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An engineer with Bell Labs, Pierce was there when a new electronic switch was invented, and he got to name the thing. The year: 1948. He decided to call it a "transistor". He said later that was "the most significant thing that ever happened to me," but that's far from the largest impact he had on the world. He read and wrote (using the pen name J.J. Coupling) science fiction, and was so inspired by an Arthur C. Clarke story about geosynchronous communications satellites that he went on to create the Telstar satellite system. Clarke said that Pierce "designed, developed, and produced it, making real that which I and others thought only to write and dream about." In 1962, Pierce helped use Telstar I for the first live international TV broadcast. He retired from Bell in 1971, and later went on to teach at Stanford University. Pierce died in California on April 2 at age 92.
From This is True for 31 March 2002
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