A brief recollection history of a real person who was depicted in the movie ...
Having recently viewed the film, "Contact"; I was reminded of an old friend from the first
S.E.T.I. project who was portrayed in the film ... The character in the film, who was the first
one to "hear" the signal, the blind researcher named Kent, actually has a real counterpart
named D. Kent Cullers, from Menlo Park, CA who was involved in the SETI project in the
early 1970s, who's amateur callsign is WA6TWX. Mine is WA6BRM ( Paul ), and we had
many fascinating discussions via the ham radio "club" I had created, The Stonehenge
Society who's sole reason to exist was to sponsor a local 2-meter band amateur repeater
we'ed put together ... among the personalities were Jack, W6RST, a political-science
professor at U.C. Berkeley, whom Kent "debated" for hours at a time, as they were good
friends from years earlier ...
My recollections include the fact that there actually were many SETI projects at the time
Kent's duties were to collect and analyze data; and I have no doubt Carl knew Kent,
and created a character based on Kent's real-life experiences ... Many long discussions
were "on-the-air" then, with Kent and Jack being the focal point of the discussions
Years later, a group of us, renamed "the Mad Scientists" re-built the repeater, and it's
still operating today, on 147.300 MHz from "somewhere in the ( S.F. ) Bay Area" ...
Ham radio "roundtable" discussions included talks of physics, science fiction, UFOs,
the Philadelphia Experiment, and whatever interested the group at the time ... the
topics of ghosts and the paranormal were amoung my favorite discussions - which
ran nightly from 7 PM (PST) to around 6, or 7 AM the next morning, with remote links
of the talks carried into Southern California, and Arizona !
My memories of those "golden" ham radio days included the fact that Kent sounded like
Carl Sagan, in both intonation, and enthusiam ! Although I had made recent attempts to
contact Kent via E-mail, I am now living on the Oregon Coast, and haven't heard from
him in several years ...
Kent was young, extremely bright, and optimistic that eventually some derivative project
from Project S.E.T.I. might eventually find something "out there". Kent and his associates
were among the most scientific, methodical, and technically minded I've met, and I often
wonder what became of them ... I am sure that the SETI work "goes on", and always will.
73's Paul WA6BRM
radioman@seasurf.com
http://seasurf.com/~radioman/
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UPDATE : 6/25/98
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Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 13:14:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: Kent Cullers
Message-Id: <199806252014.NAA14600@netcom14.netcom.com>
To: radioman@seasurf.com
Subject: Strange voices from the past
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Paul--
Just to prove the web is truly interconnected, one of my colleagues at the
SETI Institute was just reading your web pages. I remember you well. In
case it is really true that you wrote me and I neglected to write back,
don't feel lonely. After the flood of Contact mail came the video, European
distribution, etc. Give it another try, and we can have a real QSO.
Kent
D. Kent Cullers Ph.D.
Senior Scientist
Manager Project Phoenix
Seti Institute
HTTP://WWW.SETI.ORG
2035 Landings Drive
Mountain View, Ca 94043
Voice: 650-960-4559
E-Mail: kent@seti.org
Fax: 650-968-5830
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