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Vermont as a Brand
With the rise of communications behemoths, it is easy to forget that the acronym CATV stands for Community Antenna Television and that the roots of CATV can still be seen in many of the systems that still exist in rural America. The 60 subscriber “cable network” that Cliff Duncan bought in 1972 was the prototypical early CATV system, as,…
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Know Your Customer’s Business – Part 2
Veteran telecommunications engineer and author, Jim Farmer, explains the process for the development of Scientific Atlanta’s 6350 modulator, which helped propel Scientific Atlanta as a leader in the headend space in the late 1970s and 1980s. He explains how he and fellow industry luminary, Alex Best, developed the 6350 largely based on what they had learned from…
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Know Your Customer’s Business – Part 1
Cable industry engineering icon and SCTE Hall of Fame member, Jim Farmer, who retired in August after some 45 years of service to the cable TV industry, discusses some of the people who influenced his career. He also indicates that engineering organizations, such as IEEE and SCTE, were important to his growth as an engineer…
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Fiber to the Hunter’s Creek – Fiber to the Home Pioneer
One of the effects of the rapid pace of innovation is that history is also created faster than in centuries past. In trying to keep up with the present, it is easy to forget or downplay the relatively recent past. These thoughts were going through the back of my mind in a recent interview with…
