Biographical Memoirs Volume 85 (2004) / Chapter Skim
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C. Chapin Cutler
C. Chapin Cutler
Pages 62-85
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From page 63... ...
He led a successful career of research in communication science for more than four decades. His inventions in radio, radar, signal coding, imaging, and satellite communications earned him more than 80 patents, numerous awards, and a worldwide reputation.
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From page 64... ...
Reilly gave him a copy of Radio Craft magazine containing an article, "The Junk Box Radio." Cutler later wrote in his journal, "This, I believe to be the most crucial event of my life." "That's how I started," he said, "I built the junk box radio receiver, using parts from a defunct broadcast set. I screwed the parts onto a pine board and used a single old vacuum tube.
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From page 65... ...
He did not win, but he was cited as the runner-up; and, with that in his record, he later received special attention at WPI from professors and employers. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, established in 1865, was the third engineering school in the United States, after Rensselaer in 1824 and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1861.
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From page 66... ...
The Worcester Tech Wireless Association, later named the WPI Radio Club, is reputed to be the oldest college radio station in the United States, but it was not successful when it first went on the air. Cutler joined the club soon after he became a student at WPI.
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From page 67... ...
In the meantime the school provided a pair of highpower (100 W) transmitter tubes, which generated a great deal of enthusiasm in the electrical engineering department.
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From page 68... ...
On entering Waterford, Maine, on the dirt road from Bridgeton, Cutler observed two very attractive girls on the street in bathing suits, buying fish from the traveling fishmonger. Later in the evening Cutler was invited to a party of young people at the Wilkins Community House, where he met the girls he had encountered earlier.
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From page 69... ...
There were no openings in the research departments in New York City, but Cutler was offered a position at a branch laboratory in Deal, New Jersey. At Deal, research and development was centered on shortwave radio, high-power transmitter tubes, new antenna designs, and ionospheric radio propagation.
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From page 70... ...
There was a tennis court, a picnic area, and a softball field in a grove of giant maple trees. The site was on prime fallow, roughly mowed farmland, with Whale Pond brook running though the center.
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From page 71... ...
Cutler successfully built waveguide elbows, rotating joints, and connectors. At that time one had to build one's own testing gear, including power supplies.
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From page 72... ...
McRae built the assembly according to their design and mounted one antenna on the second floor of the main building and another in a remote location. They were able to measure the directivity pattern and field intensity versus elevation angle and azimuth.
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From page 73... ...
In the meantime he invented a variety of antenna feeds, including the corrugated waveguide, which years later was used in microwave devices. When radar was unveiled to the public in 1945, an artist's rendition of the Cutler feed appeared in the August 20 issue of Time magazine.
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From page 74... ...
By then Cutler was promoted to department head reporting to Pierce, who had been newly promoted to director. With his analysis Pierce deduced that noise on the electron beam due to thermal emission of electrons should appear as waves on the beam.
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From page 75... ...
Because each picture amplitude sample was very much like the preceding one, Cutler thought that if only the difference in signal amplitudes were coded, it would require only a fraction of eight bits per sample; thus, the saving would be substantial. Cutler concluded further that if one quantized the difference between quantized signals, some of the quantizing error would be compensated and one would get a more accurate representation.
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From page 76... ...
Cutler wrote a technical memorandum, "A Space Vehicle Communication System." With Pierce's approval Cutler organized an ad hoc committee to study the components that would be necessary for a long-life radio repeater in an orbiting satellite. They had frequent meetings that paved the way for the Telstar experiment, which was soon followed by Project Echo.
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From page 77... ...
Shortly after that, our man in the tracking telescope van beside the Control room excitedly yelped that he saw the balloon not far off track and began to apply directional offsets to bring us in. I checked with Goldstone to see if they were ready to receive from us at 960 MHz.
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From page 78... ...
The federal government created a semipublic corporation, the Communications Satellite Corporation, as the sole owner of this business. Cutler gloried in physical activity, was a Boy Scout leader, and loved taking his children on adventures, teaching them survival skills and the virtues of the compass.
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From page 79... ...
In 1961 Quate left Sandia to join the faculty at Stanford University as a professor of applied physics and electrical engineering. In 1975, while Quate and his students were working on the acoustic microscope, he invited Cutler to spend time at Stanford.
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From page 80... ...
C Chapin Cutler passed away on December 1, 2002, in North Reading, Massachusetts, at an age approaching 88.
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From page 81... ...
It was a difficult transition for us, from the carefree university environment to the reality of a corporate life in a country that was still foreign to us. Cutler and Virginia were mentors to our family, providing warm, parenthood care.
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From page 82... ...
Professor Bruce Wooley made Cutler's files at Stanford University available. Gary Boyd and Susan Feyerabend helped to locate Cutler's old papers left in the lab.
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From page 83... ...
:299-306. 1956 Nature of power saturation in traveling wave tubes.
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From page 84... ...
Dark-field and stereo viewing with acoustic microscope.
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