John V. Harrington

Responsible for developing radar data processing and transmission equipment for the SAGE system, as well as the first telephone-line modems.

Education: BEE, Cooper Union Institute of Technology, 1940; MEE, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1948; ScD, MIT, 1957.

Honors and Awards: fellow, IEEE; fellow, AIAA; fellow, AAAS; Air Force Medal for exceptional civilian service; Gano Dunn Award of the Cooper Union.

Harrington served with the US Navy during World War II, and then worked with the US Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory as leader of the Data Transmission Group of Division 2, and was responsible for developing radar data-processing and transmission equipment for the SAGE system, as well as the first telephone-line modems. He served as head of Lincoln Laboratory's Radio Physics Division 3 from 1958 to 1963, when he joined MIT's faculty and became the first director of MIT's Center for Space Research. In 1973 he went to the Communications Satellite Corporation, where he is now senior vice president of research and development and director of COMSAT Laboratories.

UPDATES

Harrington died December 13, 2009 aged 90. (MRW, 2013)