George was born in Cleveland, OH on April 6, 1930 – grew up on a family farm and was schooled in Mentor, Ohio before moving to Los Angeles. After High School, he entered the US Army Corps of Engineers in the Survey and Mapping Division as an enlisted man and rose to the rank of 1st Lieutenant and received an Official Citation for Outstanding Performance of Duty. During his service George designed and built bridges in advance of troop movement during the Korean War. You may have seen one of his works during the last episode of MASH; George designed the Peace Building where the armistice was signed to end the Korean War.
After his service with the US Army Corps of Engineers, George attended Loyola of Los Angeles University on the GI Bill and was the first to complete his Masters Degree from the International Training Center for Aerial Survey in Delft, Netherlands. George was then recruited to ITEK Corporation for TOP SECRET development of the first spy satellite; named Corona. The first camera to turn photos into maps. Corona was deployed from 1960 - 1973 with 156 successful missions and was a major element in stopping the Cold War and “averting World War III” (Sergei Nikitich Khrushchev). With this camera technology the US was able to locate ICBM locations and create maps from over 600,000 feet. Corona missions were so successful that NASA then deployed a new version of the Corona camera for the Apollo flights to survey the moon prior to Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. George was issued two patents having to do with the development of the first camera to be able to send photographs via radio wave to Earth. After Corona, George was instrumental in the deployment of HEXAGON - another spy satellite that operated until 1985. HEXAGON was the precursor to the modern day GPS (Global Positioning System). Based on the HEXAGON success, NASA then selected a smaller, non-classified version of this camera technology to be used on the US Space Shuttle mission 41G. George was considered a visionary and revolutionary contributor to the profession of aerospace mapping and remote sensing. During his professional life, George visited 15 countries on 7 continents. George received an Inventors Award from the US National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1976. George never considered himself exceptional – he always thought of the others he worked with as ‘Exceptional.’