Comments on: Story Behind “The Secret History” Part III: The Most Important Company You Never Heard Of

By: How Scientists and Engineers Got It Right, and VC’s Got It Wrong | Customer Development | Startups | Steve Blank Podcast – Clearshore

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:27:13 +0000

[...] is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. It might be its most important. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley, was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Since it was my first job, I [...]

By: steveblank

steveblank — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 20:38:55 +0000

Ed, Thanks for your comments. I corrected the slide and reposted the presentation. I couldn't find any public information about CHECKROTE and EARTHLING (other than in Advances in Bistatic Radar and the The Wizards of Langley. I made the leap too far to credit VIllard with the projects. The Stanford records showed that his group received more funding than any other and I assumed it was for construction of these operational systems. steve

By: Ed Lyon

Ed Lyon — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:01:54 +0000

The “Secret History” slides were interesting, but I have to object to your crediting Mike Villard (Slide 101 of Rev 5, Feb 2010) with EARTHLING and CHECKROTE radars. I was chief engineer and developer of both those radars while I worked for ITT Electro-Physics Lab in Hyattsville, MD. Mike may have “fathered” FM-CW OTH ardar at Stanford and SRI, but the rest of OTH radar technology had its beginnings at NRL, Raytheon, Sylvania, and ITT.

By: Alex Miroshnichenko

Alex Miroshnichenko — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:21:33 +0000

Well, funny how myths are created..
Sakharov was banned from any defense related work since late 60s when he made his opposition stance public. He was forced in to an internal exile to Groky (Nizhnij Novgorod) – a major industrial city closed to foreigners – about 300 mi east of Moscow in 1980 following his public protests against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was allowed to return to Moscow in Feb 1987 – AFTER Reykjavik. (I met him – accidentally – that very week).
Upon his return he became a public figure but he was never allowed an access to any classified information let alone advise the government on SDI – nor anything else for that matter.

By: John Bumgarner

John Bumgarner — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:43:43 +0000

Thanks for the words Steve!
(BTW, where did you get _that_ aerial view??)

I worked at Sylvania EDL from 1967 to 1969 and also at ESL from 1971 to 1978. I worked as a programmer and technician in Sylvania’s EM Scattering lab and later as an implementer and field engineer for ESL’s IDIMS (image processing) group. I can say that the management and staff at ESL was the absolute best.

As an example of the extremely high quality of the folks who followed Bill to make ESL great, not only did we have the very best image processing capabilities and the most excellent QRC services around, the IDIMS staff still holds annual reunions because we became a band of brothers (and sisters) under wonderful leadership.

Ah, ‘thems’ were the days.

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By: Michael F. Martin

Michael F. Martin — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:04:22 +0000

Hmm… The reykjavik summit I had in mind was in October 1986.

By: YA

YA — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:25:34 +0000

Er, any bio of Sakharov will have his chronology properly listed. Gorby let him out of exile in Nizhny Novgorod (a major city 6 hrs by train away from Moscow with a national nuclear center nearby) in 1986; Reykjavik was in 1988. Try picking one at Amazon.

By: Michael F. Martin

Michael F. Martin — Sun, 10 May 2009 20:51:58 +0000

YA,

Can you provide sources on those facts? I got my info from a New Yorker piece years ago, which I will try to find again. The New Yorker does pretty good cite checking, although it’s surely not infallible.

By: YA

YA — Sun, 10 May 2009 17:36:46 +0000

“Nobel laureate physicist Andrei Sakharov was in a gulag at the time. ”

1. Never in Gulag, only in exile.

2. Released several years before Reykiavik

3. Never engaged in defense work again, went in politics.

By: Maurice Karnaugh

Maurice Karnaugh — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:51:52 +0000

There are plenty of nerds but not all politicians will listen or understand.

By: Michael F. Martin

Michael F. Martin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:46:02 +0000

If the Soviets didn’t have a Bill Perry on their side we might have gotten an even better result. Years ago I read a story that when Gorbachev and Reagan met in Reykjavik to talk total disarmament, that Reagan’s insistence on SDI (a/k/a Star Wars) was a sticking point that kept the USSR from agreeing to total disarmament.

Nobel laureate physicist Andrei Sakharov was in a gulag at the time. After he was released and brought in to advise Gorbachev on SDI, the USSR completely changed its negotiating stance. But the moment was lost, and total disarmament was never again on the table.

*Sigh* If only more nerds were around to advise politicians.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:09:24 +0000

Interesting how much influence the military has had on our technology industry. Like Stanford, the military influenced MIT’s rise as a technology leader through the Lincoln Lab and others.

There’s a great talk by Bill Perry given at Stanford, available here: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1677

By: Shane Rogers

Shane Rogers — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:37:27 +0000

The names of ‘secret’ customers is funny. I used to work for a company located in Arlington, VA that had the CIA as a client. Their code name was UTR (Up The River) in reference to their geographic location up the Potomac River. But I couldn’t help but giggle on the inside and wonder if the project team was issued paddles. If not they were Up the River w/o a Paddle.