Dr. Bernard M. Oliver

Here is a bit of history.  The first letter I received from the late Barney Oliver as a result of contacting the NASA SETI Office at the Ames Research Center.  With it came a copy of what is now referred to as "The SETI Bible", otherwise known as The Project Cyclops Report.  And all was revealed.

• See Project Cyclops

• My response to the above letter from Dr. Barney Oliver, dated November 19, 1990.

As a result of the letter below, I gave a talk about Optical SETI at NASA Ames on April 15, 1991.  I disregarded Barney's remarks about not dwelling on the subject of obtaining sharp beams optically.  Otherwise, it would have gutted my lecture, and it was the issue of transmitter gains that was the crux of the matter.  Note that there is a secretarial error in this letter in that the actual date was January 9, 1991 - a common error to type the previous year during the early part of January.

• See Barney Oliver's paper from SPIE's OSETI I Conference

• See The Planetary Society for further background information on how the SETI community responded to my revisit of Optical SETI during the '90s.

• See The Bernard Oliver Chair