Scott Kirsner and Rebecca Carpenter, MA
Cambridge, We Have a Problem: The Forgotten Story of NASA’s Electronics Research Center
If you lived in the Boston area in the 1960s, you may remember the glory days of the Electronics Research Center, a NASA facility that was supposed to make Kendall Square an essential part of our country’s space program — but that just wasn’t in the stars. Kirsner will talk about why NASA chose to set up the ERC Cambridge, what happened to it, and how its untimely demise led to the Kendall Square we know today. In 2025, the last vestiges of the NASA ERC campus were demolished as part of an MIT project to revitalize its 14-acre site, and this presentation will also touch on the future plans for this part of Kendall.
Scott Kirsner (scottkirsner.com) is a writer, editor, speaker, and moderator who has covered research, startups, and venture capital in the New England region for publications like Wired, Fast Company, and the New York Times, and has written a regular column for the Boston Globe since 2000. Kirsner is the Innovation Economy columnist for the Boston Globe and author of the recent collection Innovation Economy: True Stories of Start-ups, Flame-outs, and Inventing the Future in New England.
Rebecca Carpenter, MA, joined Draper in 2022 as the Corporate Archivist, where she leads efforts to document and preserve Draper’s rich history. Her work spans the management of all physical and digital documents, photographs, and artifacts. In this role, she also oversees the creation and curation of the Draper Museum, which highlights the history, culture of innovation and future advancements to a broader audience. Rebecca holds a BA in History and English from Fitchburg State University and a MA in Archives from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
