This an edited transcript of an oral history interview of Harold Rosen conducted by Volker Janssen. Harold Rosen was an electrical engineer at Hughes Aircraft Company who helped design the first geosynchronous communications satellites. Rosen was born on 20 March 1926 in New Orleans. He studied electrical engineering at Tulane, interrupted by service in the Navy during World War II as a radio and radar technician, and graduated from Tulane in 1947. He then attended Caltech, receiving MS (1948) and PhD (1951) degrees in electrical engineering. While in graduate school he worked for Raytheon on radar-guided anti-aircraft missiles. He joined Hughes Aircraft in 1956, working on airborne radars for interceptors. He then led the team that designed and built Syncom, the first geosynchronous communications satellite. He continued to work on communications satellites at Hughes, eventually retiring in 1993. He returned as a consultant at Hughes (which subsequently became part of Boeing), and also developed an interest in nuclear power. Rosen passed away 30 January 2017. [Object file name], Aerospace Oral History Project, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
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