James L. Pelkey

Historian of the data-communications industry who conducted a series of interviews in the 1980s — later published as the web book Entrepreneurial Capitalism and Innovation: A History of Computer Communications 1968–1988 and deposited as the James L. Pelkey Collection at the Computer History Museum — and who built his own site, History of Computer Communications, from that same research. The vault had already relied on his work once, indirectly, for the Codex/QAM-modem claim (claim-codex-1971-qam-modem-is-earliest-documented-commercial-9600bps-product, via his site's transcription of a John Pugh interview); this capture is the first time the vault reads his own interview transcripts directly — a June 1988 Computer History Museum oral history with Larry Roberts — making him a recurring primary-source compiler bridging two otherwise unconnected vault clusters (modem history and DARPA/IPTO funding history).

References

• claim-codex-1971-qam-modem-is-earliest-documented-commercial-9600bps-product
• claim-roberts-1988-pelkey-chm-interview-independently-corroborates-mansfield-pressure-pattern
• Capture: 2026-10-18-does-larry-robertss-own-primary-writing-his-1988