Alumni Update from Loren Bearce

Loren S. Bearce was born in Brown County, Kansas on March 22, 1927.  He graduated as the second highest high school senior at Hiawatha High School in Hiawatha, KS in 1945.  In 1949 he received a B.S. degree in physics, with honors, from Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS.  His subsequent graduate study was at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD.

From 1945 to 1946, he served in World War II in the U.S. Navy as an aviation electronics technician.

In 1948, he joined the scientific staff of the Radio Techniques Branch of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, where he was engaged as an Electronic Scientist in research on radio communication systems.  His initial projects were in the field of instrumentation, particularly the development of precision capacitance standards and improved techniques of communication receiver measurement.

Later, he was concerned with speech compression techniques, receiver detection circuitry, and the development of more linear RF amplifiers with large dynamic range to improve the strong signal selectivity of communication receivers.  Much of his work was in the field to UHF, VHF, and VLF electro-magnetic wave propagation.  In connection with this work, he developed an automatic programming system for NRL’s NAREC high-speed digital computer.

VLF propagation research stemmed from a project for extension of the theoretical treatment of submerged communications reception.  He named the experiment for the early fourth earth satellite orbit, as LOFTI-I, which means the first Low Frequency Trans Ionosphere signal propagation.  The design included measurement of the electric and magnetic fields radiated from an earth’s surface radio transmitter, and the technical coordination for the reduction and analysis of the satellite’s data.  He was co-author of the IRE Proceedings article of January 1962, entitled “Penetration of the Ionosphere by Very Low Frequency Radio Signals,”  He retired from his government position in 1989.

Mr. Bearce married Ruth A. Bottamiller on 1 Sepember 1953 in Washington, DC.  They have four daughters:  Jennifer, Jeannine, Jenniece and Jennelle.  In 2005 they moved to their present home at 9114 Chaterhouse Road, Frederick, MD  21073.

Mr. Bearce has been a member of IEEE, RESA, the K-State Alumni Association, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Xi, and he Association for Computing Machinery.