---
title: "James L. Pelkey"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "James L. Pelkey"
aliases: ["James Pelkey","Jim Pelkey"]
first_seen: "2026-10-18T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Computer History Museum oral histories","Larry Roberts","history of computer communications","Codex / QAM modem history"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


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 [[entity-larry-roberts|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