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Persistence of Light: From a Japanese Prison Camp to an Elephant in the Alps to Silicon Valley
John Hoyte was a student at Cambridge University who realized one day that a grant he might get could provide an interesting and unusual summer vacation. And thus was born the idea of leading an elephant over the Alps via the trails, paths, and mountain passes taken by Hannibal with his army and war elephants in 218 B.C to do battle with the Roman empire.
Hoyte's successful mission, with an elephant named Jumbo on loan from the Turin zoo, became a media sensation, leading to international coverage and starting him on the way to a fifty-year career as an inventor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
Hoyte's story is a fascinating one, beginning with the six years of his childhood spent in a Japanese internment camp in China during World War II. Throughout the years that followed, he has taken each surprising twist and turn of fate and used it to help build a life infused with purpose, creativity and fulfillment.
Hoyte's successful mission, with an elephant named Jumbo on loan from the Turin zoo, became a media sensation, leading to international coverage and starting him on the way to a fifty-year career as an inventor and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
Hoyte's story is a fascinating one, beginning with the six years of his childhood spent in a Japanese internment camp in China during World War II. Throughout the years that followed, he has taken each surprising twist and turn of fate and used it to help build a life infused with purpose, creativity and fulfillment.
248 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2018
5 people are currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
John Hoyte
7 books3 followersJohn Merrishaw Hoyte was born in 1932 in Ping Yang Fu, China, of medical missionary parents. He attended a British-run boarding school at Chefoo, Shantung Province, along with his three brothers and two sisters. During world war ll, the school was interned by the invading Japanese at the Weihsien Concentration Camp.
After the war the family settled in England where he completed his education at Forest School, Essex, and Saint John’s College, Cambridge.
After two years in the army as an instructor in electronics he worked in British industry for three years and then led The British Alpine Hannibal Expedition over the Alps with Jumbo, an Indian elephant, from the Turin Zoo.
Coming to the US at age 27, he worked as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Palo Alto, California for six years, and was awarded a patent.
He then founded his own company, Spectrex Corporation, in Silicon Valley, based on a direct reading spectroscope, invented by his eighty-six-year-old uncle.
At age 36 he married Alma Polinsky, a nurse from Canada and they had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. Alma died of ovarian cancer after twenty one years of marriage. They lived in Menlo Park, California.
After fifty years as president of Spectrex, he sold the company to the employees.
John now lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife, Luci Shaw, a well known poet.
His hobbies are sailing, tent camping, pen-and-ink sketching, acrylic painting and playing the classical guitar.
At present he is writing a memoir of his boyhood in China and the Alpine elephant expedition.
After the war the family settled in England where he completed his education at Forest School, Essex, and Saint John’s College, Cambridge.
After two years in the army as an instructor in electronics he worked in British industry for three years and then led The British Alpine Hannibal Expedition over the Alps with Jumbo, an Indian elephant, from the Turin Zoo.
Coming to the US at age 27, he worked as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Palo Alto, California for six years, and was awarded a patent.
He then founded his own company, Spectrex Corporation, in Silicon Valley, based on a direct reading spectroscope, invented by his eighty-six-year-old uncle.
At age 36 he married Alma Polinsky, a nurse from Canada and they had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. Alma died of ovarian cancer after twenty one years of marriage. They lived in Menlo Park, California.
After fifty years as president of Spectrex, he sold the company to the employees.
John now lives in Bellingham, Washington, with his wife, Luci Shaw, a well known poet.
His hobbies are sailing, tent camping, pen-and-ink sketching, acrylic painting and playing the classical guitar.
At present he is writing a memoir of his boyhood in China and the Alpine elephant expedition.
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July 19, 2018Full disclosure:
I haven't rated or reviewed due to the fact that I assisted John Hoyte with meta-editing and editing.
ASM
I haven't rated or reviewed due to the fact that I assisted John Hoyte with meta-editing and editing.
ASM
Displaying 1 of 1 review