Castine man nominated for engineering prize

CASTINE – Edward A. Miller of Castine has been nominated by the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office for the Charles Stark Draper Prize of the National Academy of Engineering, which honors those who have contributed substantially to the advancement of engineering.

Engineers worldwide are eligible. Recipients share a stipend of $500,000. The Draper Prize is awarded annually and is recognized as one of the world’s pre-eminent awards for engineering achievement. The Charles Stark Draper Prize “honors an engineer whose accomplishments have significantly impacted society by providing the ability to live freely and comfortably.”

Miller was a key technical leader of the Discoverer-Corona Reconnaissance Team. Six other members of the Corona team also were nominated. The team developed the orbiting space vehicle, the high-resolution camera and space-age film. Miller was a General Electric engineer at the time.

Miller was specifically cited for his technical leadership of the development of a Corona satellite recovery vehicle, which in August 1960 returned to Earth – the first manmade object to return from orbit.

Not only was this a scientific first, but the recovery vehicle contained thousands of square miles of vital and sensitive pictures of Russia and China during the Cold War. Access to those countries had been denied to the United States after the loss of the U-2, America’s only source of overhead imagery at the time.

Previous winners of the Draper Prize include Sir Frank Whittle for the development of the turbojet engine, Charles K. Kao and others for the development of fiber optics, John Backus of the development of FORTRAN, Vinton G. Cerf for the development of the Internet, and Ivan A. Getting and others for the development of the global positioning system.

When the top secret Corona program was declassified in the late 1990s, the New York Times wrote, “Corona may have averted World War III.”

Announcement of the winners of the Draper Prize will be made by the National Academy of Engineering in Washington in February 2005.

Miller is a graduate of the College of Engineering of the University of Maryland and member of Tau Beta Pi, the national engineering honor society. He served as assistant Secretary of the Army for research and development during the Ford administration.