CLASS OF 1953 WHO'S WHO & WHERE - The City College Fund

Louis Pollack is one of the pioneers of modern communications satellites.Born in New York City in 1920, Louis graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1938. Beginningat a young age, knowing his destiny was to become an engineer, he taught himself fundamentals ofelectrical circuit theory, tinkering with tubes and other electrical components that he would buywith money set aside from odd jobs.After exploring other fields while attending evening classes at New York University, he returned toengineering, starting at City College in 1940; he took night classes while working full-time. ThenWorld War II came along; upon seeing an announcement in the ‘QST’, a magazine for amateurradio enthusiasts published by the American Radio Relay League, Louis applied to the U.S. ArmySignal Corp’s General Development Laboratories located at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He accepteda position and was qualified on the early warning RADAR systems being deployed to trackpotential enemy threats to the United States. Early in 1942, serving as an Army civilian, he wastransferred to the Alaska Defense Command to install, repair, and rebuild RADAR and ground forcecommunications equipment in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska mainland. After nearly a two-yearstint, he returned to New York City, where he accepted a position at ITT Federal Laboratories as asenior technician.Louis also resumed night classes at City College toward a degree in Electrical Engineering from1944 –1953. At the same time, he and his wife Dorothy started their family welcoming two daughters,Annette and Barbara, in January 1947 and January 1948. By subway, he traveled from theirhome in Sunnyside, Long Island to his ITT job in New York City, and then from there to City Collegefor evening classes (and some Saturday classes too!). After putting in a full day, he returnedhome late at night. This routine continued for nearly a decade. In fact, their two daughters attendedhis graduation ceremony in June of 1953.His fondest memory of CCNY was attending the class of Dr. Cecile Froelich. Louis recollects theElectric Circuit course the professor taught as she had the ability to illustrate the concepts with greatclarity.Early assignments in his career at ITT involved installing high power transmitters at television stations,which were then just coming on-line during the beginnings of the television era.Working up the ranks during his 23 year career at ITT, some of the many memorable technicalachievements included the first commercial wideband (TV) tropospheric scatter transmission systemused for public telephone transmissions between Florida and Cuba, in addition to Florida and Nassau.The project included a 10KW UHF power amplifier, which received a U.S. patent.While at ITT, Louis also designed a wide range of microwave communications and space equipmentand systems. These technology achievements represented early development of commercial communicationssatellites, such as TELSTAR and ‘Early Bird’, and the start of a series of satellites thatwould form the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT). He designedthe first commercial communications satellite earth terminal in 1960 that was licensed by the FederalCommunications Commission (FCC) to conduct space communications research. The ITT experimentalstation located in Nutley, New Jersey was used in moon reflection tests to explore the feasibilityof radio signaling over long distances on earth. In 1964, he directed the project, which