George Mueller, American space engineer, Died at 97

  Dead Famous

George Mueller, born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 16, 1918, and passed away on October 12, 1015.

His mother, a high school graduate, was from Belleville, Illinois and had been a secretary, but she never worked after marriage.

His father was an electrician who began working as a boy and never went to high school, but later became superintendent of an electrical motor repair shop in St. Louis.

Both parents were English speakers, but also spoke German, although George never learned it well enough to converse.

He went to Benton School in St. Louis until the 8th grade, when he and his parents moved to a larger house in the country called Bel Nor, and later graduated from Normandy High School.

The young George enjoyed reading science fiction and, helped by his grandfather, woodworking – although his first model ship capsized.

When he was aged 11 or 12 George also built and raced model aircraft – such as gliders and rubber band model airplanes.

Always curious about how things worked, he also built radios, following in the footsteps of his father.

Interested in these activities, the teenage George wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, but discovered that where he could afford to go to school, the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy (now Missouri University of Science and Technology) in Rolla, Missouri, there was no aeronautical engineering department.

They did offer mechanical engineering, so he enrolled in that program but found it discouraging and switched to electrical engineering.

George assumed he would end up working in industry and so, in his senior year, went on a tour of various suitable companies.

He applied to RCA, General Electric and Emerson but when he graduated in 1939 the economy took another downturn and he, like most of the class, had no job.

After applying to several graduate schools, he got an offer of a television fellowship (funded by RCA) at Purdue University.

The fellowship led to his working on an early television project.

Purdue was building a television transmitter for the campus, and it was the first of the kind that was using all vacuum tubes to produce the pictures.

It was also the first using a cathode ray tube for display purposes.

They still had mechanical disks for scanning, but we’re trying to develop an all-electronic approach.

George Mueller died at age 97 in October 1015.


Dr. George E. Mueller – Fulfilling the Vision from Dan Ibabao on Vimeo.