User:DeknMike/Thomas W Mitchell

Thomas W Mitchell

Thomas W Mitchell(1912-2010) was an American inventor and innovator. He is notable for his pioneering work in bringing cable television to Wyoming, beginning with a 'shared antenna' service in 1954. In his later life he was a cable systems consulting engineer.

Background

Thomas Mitchell was born in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, the eldest son of Thomas W and Elizabeth Mitchell. The family were sharecropper farmers. He attended Chandler schools and graduated from Chandler High School in 1930. Since it was the early days of the Depression couldn't get a job, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, which sent him to Worland, Wyoming, for three years, and then to Washington, D. C.

Early Career

Mitchell was drafted to the US Army in 1942 and was sent to Fort Monroe, Virginia for gunnery school. While there, he cross-trained into communications. In 1946, he was sent to MIT to learn about a radical new technology called radar. He was trained how to set up and maintain the transmitter/receivers, and accompanied their deployment to the Pacific theater.

When he arrived in Hawaii, the radars were on fixed pedestals, unable to turn and 'sweep' the approach paths. Mitchell led a team to cobble old truck parts into a movable stand, creating the first rotating radar.

During the height of the war in the Pacific, Tom Mitchell's job was to service radar installations on remote islands. In one case, he was attacked by enemy forces, but was able to hold them at bay and protect the installation until reinforcements arrived. For this he was awarded the Bronze Star. citation needed (not listed at http://www.ww2awards.com/person.asp?id=25&abc=M)

entering cable television

At the end of the war, he moved back to Worland, Wyoming, intending to set up an electronics shop and sell television sets. There was no television in that area at the time, but he discovered a location in the hills were there as a notch in the frequency propagation that allowed receipt of television signals, as small spot of 'probably a thousand feet diameter.' He was able to receive signals with a 3-foot antenna on the mountaintop, and routed the signal down to an old movie theater, where TV was presented to the residents. In 1953, Mitchell and Roy Bliss established a shared antenna company to send television signals to houses and businesses in the town. Initally, they charged $150 to connect to the feed, which provided one channel of television from 4pm to 11pm.

The company went on to establish cable systems throughout Wyoming, Montana and the Pacific Northwest. Eventually they settled in Casper and formed Wyoming Cable Television Association, and started TV station KWRB-TV in 1957. They sold that in 1965, it became channel 10 Riverton. The station owners changed the call letters in 1980 to KTNW (now KLWY)

Mitchell began to freelance as a cable television and microwave station installation engineer

For this work, he was honored by the Cable Pioneers Association in 1979. reference: [Cable Pioneers Oral History Project, accessed 29 Jul 10]

other accomplishments

Mitchell is also noted for having constructed an antenna tower in central Florida without guy wires that has withstood multiple hurricanes. citation needed