Joseph Nunn (1905–1968) was an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

. In 1956 he worked in collaboration with Dr. James G. Baker to design and manufacture a series of

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

tracking

camera A camera is an Optics, optical instrument that can capture an image. Most cameras can capture 2D images, with some more advanced models being able to capture 3D images. At a basic level, most cameras consist of sealed boxes (the camera body), ...

s. These were called

Baker-Nunn camera A Schmidt camera, also referred to as the Schmidt telescope, is a catadioptric astrophotographic telescope designed to provide wide fields of view with limited aberrations. The design was invented by Bernhard Schmidt in 1930. Some notable ex ...

s after their designers, and consisted of a very precise tracking system combined with an unusually large, wide-field camera for photographing large areas of the sky. Joseph Nunn was responsible for designing the mechanical elements of these cameras, while Dr. Baker worked on the camera. The optics were fabricated by the Perkin-Elmer Corporation, and the camera was assembled by

Boller and Chivens Boller and Chivens was an American manufacturer of high-quality telescopes and spectrographs headquartered in South Pasadena, California. History Founded about 1946 by Harry Berthold Boller (1915-1997) and Clyde Cuthbertson Chivens (1915-2008). ...

. This camera provided tracking data on the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

Sputnik I Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

satellite.NASA, ''Vanguard: A History'', Chapter 11, "From ''Sputnik I'' to TV-3."
/ref> An STP network of the 12 cameras were built by August 1958. The cameras remained in operation until 1991, when they were decommissioned. At least one of the cameras was later refurbished for use in the Asteroid tracking program. Joseph Nunn lived in

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. ...

and

San Marino, California San Marino is a residential city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. It was incorporated on April 25, 1913. At the 2010 census the population was 13,147. The city is one of the wealthiest places in the nation in terms of househol ...

. He was a nephew of American entrepreneur and educator L.L. Nunn. The crater Nunn on the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

is named after him.

References

External links

The first Baker-Nunn camera. Left to right, Clyde Chivens, Harry Boller, Joseph Nunn. Source: Photograph provided by Don Winans, scanned and posted by Peter Abrahams
1905 births 1968 deaths Optical engineers Engineers from California People from Pasadena, California People from San Marino, California 20th-century American engineers {{US-engineer-stub