By SARAH SHMERLING | Managing Editor
Have you used a cell phone today? Written an email? Posted to your Facebook page?
Then you can thank Harold Rosen.
Rosen, the doctoral engineer who designed the electronics, propulsion and power system for the first communications satellite, died on Monday, Jan. 30 in his home at the age of 90.
Rich Schmitt/Staff Photographer
Widely recognized as the “father of the geostationary satellite,” Rosen designed the technology that allows our televisions and cellular phones to work.
“Of all the technological breakthroughs made in Los Angeles during the Cold War—the first supersonic jet fighter, the Apollo moon ship, stealth aircraft, the space shuttle, the Blackbird spy plane, the intercontinental ballistic missile system and much else—the creation of a communications satellite has had the largest and most enduring cultural, social and economic impact,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Although Rosen shared in an interview with the Palisadian-Post in 2013 that he often turned his cell phone ringer off.
“I’m a real consumer of the product,” Rosen admitted, “but I don’t like to be tied to it. I don’t use [smartphones or email] as much as other generations because I prefer to deal with people face to face.”
After his work on the communications satellite was complete, Rosen was the chief scientist at Hughes Aircraft’s space and communications group where he helped designed two spacecraft programs: Hughes Satellite 376 and Hughes Satellite 601.
Rosen, along with his wife, Deborah Castleman, lived in the Palisades for almost 60 years.
The couple met in 1983 when Rosen asked Castleman if he could join her lunchtime jogging group. That year, they went on their first date at Jack’s by the Beach.
The couple spent their retirement doing early morning hikes in Temescal Canyon and twice-daily workouts at Spectrum Athletic Club on Sunset.
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