NEWS ITEM
AWA Installs New Exhibit Dedicated to Tom Peterson, RCA Member and Award Recipient
T
he Antique Wireless Association opened a new exhibit dedicated to Thomas Peterson, Jr. Mr. Peterson served for 22 years on the AWA Board of Trustees and 17 years as AWA Director. Under Tom’s leadership, AWA has achieved international recognition as a premier, communications, historical organization with a world-class museum. Tom led the way to develop the Thomas Peterson AWA Campus which includes 4 buildings on five acres. Tom’s leadership and support made that possible. Tom Peterson passed away in February 2021. He was a gentle man, inquisitive, quick to laugh, and brilliant.
MIT’s involvement with Rosetta, a joint European Space Agency-NASA mission that visited a comet in 2014. He also served on the Visiting Committees of the Deans of the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Medicine with Case Western Reserve University. He is one of the founding donors to the Bridge Project, a collaboration between the Koch Institute and the Dana-Farber/ Harvard Cancer Center.
EXHIBIT The Peterson family generously donated some of Tom’s collection to AWA to create a memorial exhibit in his honor. Tom received the Radio Club of America’s Ralph Batcher Award in 2017 for significant work in preserving the history of radio and electronic communications.
TOM PETERSON Mr. Peterson attended MIT. He returned to Cleveland to run the family business, Preformed Line Products Company (PLPC), a manufacturer of components for the energy and communications industries. He spent 10 years at PLPC and rose to executive vice president. Then, he launched his own company, Motion Picture Sound Inc. (MPSI), a firm that produced sophisticated audio for movies and television. His clients included the Pentagon, PBS, NASA, and Disney World. He was in business for 20 years before turning his love for invention into three electrical technology patents. He retired from MPSI in 1987. He pursued research on his own and developed international patents for a method to measure a previously unknown permanent electric charge density in dielectric substances that was presented at the 7th Scientific Assembly of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, Buenos Aires, 1993. He also edited journal submissions by colleagues on Russian/ Japanese earthquake prediction.
SOURCES Museum Exhibits: Thomas Peterson Exhibit, Museum Sparks, Antique Wireless Association, Dec. 2021, Vol. 5 No. 4. Radio Club of America Announces 2017 Award Winners and Fellows, Radio Club of America Press Release, Aug. 4, 2017. Spotlight on 2017 RCA Banquet Awards, Proceedings of the Radio Club of America, Fall 2017.
Tom has dedicated his time and resources to preservation and education about the history of electric and electronic signaling and communication. He established the Thomas F. Peterson, Jr. Conservator Fund in the MIT Libraries and is funding the Vail Access Project, which will restore and catalogue the rare books in the MIT Libraries’ Vail Collection that focusses on electrical and electronic history. He funded the creation of the Thomas F. Peterson Gallery at the MIT Museum and funded the MIT 150th anniversary displays. He served on the McGovern Institute for Brain Research’s Leadership Board and the Corporation Development Committee. He has supported groundbreaking research on human perception and magnetic studies of rock from the Moon, Earth and Mars. He established the Peterson Nanotechnology Materials Core Facility at MIT’s Koch Institute for Cancer Research to both characterize and image nanomaterials. He funded the Thomas F. Peterson Gallery and served on the MIT Museum’s advisory board. He supported the work of MIT’s Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, including a pledge that enabled
SPRING 2022 PROCEEDINGS
AWA Museum, Tom Peterson exhibit.
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