On Thursday, August 11, 2016 at 3:09:47 PM UTC+12, Fred J. McCall wrote:
William Mook wrote:


My friend Carl Sagan ...


Carl Sagan couldn't have picked you out of a lineup.

I met Sagan following the 20th anniversary of Project Ozma in 1980 and later at the switch on ceremony of Project BETA at Harvard university and remained in touch thereafter.

At the time, I worked at the Ohio State University as a research associate in the Astronomy department, and ran a computer company. I worked first with Walter Mitchell reducing data he collected on Skylab's solar telescope, identifying spectra on the sun . Then with John Kraus reducing data he collected with 'Big Ear'.

Since I made substantive contributions to the FFT analyser design developed by the Berkley team when at OSU, the FFT analyzer for use at Harvard's telescope in the years preceding META then BETA starting in 1983, Paul Horowitz donated META the predecessor of BETA to OSU's Big Ear for this reason, and I was there to collect it! I was invited at Carl's urging to attend the lecture they had planned, and PBS' NOVA even filmed me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0_cpy30Los

I'm at 53:33 and was sporting a moustache then!

As this photo from that time attests;

http://www.naapo.org/NAAPO-News/Vol04/v04n01pic2.gif

I invented the computer based cash register;

https://www.google.com/patents/US4903200

and had access to a lot of hardware that was I made available for free to graduate students, to get things built.

Liar.

I see that you are resigned to believe what you wish to think, but I knew Carl well. I'm sorry you can't see that.


--
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the
soul with evil."
-- Socrates