Earth's Rotation

Paul Convertino who was the manager of the Optical Technology Division’s Systems Department in Danbury told me this story some years ago.

Back in the late 1960’s the Perkin-Elmer marketing people had an advertisement that was on television and it showed a space view of the earth and talked about all the good science that Perkin-Elmer was doing, but the earth was rotating in the wrong direction. Paul said “I remember a senior CIA manager that we were meeting with on an old program coming in to me and said “great aerospace guys you are, you don’t even know which way the earth is turning.”  One of our guys said, “You customer guys are so powerful why don’t you get to rotate the earth in the other direction.”

Tech Doc Dept 1982

The Technical Document Department at Perkin-Elmer in Danbury, Connecticut was an invaluable asset to all of our work. They created, copied, labeled most of our reports and official documents for all of our programs, classified or not. Their photographic section provided key photographs of our people, hardware, tests and models of interest. In addition to taking fine photographs and videos the department staff created artistic drawings of products. They were a major contributor to the success of a variety of products.     

Names of part of Tech Doc Department

Left to right:

Front row: Bob Ogden, Jean Walker, Lorraine Coffey, Mary Bresmon, Don Bossa, Ron Beck

Back row: Ray Haithwaite, John Restivo, Frank Tudino, Stan Karpacz, Pete Greene

Picture taken by Ralph Panagrosso

Oscar Berendsohn

by Phil Pressel

Oscar was my friend and colleague at Perkin-Elmer for 28 years. He was a very kind and giving man who was always ready and willing to give help and advice to all of us at PE. He was an expert metallurgist and materials process engineer. On two key programs at PE, the Hexagon spy satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope  he provided time and cost savings expertise that improved designs of critical assemblies. 

He was instrumental in solving many head scratching material problems during the design and operational phases of these and other programs. He taught us about special material coatings that helped protect against corrosion and he was the key to maintaining focus of the Hexagon camera over temperature changes by providing the exact proper heat treatment for a material most of us knew nothing about when we started work on the program. That material was Invar, a steel whose thermal expansion properties closely matched that of the glass mirrors.

He was also a good conversationalist and we often talked of many non-engineering topics, from both of our escapes from the Nazis to music and politics. I will miss him a lot. Phil Pressel.

Dick Carricato

A memory of Dick Carricato

by Phil Pressel

Dick Carricato was my colleague and friend at Perkin-Elmer and we worked together from the start of the Hexagon program. He passed away on May 24, 2017. He was a gentleman and a great electrical engineer with a specialty in servomechanisms or control systems. He looked like an all-American athlete with his trim physique and crew cut hair.

He and I both began our Perkin-Elmer careers in 1965. The chief engineer on Hexagon, Bob Landsman, described itas “Hexagon was an orbiting reconnaissance satellite system consisting of two large independent stereoscopic cameras. They will be performing search and surveillance missions from about 100 miles in space.” Between Bob’s technical explanations and the security officer’s briefing, Dick was asked if he was surprised. Dick said “I felt numb. I just read a lot of words and concepts that I had never heard before. Covert operations, undercover, search and surveillance of the Sino-Soviet bloc, and compartmentalized security clearances were all new phrases to me and quite foreign to me. I had a lot to learn! No I didn’t feel surprise: I felt like I had just joined the big league.”

All of us design engineers became familiar with the requirements of the job, and we all thought it would never work. The program also had severe schedules.

The bottom line is that we did it successfully. There needed to be experts in many fields, among which was to design the servo control to perfectly synchronize the speed and position of the fast moving film with the moving image. Three electrical engineers designed the servo system. They were Dick Carricato, Marty Yellin and Dick Labinger. Many engineers did outstanding work but to me these stand out as key people and Dick Carricato was the one who knew how Hexagon worked better than anyone. He was the “go to guy” to investigate causes and solutions to anomalies in the system prior to and after launch and while operating in orbit. He was often called in the middle of the night.

Len Farkas, a former director of the program said “Dick was one of the most important and least appreciated and most honest person on the program. He would do anything to help you out and if it weren’t for Dick Carricato we would not have been so successful. He was close to a genius and should given special recognitions for his contributions to the program.”

One of his major contributions that few people knew about occurred in 1972 when one of the two cameras experienced a film break. Dick was called at 2:30 AM and came in to evaluate all of the telemetry data that was coming in. He next directed a series of simulation tests on the Engineering model of the system and when the test results showed similar “signatures” as the data from orbit, he was able to determine the real cause of the problem. After several weeks of evaluation and analysis Dick prepared a detailed report that he presented to the CIA and senior representatives of associated companies such as Lockheed, TRW and Kodak. At the conclusion of the meeting the various program managers, including Mike Maguire the Perkin-Elmer Director of the program, met together with the CIA to discuss the performance fee that would be awarded for this mission. When Mike came out of that meeting Dick asked him if they agreed with our assessment of the problem. With a smile Mike said “They gave us full fee.” This indicated that Perkin-Elmer’s analysis of the problem was correct, contrary to a defensive explanation by one of the other companies and as a result earned some millions of dollars for Perkin-Elmer. Thank you Dick.   What a guy.  

Dick was not only a talented engineer but he was a kind and gently guy. He was always happy to go out of his way to explain things, to perform a test, to do favors for anyone. He never raised his voice or showed disappointment or anger. It was such a pleasure talking with him about anything. He owned and flew his own one propeller airplane and told interesting stories about it. He could describe trips and neighborhoods in such an elegant and poetic way. He was curious about so many things. He taught himself Fortran when he saw that there was a dire need for it. He was always quite formal and wore a jacket and tie even during the early days of “casual Fridays.” Best of all he listened to people and communicated so well verbally and in his writings. He had a great influence on so many of us, and certainly on me even through today. I will miss him greatly.

Car or van pooling back in 1972 to save on driving and gas. Notice the ties.

From left Paul Taormina, John Connic, Tom Tracy, Bruce Meyer, Eph Tobin, Bill Morris, Jerry De Clement, Jon Aspinwall, Lou Trapasso,  Chet Sokol, John Keating