Arthur A. Collins
Within the radio spectrum only longer waves were thought to be refracted by the atmosphere ("skip"), allowing long-distance communication at night, but not so the shorter wavelength relegated to amateurs.
Reinartz and Collins discovered that such "skip" did occur in the 20-meter range and during the daytime, which allowed long-distance communication with this type of equipment.
When Reinartz became the ship's radio operator on the National Geographic-sponsored MacMillan Arctic expedition in 1925 only he and Collins were able to maintain reliable communication, unlike the U.S. Navy using longer wavelengths.
[2][3][4][5] Arthur Collins graduated from high school in Cedar Rapids and attended college at Amherst in Massachusetts, but returned at the end of his freshman year.
In 1930 Arthur Collins married Margaret (Peg) Van Dyke in Cedar Rapids, a noted artist within her community and a former student of Grant Wood.
RCA claimed it had exclusive rights to the de Forest vacuum tube oscillator circuit patent, and brought suit against Collins Radio and other purported infringers.
[8][9] During World War II Collins Radio became a key supplier of ground, ship, and aircraft communication equipment, expanding from about 350 to a peak of about 3700 employees.
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, the Corregidor station in the Philippines used Collins equipment to reach the outside world, as did the USS Missouri during the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo Bay.
Collins Radio quickly shifted from war-time projects to building communication equipment for the airlines and corporate fleets.
A licensed pilot in his 20s, Arthur Collins led the pioneering development of the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) and other integrated flight instruments that combined in one display the pitch, roll, and yaw attitudes of the aircraft as well as its compass heading.
Such techniques make very efficient use of bandwidth and virtually eliminate the noise and signal distortion that often plagues conventional radio.
A key component of KINEPLEX was the world's first practical, mass-produced MODEM (modulator/demodulator), in essence, a translator between binary and analog signals.
[15] Arthur Collins was among the first to predict the coming computer and telecommunication revolution and led his engineers to combine the lessons of KINEPLEX with communication expertise to establish in the early 1960s a data and message switching facility in Cedar Rapids, using Collins C8400 computers to process a reservation and other data traffic for the airlines.
Collins Radio also designed and built microwave communications systems, supplying both the basic equipment and also relay towers, often in remote, mountain top locations, to transmit the line-of-sight signal over long distances.
A bright, young Indian mathematician named Roshan Sharma was fortuitously hired, based partly on his recent mastery of the necessary underlying mathematics needed to produce the resonating discs.
[23] Collins Radio entered the field of space communications very early when in 1951 it designed and built an ultra-high frequency 20-kW transmitter on 418 MHz coupled to a high gain antenna with an unusual tapered horn shape, installed at its facilities at the Cedar Rapids Airport.
On November 8, 1951, two-way communications with a similar station at Sterling, Virginia was established for the first time by reflecting the UHF signal off the moon.
Collins Radio pioneered satellite communications in 1960 by constructing two large ground stations at its facilities in Cedar Rapids, IA, and Richardson, TX.
He is known to have traveled in the late 1930s to Iowa State College to visit John V. Atanasoff, the acknowledged inventor of the first digital computer, although unfortunately, no records exist of their discussions.
Arthur Collins had predicted in 1957 the need to combine computers with communication, using some of the technology developed as part of KINEPLEX and related work.
Modular construction allowed an easy expansion of computer capability in response to demand and provided benefits in manufacture and maintenance (boxes could be swapped).
Arthur Collins was intensely involved in these efforts, bringing in outside telecommunication experts, and setting up classes for the study of computer architecture and software design.
The result was the "C-System", a distributed, ring network linking processors and peripheral equipment and functions, including manufacturing devices, inventory control, purchasing, and other administrative activities.
The C-System was designed to be flexible, able to expand to meet diverse needs, and accessible by a variety of users, not just computer specialists.
One of the main difficulties was the large size, relatively low density, and very high cost of computer memory, as demanded by the C-System.
Ironically, his vision of a distributed network of relatively small processors and computer work stations was exactly prescient.
Collins published a book on telecommunication entitled "A Time for Innovation", co-authored with Robert Pedersen, and his firm eventually was awarded several patents, some posthumously.
Arthur Collins worked until his death from a stroke, having lived long enough to see the advent of the personal computer, the fiber optic cable, and the beginning of the internet.
There is no doubt that part of the company's success was due to Arthur Collins' ability to seek out and recognize talented engineers and administrative staff.
"It is necessary that we marshal the combined powers of many scientific and engineering disciplines together with man's other creative and spiritual faculties in an effort to build a decent and meaningful world.
