Thomas Wm. Hamilton

Thomas Wm. Hamilton was born in San Francisco, California on January 11, 1939. He is the son of William Angelo Hamilton (1892-1941) and the former Mildred Lucille Holtman (1912-). He is a former child actor. His first role was as Barnaby, the little boy with a fairy godfather. Following this he appeared in the movie Miracle on 34th Street. Later he appeared with some frequency on the very early children's television program Mr. I-Magination. Other roles included appearing in a radio production of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as the boy who befriends Huck and Jim but is killed.
After high school (Eastern Military Academy, where he graduated as valedictorian and Sergeant-Major in 1956) Hamilton did little acting, most notably a summer stock production of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones. His last role was as Estragon in a production of Waiting for Godot on WKCR radio in 1961.

Hamilton's subsequent career is complex, with overlapping periods in astronomy, journalism, and politics. The discussion below separates these by topic, noting that they may overlap in time.

Astronomy
Hamilton worked on the Apollo Project for several years at Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. on Long Island. His responsibilities included providing astronomical information for engineers and others, determining the characteristics of orbits around the Moon, the requirements for radar accuracy and fuel needed to perform lunar orbit rendezvous, and the back-up technique for such rendezvous.

As the civilian input to Apollo wound down, Hamilton went to work for a planetarium manufacturer on Long Island, Viewlex, writing canned planetarium shows for that firm's programmable planetariums. He also compiled a list of star names marketed with the planetariums.

In 1970 Hamilton was hired to operate the planetarium at Wagner College on Staten Island. Within two years he had created a program to train students to enter the planetarium field. In 1973 he was an invited guest observer of the first fly-by of Mercury, and in 1979 of the first Space Shuttle launch. He retired from teaching in 2003.

Journalism

In 1967-68 Hamilton worked for the Liberation News Service, specializing in reports with a scientific bent. The 1968 rebellion at Columbia University saw Hamilton writing much of the coverage by LNS of events there. He became so involved, entering three of the five buildings students occupied, and once stirring a crowd to halt police efforts to push it back, that he was accused of inventing "participatory journalism".

His journalistic career resumed while teaching at Wagner College, as Hamilton became a reporter with the news department of radio station WBAI. When the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded on launch he was on the air continuously for over six hours, and the station bragged of having an astronomer on its news staff.

Later Hamilton wrote a number of articles for the Staten Island Advance and Staten Island Register newspapers. From 1994 to 2001 Hamilton produced a weekly news shows on cable television. This show, Staten Island Journal, won five Nova Awards in various years for environmental and general news coverage.

Politics

Hamilton entered politics in response to a 1983 plan by the United States Navy to base a nuclear-armed Surface Action Group within a mile of his newly purchased home. After serving seven terms as Secretary of the Staten Island Democratic Association, he joined the newly formed Independence Party, and served at County Chair for eight years. He also was twice (1996 and 2000) on the party's slate of candidates for the Electoral College, and was continuously on the party's State Committee. He twice ran for office on the Independence line, once for State Senate, and once, with cross-endorsement from the Green Party, for State Assembly. He received about two percent of the vote both times.

Bibliography
Books
* Library Systems and Information Technology, New York: Diebold Research Group, 1966.
* Unbundling, An IBM Market Analysis and History, New York: Programming Sciences Corp., 1967.
* Time for Patriots: the 21st Century Confronts Bunker Hill--And After, New York: Strategic Book Publishing, ISBN 978-1-60693-224-7, released Sept. 2008.

Technical Papers
* Characteristics of Circumlunar Orbits, Grumman Aircraft Corp., Bethpage, NY, 1964
* Use of an Apollo Spacecraft to Visit an Asteroid Passing Close to Earth, Grumman Aircraft Corp., Bethpage, NY, 1964.
* Radar Accuracy Requirements and Fuel Requirements for Lunar Orbit Rendezvous, Grumman Aircraft Corp., Bethpage, NY, 1965

Booklet
* Useful Star Names, Viewlex, Holbrook, NY, 1968. (Provided free to those purchasing a planetarium from Viewlex, and sold to others), 50 pages.

Newspaper Articles
* Americans Are Unfit For Human Consumption, Liberation News Service, March 13, 1968.
* The Disregard of Astronomical Fact, Staten Island Advance, April 10, 1977.
* What Was That In The Sky? Most UFOs Can Be Explained, Staten Island Advance, January 29, 1978.
* How To Secede...And Not Succeed, Staten Island Advance, April 9, 1978, page B-1.
* Science Fiction: A Window on the Future", Staten Island Advance, October 22, 1978, page B-1.
* Important Space Advances Win Limited Public Attention, Staten Island Advance, December 30, 1979.

Professional Journals and Conferences
* Mars System Orrery, The Constellation, June 1999, page 7
* Pluto System Orrery, The Constellation, March 2005, page 5
* The Universe of Today versus the Universe of Our College Days, May 2005, Columbia University, 45th Annual Class Reunion. Published in The Constellation, September 2005.
* Fifty Years In Space, The Constellation, September 2007, pages 9 and 10.
* Public Misunderstanding of Astronomy as Seen on the Internet, paper at the Triple Conjunction Conference, Oglebay, WV, September 2007. Published in the Proceedings.
* Planetariums and the International Year of Astronomy (2009), The Constellation, March 2008, pages 7 and 8.
* The Responsibility of Planetariums Under the Americans with Disabilities Act", paper presented at the annual meeting of the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society, May 17, 2008. To be published in the Proceedings.

Miscellany
* The Hamiltons of Science Fiction, An Darach, Vol. 27, No. 3, September 2003, ISSN 1542-1139, Edmund Hamilton
* The Hamiltons of Science Fiction, An Darach, Vol. 27, No 4, ISSN 1542-1139, Theodore Sturgeon (Edward Hamilton Waldo)
* The Hamiltons of Science Fiction, An Darach, Vol. 28, No. 1, ISSN 1542-1139, Peter F. Hamilton
* The Hamiltons of Science Fiction, An Darach, Vol. 28, No. 2, ISSN 1542-1139, Laurell K. Hamilton
* Foreign Language Planetarium Shows, written under a 1980 grant from the U. S. government's Institute of Museum Services. Shows in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili. These shows were distributed to 260 planetariums in the United States and a few in other countries.
* Planetarium Shows for the Deaf, two shows written with a grant from the Sussman Educational Fund. One was a version of the foreign language shows, the other about deaf astronomer John Goodricke.

Sources:
* PM (newspaper), July 28, 1946, pages 1, 4, 18 "Barnaby Meets Barnaby", with photos.
* "For Theater Goers", (syndicated newspaper column) Gilbert Kanour, Sept. 11, 1946.
* Equity: Official Organ of the Actors' Equity Association and the Chorus Equity Association, "Growth of the AEA: Junior Members", September 1946, page 18.
* Downer, Alan Seymour: Fifty Years of American Drama, 1900-1950, Chicago: Regnery (1951)
* "Keep an Eye on the Sky for identified flying objects", Staten Island Advance, June 3, 2008, page A3.
* This Is My Story, a purported autobiography with highly dubious content, such as a totally nonfactual claim to residence in Mexico City, Bronx: Barnard, n.d.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu