from Caltech , and died in Sunnyvale , California , from complications of Parkinsons Disease . At Bell Labs . Pierce 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 built the first transistor , and at the request of one of them , Walter Brattain , coined the term transistor ; he recalled : Pierces 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 Kompfner had 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 Kompfners 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 . Others say that quip was commonly heard at the Bell Laboratories prior to the invention of the transistor . Other famous Pierce quips are Funding 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 . The National Inventors Hall of Fame has honored Bernard M . Oliver and Claude Shannon as the inventors of PCM , as described in Communication System Employing Pulse Code Modulation , filed in 1946 and 1952 , granted in 1956 . Another patent by the same title was filed by John Pierce in 1945 , and issued in 1948 : . The three of them published The Philosophy of PCM in 1948 . Pierce did significant research into satellites , including an important leadership role ( as executive director of Bells Research-Communications Principles Division ) 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 . Clarke himself characterized Pierce as one of the two fathers of the communications satellite ( along with Harold Rosen ) . See ECHO – Americas First Communications Satellite ( reprinted from SMEC Vintage Electrics Volume 2 #1 ) for some details on his original contributions . Pierce led the Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee that produced the ALPAC report , which had the effect of curtailing most funding for work on machine translation in the late 1960s and early 1970s . Life after Bell Labs . After leaving Bell Laboratories , he joined Caltech as a professor of electrical engineering in 1971 . Shortly thereafter , he also took the position of Chief Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory . In 1980 he retired from Caltech and moved to his final position at Stanfords CCRMA . Here he was prominent in the research of computer music , as a Visiting Professor of Music , Emeritus ( along with John Chowning and Max Mathews ) . It was at Stanford that he became an independent co-discoverer of the non-octave musical scale that he later named the Bohlen–Pierce scale . Many of Pierces 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 ; Mans World of Sound ; Quantum Electronics ; and Signals : The Science of Telecommunication . In 1960 , Pierce was awarded the Stuart Ballantine Medal . In 1962 , Pierce received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement . 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 . In 1985 , he was one of the first two recipients of the Japan Prize for outstanding achievement in the field of electronics and communications technologies . Personal life . Besides his technical books , Pierce wrote science fiction under the pseudonym J.J . Coupling , which refers to the total angular momenta of individual particles . John Pierce also had an early interest in gliding and assisted in the development of the Long Beach Glider Club in Los Angeles , one of the earliest glider clubs in the United States . According to Richard Hamming you couldnt talk to John Pierce without being stimulated very quickly . Pierce had been a resident of Berkeley Heights , New Jersey , Pasadena , California , and later of Palo Alto , California . In his later years , as a Visiting Professor at Stanford Universitys Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics , he and his wife Brenda were known for holding dinner parties in their Palo Alto home , in which they would invite an eclectic mix of guests and lead lively discussions on topics ranging from space exploration to politics , health care , and 20th-century music . One such dinner party was reported in This Is Your Brain On Music , written by Pierces former student Daniel Levitin . The papers of John R . Pierce are at the Huntington Library in San Marino , California . At his death Pierce was survived by his wife Brenda ; a son , science fiction editor John Jeremy Pierce ; and a daughter , Elizabeth Anne Pierce .