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1 Sinclair, Sir Clive Maries
[br]b. 30 July 1940[br]English electronic engineer and inventor.[br]The son of G.W.C.Sinclair, a machine tool engineer, the young Sinclair's education was disrupted by the failure of his father's business. Aged 12 he left Boxgrove preparatory school and went through twelve more schools before leaving St George's School, Weybridge, at the age of 17. His first job was as an editorial assistant on a hobbyist's magazine, Practical Wireless, and his next as an editor at Bernard Books, writing a series of technical manuals. In 1961 he registered Sinclair Radionics and in the following year announced its first product, a micro-amplifier. This was the first of a series of miniaturized radio products that he put on the market while retaining his editorial job. In 1972 he launched the Sinclair Executive calculator, selling originally at £79.95 but later at £24.95. In 1976, the Black Watch, an electronic watch with digital light-emitting diode (LED) display, was marketed, to be followed by the TV1A, a miniature television with a 2 in. (5 cm) monochrome screen. During the latter part of this period, Sinclair Radionics was supported by investment from the UK National Enterprise Board, who appointed an outside managing director; after making a considerable loss, they closed the company in 1979. However, Sinclair Electronics had already been set up and started to market the UK's first cheap computer kit, the MK 14, which was followed by the ZX 80 and later the ZX 81. Price was kept at a minimum by the extensive use of existing components, though this was a restriction on performance. The small memory was enhanced from one kilobyte to seventeen kilobytes with the addition of a separate memory unit. In January 1985 Sinclair produced the Sinclair C5, a small three-wheeled vehicle driven by a washing-machine engine, intended as a revolutionary new form of personal transport; perceived as unsafe and impractical, it did not prove popular, and the failure of this venture resulted in a contraction of Sinclair's business activities. Later in 1985, a rival electronics company, Amstrad, paid £35,000,000 for all rights to existing Sinclair computer products.In March 1992, the irrepressible Sinclair launched his latest brainchild, the Zike electric bicycle; a price of £499 was forecast. This machine, powered by an electric motor but with pedal assistance, had a top speed of 19 km/h (12 mph) and, on full power, would run for up to one hour. Its lightweight nickel-cadmium battery could be recharged either by a generator or by free-wheeling. Although more practical than the C5, it did not bring Sinclair success on the scale of his earlier micro-electronic products.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1983.Further ReadingI.Adamson and R.Kennedy, 1986, Sinclair and the "Sunrise" Technology, Harmondsworth: Penguin.IMcNBiographical history of technology > Sinclair, Sir Clive Maries
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2 Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo
[br]b. 25 April 1874 Bologna, Italyd. 20 July 1937 Rome, Italy[br]Italian radio pioneer whose inventiveness and business skills made radio communication a practical proposition.[br]Marconi was educated in physics at Leghorn and at Bologna University. An avid experimenter, he worked in his parents' attic and, almost certainly aware of the recent work of Hertz and others, soon improved the performance of coherers and spark-gap transmitters. He also discovered for himself the use of earthing and of elevated metal plates as aerials. In 1895 he succeeded in transmitting telegraphy over a distance of 2 km (1¼ miles), but the Italian Telegraph authority rejected his invention, so in 1896 he moved to England, where he filed the first of many patents. There he gained the support of the Chief Engineer of the Post Office, and by the following year he had achieved communication across the Bristol Channel.The British Post Office was also slow to take up his work, so in 1897 he formed the Wireless Telegraph \& Signal Company to work independently. In 1898 he sold some equipment to the British Army for use in the Boer War and established the first permanent radio link from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. In 1899 he achieved communication across the English Channel (a distance of more than 31 miles or 50 km), the construction of a wireless station at Spezia, Italy, and the equipping of two US ships to report progress in the America's Cup yacht race, a venture that led to the formation of the American Marconi Company. In 1900 he won a contract from the British Admiralty to sell equipment and to train operators. Realizing that his business would be much more successful if he could offer his customers a complete radio-communication service (known today as a "turnkey" deal), he floated a new company, the Marconi International Marine Communications Company, while the old company became the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company.His greatest achievement occurred on 12 December 1901, when Morse telegraph signals from a transmitter at Poldhu in Cornwall were received at St John's, Newfoundland, a distance of some 2,100 miles (3,400 km), with the use of an aerial flown by a kite. As a result of this, Marconi's business prospered and he became internationally famous, receiving many honours for his endeavours, including the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1909. In 1904, radio was first used to provide a daily bulletin at sea, and in 1907 a transatlantic wireless telegraphy service was inaugurated. The rescue of 1,650 passengers from the shipwreck of SS Republic in 1909 was the first of many occasions when wireless was instrumental in saving lives at sea, most notable being those from the Titanic on its maiden voyage in April 1912; more lives would have been saved had there been sufficient lifeboats. Marconi was one of those who subsequently pressed for greater safety at sea. In 1910 he demonstrated the reception of long (8 km or 5 miles) waves from Ireland in Buenos Aires, but after the First World War he began to develop the use of short waves, which were more effectively reflected by the ionosphere. By 1918 the first link between England and Australia had been established, and in 1924 he was awarded a Post Office contract for short-wave communication between England and the various parts of the British Empire.With his achievements by then recognized by the Italian Government, in 1915 he was appointed Radio-Communications Adviser to the Italian armed forces, and in 1919 he was an Italian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference. From 1921 he lived on his yacht, the Elettra, and although he joined the Fascist Party in 1923, he later had reservations about Mussolini.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsNobel Prize for Physics (jointly with K.F. Braun) 1909. Russian Order of S t Anne. Commander of St Maurice and St Lazarus. Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown (i.e. Knight) of Italy 1902. Freedom of Rome 1903. Honorary DSc Oxford. Honorary LLD Glasgow. Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy 1905. Royal Society of Arts Albert Medal. Honorary knighthood (GCVO) 1914. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Medal of Honour 1920. Chairman, Royal Society of Arts 1924. Created Marquis (Marchese) 1929. Nominated to the Italian Senate 1929. President, Italian Academy 1930. Rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1934.Bibliography1896, "Improvements in transmitting electrical impulses and in apparatus thereof", British patent no. 12,039.1 June 1898, British patent no. 12,326 (transformer or "jigger" resonant circuit).1901, British patent no. 7,777 (selective tuning).1904, British patent no. 763,772 ("four circuit" tuning arrangement).Further ReadingD.Marconi, 1962, My Father, Marconi.W.J.Baker, 1970, A History of the Marconi Company, London: Methuen.KFBiographical history of technology > Marconi, Marchese Guglielmo
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3 De Forest, Lee
SUBJECT AREA: Broadcasting, Electronics and information technology, Photography, film and optics, Recording, Telecommunications[br]b. 26 August 1873 Council Bluffs, Iowa, USAd. 30 June 1961 Hollywood, California, USA[br]American electrical engineer and inventor principally known for his invention of the Audion, or triode, vacuum tube; also a pioneer of sound in the cinema.[br]De Forest was born into the family of a Congregational minister that moved to Alabama in 1879 when the father became President of a college for African-Americans; this was a position that led to the family's social ostracism by the white community. By the time he was 13 years old, De Forest was already a keen mechanical inventor, and in 1893, rejecting his father's plan for him to become a clergyman, he entered the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University. Following his first degree, he went on to study the propagation of electromagnetic waves, gaining a PhD in physics in 1899 for his thesis on the "Reflection of Hertzian Waves from the Ends of Parallel Wires", probably the first US thesis in the field of radio.He then joined the Western Electric Company in Chicago where he helped develop the infant technology of wireless, working his way up from a modest post in the production area to a position in the experimental laboratory. There, working alone after normal working hours, he developed a detector of electromagnetic waves based on an electrolytic device similar to that already invented by Fleming in England. Recognizing his talents, a number of financial backers enabled him to set up his own business in 1902 under the name of De Forest Wireless Telegraphy Company; he was soon demonstrating wireless telegraphy to interested parties and entering into competition with the American Marconi Company.Despite the failure of this company because of fraud by his partners, he continued his experiments; in 1907, by adding a third electrode, a wire mesh, between the anode and cathode of the thermionic diode invented by Fleming in 1904, he was able to produce the amplifying device now known as the triode valve and achieve a sensitivity of radio-signal reception much greater than possible with the passive carborundum and electrolytic detectors hitherto available. Patented under the name Audion, this new vacuum device was soon successfully used for experimental broadcasts of music and speech in New York and Paris. The invention of the Audion has been described as the beginning of the electronic era. Although much development work was required before its full potential was realized, the Audion opened the way to progress in all areas of sound transmission, recording and reproduction. The patent was challenged by Fleming and it was not until 1943 that De Forest's claim was finally recognized.Overcoming the near failure of his new company, the De Forest Radio Telephone Company, as well as unsuccessful charges of fraudulent promotion of the Audion, he continued to exploit the potential of his invention. By 1912 he had used transformer-coupling of several Audion stages to achieve high gain at radio frequencies, making long-distance communication a practical proposition, and had applied positive feedback from the Audion output anode to its input grid to realize a stable transmitter oscillator and modulator. These successes led to prolonged patent litigation with Edwin Armstrong and others, and he eventually sold the manufacturing rights, in retrospect often for a pittance.During the early 1920s De Forest began a fruitful association with T.W.Case, who for around ten years had been working to perfect a moving-picture sound system. De Forest claimed to have had an interest in sound films as early as 1900, and Case now began to supply him with photoelectric cells and primitive sound cameras. He eventually devised a variable-density sound-on-film system utilizing a glow-discharge modulator, the Photion. By 1926 De Forest's Phonofilm had been successfully demonstrated in over fifty theatres and this system became the basis of Movietone. Though his ideas were on the right lines, the technology was insufficiently developed and it was left to others to produce a system acceptable to the film industry. However, De Forest had played a key role in transforming the nature of the film industry; within a space of five years the production of silent films had all but ceased.In the following decade De Forest applied the Audion to the development of medical diathermy. Finally, after spending most of his working life as an independent inventor and entrepreneur, he worked for a time during the Second World War at the Bell Telephone Laboratories on military applications of electronics.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsInstitute of Electronic and Radio Engineers Medal of Honour 1922. President, Institute of Electronic and Radio Engineers 1930. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Edison Medal 1946.Bibliography1904, "Electrolytic detectors", Electrician 54:94 (describes the electrolytic detector). 1907, US patent no. 841,387 (the Audion).1950, Father of Radio, Chicago: WIlcox \& Follett (autobiography).De Forest gave his own account of the development of his sound-on-film system in a series of articles: 1923. "The Phonofilm", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 16 (May): 61–75; 1924. "Phonofilm progress", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 20:17–19; 1927, "Recent developments in the Phonofilm", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 27:64–76; 1941, "Pioneering in talking pictures", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 36 (January): 41–9.Further ReadingG.Carneal, 1930, A Conqueror of Space (biography).I.Levine, 1964, Electronics Pioneer, Lee De Forest (biography).E.I.Sponable, 1947, "Historical development of sound films", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 48 (April): 275–303 (an authoritative account of De Forest's sound-film work, by Case's assistant).W.R.McLaurin, 1949, Invention and Innovation in the Radio Industry.C.F.Booth, 1955, "Fleming and De Forest. An appreciation", in Thermionic Valves 1904– 1954, IEE.V.J.Phillips, 1980, Early Radio Detectors, London: Peter Peregrinus.KF / JW -
4 Branly, Edouard Eugène
[br]b. 23 October 1844 Amiens, Franced. 24 March 1940 Paris, France[br]French electrical engineer, who c.1890 invented the coherer for detecting radio waves.[br]Branly received his education at the Lycée de Saint Quentin in the Département de l'Aisne and at the Henri IV College of Paris University, where he became a Fellow of the University, graduating as a Doctor of Physics in 1873. That year he was appointed a professor at the College of Bourges and Director of Physics Instruction at the Sorbonne. Three years later he moved to the Free School in Paris as Professor of Advanced Studies. In addition to these responsibilities, he qualified as an MD in 1882 and practised medicine from 1896 to 1916. Whilst carrying out experiments with Hertzian (radio) waves in 1890, Branly discovered that a tube of iron filings connected to a source of direct voltage only became conductive when the radio waves were present. This early form of rectifier, which he called a coherer and which needed regular tapping to maintain its response, was used to operate a relay when the waves were turned on and off by Morse signals, thus providing the first practical radio communication.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsPapal Order of Commander of St George 1899. Légion d'honneur, Chevalier 1900, Commandeur 1925. Osiris Prize (jointly with Marie Curie) 1903. Argenteuil Prize and Associate of the Royal Belgian Academy 1910. Member of the Academy of Science 1911. State Funeral at Notre Dame Cathedral.BibliographyAmongst his publications in Comptes rendus were "Conductivity of mediocre conductors", "Conductivity of gases", "Telegraphic conduction without wires" and "Conductivity of imperfect conductors realised at a distance by wireless by spark discharge of a capacitor".Further ReadingE.Hawkes, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen. E.Larien, 1971, A History of Invention, London: Victor Gollancz.V.J.Phillips: 1980, Early Radio Wave Detectors, London: Peter Peregrinus.KF -
5 Smith, Willoughby
[br]b. 16 April 1828 Great Yarmouth, Englandd. 17 July 1891 Eastbourne, England[br]English engineer of submarine telegraph cables who observed that light reduced the resistance of selenium.[br]Smith joined the Gutta Percha Company, London, in 1848 and successfully experimented with the use of gutta-percha, a natural form of latex, for the insulation of conducting wires. As a result, he was made responsible for the laying of the first cross-Channel cable between Dover and Calais in 1850. Four years later he laid the first Mediterranean cable between Spezia, Italy, and Corsica and Sardinia, later extending it to Algeria. On its completion he became Manager of the Gutta Percha works, which in 1864 became the Telegraph and Construction Company. In 1865 he assisted on board the Great Eastern with the laying of the transatlantic cable by Bright.Clearly his management responsibilities did not stop him from experimenting practically. In 1866 he discovered that the resistance of a selenium rod was reduced by the action of incident light, an early discovery of the photoelectric effect more explicitly observed by Hertz and subsequently explained by Einstein. In 1883 he read a paper to the Society of Telegraph Engineers (later the Institution of Electrical Engineers), suggesting the possibility of wireless communication with moving trains, an idea that was later successfully taken up by others, and in 1888 he demonstrated the use of water as a practical means of communication with a lighthouse. Four years later, after his death, the system was tried between Alum Bay and the Needles in the Isle of Wight, and it was used subsequently for the Fastnet Rock lighthouse some 10 miles (16 km) off the south-west coast of Ireland.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFounder and Council Member of the Society of Telegraph Engineers 1871; President 1873.BibliographyThe effect of light on the resistance of selenium was reported in a letter to the Vice- Chairman of the Society of Telegraph Engineers on 4 February 1873.7 June 1897, British patent no. 8,159 (the use of water, instead of cable, as a conductor).November 1888, article in Electrician (describes his idea of using water as a conductor, rather than cable).Further ReadingE.Hawkes, 1927, Pioneers of Wireless, London: Methuen.C.T.Bright, 1898, Submarine Cables, Their History, Construction and Working.See also: Field, Cyrus WestKF -
6 Braun, Karl Ferdinand
[br]b. 6 June 1850 Fulda, Hesse, Germanyd. 20 April 1918 New York City, New York, USA[br]German physicist who shared with Marconi the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics for developments in wireless telegraphy; inventor of the cathode ray oscilloscope.[br]After obtaining degrees from the universities of Marburg and Berlin (PhD) and spending a short time as Headmaster of the Thomas School in Berlin, Braun successively held professorships in theoretical physics at the universities of Marburg (1876), Strasbourg (1880) and Karlsruhe (1883) before becoming Professor of Experimental Physics at Tübingen in 1885 and Director and Professor of Physics at Strasbourg in 1895.During this time he devised experimental apparatus to determine the dielectric constant of rock salt and developed the Braun high-tension electrometer. He also discovered that certain mineral sulphide crystals would only conduct electricity in one direction, a rectification effect that made it possible to detect and demodulate radio signals in a more reliable manner than was possible with the coherer. Primarily, however, he was concerned with improving Marconi's radio transmitter to increase its broadcasting range. By using a transmitter circuit comprising a capacitor and a spark-gap, coupled to an aerial without a spark-gap, he was able to obtain much greater oscillatory currents in the latter, and by tuning the transmitter so that the oscillations occupied only a narrow frequency band he reduced the interference with other transmitters. Other achievements include the development of a directional aerial and the first practical wavemeter, and the measurement in Strasbourg of the strength of radio waves received from the Eiffel Tower transmitter in Paris. For all this work he subsequently shared with Marconi the 1909 Nobel Prize for Physics.Around 1895 he carried out experiments using a torsion balance in order to measure the universal gravitational constant, g, but the work for which he is probably best known is the addition of deflecting plates and a fluorescent screen to the Crooke's tube in 1897 in order to study the characteristics of high-frequency currents. The oscilloscope, as it was called, was not only the basis of a now widely used and highly versatile test instrument but was the forerunner of the cathode ray tube, or CRT, used for the display of radar and television images.At the beginning of the First World War, while in New York to testify in a patent suit, he was trapped by the entry of the USA into the war and remained in Brooklyn with his son until his death.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsNobel Prize for Physics (jointly with Marconi) 1909.Bibliography1874, "Assymetrical conduction of certain metal sulphides", Pogg. Annal. 153:556 (provides an account of the discovery of the crystal rectifier).1897, "On a method for the demonstration and study of currents varying with time", Wiedemann's Annalen 60:552 (his description of the cathode ray oscilloscope as a measuring tool).Further ReadingK.Schlesinger \& E.G.Ramberg, 1962, "Beamdeflection and photo-devices", Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 50, 991.KF -
7 Duddell, William du Bois
SUBJECT AREA: Electricity[br]b. 1872 Kensington, London, Englandd. 4 November 1917 London, England[br]English engineer, inventor of the first practical oscillograph.[br]After an education at the College of Stanislas, Cannes, Duddell served an apprenticeship with Davy Paxman of Colchester. Studying under Ayrton and Mather at the Central Technical College in South Kensington, he found the facilities for experimental work of exceptional value to him and remained there for some years. In 1897 Duddell produced a galvanometer which was sufficiently responsive to display an alternating-current wave-form. This instrument, with a coil carrying a mirror in the air gap of a powerful electromagnet, had a small periodic time. An oscillating mirror driven by a synchronous motor spread out the deflection on a time-scale. This development became the first commercial oscillograph and brought Duddell into prominence as a first-rate designer of special instruments. The Duddell oscillograph remained in use until after the Second World War, examples being used for recording short-circuit tests on high-power switchgear and other rapidly varying or transient phenomena. His next important work was to collaborate with Professor Marchant at Liverpool University to investigate the characteristics of the electric arc. This led to the suggestion that, coupled to a resonant circuit, the electric arc could form a generator of high-frequency currents. This arrangement was later developed by Poulson for wireless telegraphy. Duddell spent the last years of his life on government research as a member of the Admiralty Board of Inventions and Research and also of the Inventions Board of the Ministry of Munitions.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsCBE 1916. FRS 1907. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1912. President, Institution of Electrical Engineers 1912 and 1913.Bibliography1897, Electrician, 39:636–8 (describes his oscillograph). 5 March 1898, British patent no. 5,449 (the oscillograph).1899, with E.W.Marchant, "Experiments on alternate current arcs by aid of oscillograph", Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 28: 1–107.Further ReadingV.J.Phillips, 1987, Waveforms, Bristol (a comprehensive account).1945, "50 years of scientific instrument manufacture", Engineering, 159:461.GWBiographical history of technology > Duddell, William du Bois
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8 Haddy, Arthur Charles
[br]b. 16 May 1906 Newbury, Berkshire, Englandd. December 1989[br]English electronics engineer who developed Full Frequency Range Recording for the Decca Record Company and was instrumental in the development of stereo records.[br]He developed recording equipment for. the Crystallate Gramophone Company, becoming Chief Recording Engineer at Decca when Crystallate was taken over. Eventually he was made Technical Director of Decca Record Company Ltd, a position he held until 1980. The developments of good cutterheads accelerated due to contract work for the armed services during the Second World War, because an extended frequency range was needed. This necessitated the solution of the problem of surface noise, and the result became known publicly as the ffrr system. The experience gained enabled Haddy to pioneer European Long Play recording. Haddy started development of a practical stereo record system within the Decca group, and for economic reasons he eventually chose a solution developed outside his direct surveillance by Teldec. The foresight of Decca made the company an equal partner in the standards discussions during the late 1950s, when it was decided to use the American 45/45 system, which utilized the two side walls of the groove. The same foresight had led Decca to record their repertoire in stereo from 1954 in order to prepare for any commercialized distribution system. In 1967 Haddy also became responsible for cassette manufacture, which meant organizing the logistics of a tape-duplication plant.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsOBE 1976.BibliographyHaddy's patents are a good description of some of his technical achievements; for example: UK patent no. 770,465 (greater playing time from a record by changing the groove pitch); UK patent no. 807,301 (using feedback to linearize a cutterhead); UK patent no. 810,106 (two-channel by simultaneous vertical and lateral modulation).Further ReadingG.A.Briggs (ed.), 1961, Audio Biographies, Wharfedale Wireless Works, pp. 157–63. H.E.Roys, "The coming of stereo", Jour. AES 25 (10/11):824–7 (an appreciation of Haddy's role in the standardization of stereo recording).GB-N -
9 Jenkins, Charles Francis
[br]b. 1867 USAd. 1934 USA[br]American pioneer of motion pictures and television.[br]During the early years of the motion picture industry, Jenkins made many innovations, including the development in 1894 of his own projector, the "Phantoscope", which was widely used for a number of years. In the same year he also suggested the possibility of electrically transmitting pictures over a distance, an interest that led to a lifetime of experimentation. As a result of his engineering contributions to the practical realization of moving pictures, in 1915 the National Motion Picture Board of Trade asked him to chair a committee charged with establishing technical standards for the industry. This in turn led to his proposing the creation of a professional society for those engineers in the industry, and the following year the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (later to become the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) was formed, with Jenkins as its first President. Soon after this he began experiments with mechanical television, using both the Nipkow hole-spiral disc and a low-definition system of his own, based on rotating bevelled glass discs (his so-called "prismatic rings") and alkali-metal photocells. In the 1920s he gave many demonstrations of mechanical television, including a cable transmission of a crude silhouette of President Harding from Washington, DC, to Philadelphia in 1923 and a radio broadcast from Washington in 1928. The following year he formed the Jenkins Television Company to make television transmitters and receivers, but it soon went into debt and was acquired by the de Forest Company, from whom RCA later purchased the patents.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFirst President, Society of Motion Picture Engineers 1916.Bibliography1923, "Radio photographs, radio movies and radio vision", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 16:78.1923, "Recent progress in the transmission of motion pictures by radio", Transactions ofthe Society of Motion Picture Engineers 17:81.1925, "Radio movies", Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 21:7. 1930, "Television systems", Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 15:445. 1925. Vision by Radio.Further ReadingJ.H.Udelson, 1982, The Great Television Race: A History of the American Television Industry, 1925–41: University of Alabama Press.R.W.Hubbell, 1946, 4,000 Years of Television, London: G.Harrap \& Sons.1926. "The Jenkins system", Wireless World 18: 642 (contains a specific account of Jenkins's work).KFBiographical history of technology > Jenkins, Charles Francis
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10 Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew
[br]b. 25 March 1892 Kazan District, Russiad. 24 October 1980[br]Russian (naturalized American in 1932) electrical engineer responsible for the development of the professional tape recorder and the first commercially-successful video tape recorder (VTR).[br]Poniatoff was educated at the University of Kazan, the Imperial College in Moscow, and the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, gaining degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering. He was in Germany when the First World War broke out, but he managed to escape back to Russia, where he served as an Air Force pilot with the Imperial Russian Navy. During the Russian Revolution he was a pilot with the White Russian Forces, and escaped into China in 1920; there he found work as an assistant engineer in the Shanghai Power Company. In 1927 he immigrated to the USA, becoming a US citizen in 1932. He obtained a post in the research and development department of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, New York, and later at Dalmo Victor, San Carlos, California. During the Second World War he was involved in the development of airborne radar for the US Navy.In 1944, taking his initials to form the title, Poniatoff founded the AMPEX Corporation to manufacture components for the airborne radar developed at General Electric, but in 1946 he turned to the production of audio tape recorders developed from the German wartime Telefunken Magnetophon machine (the first tape recorder in the truest sense). In this he was supported by the entertainer Bing Crosby, who needed high-quality replay facilities for broadcasting purposes, and in 1947 he was able to offer a professional-quality product and the business prospered.With the rapid post-war boom in television broadcasting in the USA, a need soon arose for a video recorder to provide "time-shifting" of live TV programmes between the different US time zones. Many companies therefore endeavoured to produce a video tape recorder (VTR) using the same single-track, fixed-head, longitudinal-scan system used for audio, but the very much higher bandwidth required involved an unacceptably high tape-speed. AMPEX attempted to solve the problem by using twelve parallel tracks and a machine was demonstrated in 1952, but it proved unsatisfactory.The development team, which included Charles Ginsburg and Ray Dolby, then devised a four-head transverse-scan system in which a quadruplex head rotating at 14,400 rpm was made to scan across the width of a 2 in. (5 cm) tape with a tape-to-head speed of the order of 160 ft/sec (about 110 mph; 49 m/sec or 176 km/h) but with a longitudinal tape speed of only 15 in./sec (0.38 m/sec). In this way, acceptable picture quality was obtained with an acceptable tape consumption. Following a public demonstration on 14 April 1956, commercial produc-tion of studio-quality machines began to revolutionize the production and distribution of TV programmes, and the perfecting of time-base correctors which could stabilize the signal timing to a few nanoseconds made colour VTRs a practical proposition. However, AMPEX did not rest on its laurels and in the face of emerging competition from helical scan machines, where the tracks are laid diagonally on the tape, the company was able to demonstrate its own helical machine in 1957. Another development was the Videofile system, in which 250,000 pages of facsimile could be recorded on a single tape, offering a new means of archiving information. By 1986, quadruplex VTRs were obsolete, but Poniatoff's role in making television recording possible deserves a place in history.Poniatoff was President of AMPEX Corporation until 1955 and then became Chairman of the Board, a position he held until 1970.[br]Further ReadingA.Abrahamson, 1953, "A short history of television recording", Part I, JSMPTE 64:73; 1973, Part II, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 82:188 (provides a fuller background).Audio Biographies, 1961, ed. G.A.Briggs, Wharfedale Wireless Works, pp. 255–61 (contains a few personal details about Poniatoff's escape from Germany to join the Russian Navy).E.Larsen, 1971, A History of Invention.Charles Ginsburg, 1981, "The horse or the cowboy. Getting television on tape", Journal of the Royal Television Society 18:11 (a brief account of the AMPEX VTR story).KF / GB-NBiographical history of technology > Poniatoff, Alexander Mathew
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11 Poulsen, Valdemar
[br]b. 23 November 1869 Copenhagen, Denmarkd. 23 July 1942 Gentofte, Denmark[br]Danish engineer who developed practical magnetic recording and the arc generator for continuous radio waves.[br]From an early age he was absorbed by phenomena of physics to the exclusion of all other subjects, including mathematics. When choosing his subjects for the final three years in Borgedydskolen in Christianshavn (Copenhagen) before university, he opted for languages and history. At the University of Copenhagen he embarked on the study of medicine in 1889, but broke it off and was apprenticed to the machine firm of A/S Frichs Eftf. in Aarhus. He was employed between 1893 and 1899 as a mechanic and assistant in the laboratory of the Copenhagen Telephone Company KTAS. Eventually he advanced to be Head of the line fault department. This suited his desire for experiment and measurement perfectly. After the invention of the telegraphone in 1898, he left the laboratory and with responsible business people he created Aktieselskabet Telegrafonen, Patent Poulsen in order to develop it further, together with Peder Oluf Pedersen (1874– 1941). Pedersen brought with him the mathematical background which eventually led to his professorship in electronic engineering in 1922.The telegraphone was the basis for multinational industrial endeavours after it was demonstrated at the 1900 World's Exhibition in Paris. It must be said that its strength was also its weakness, because the telegraphone was unique in bringing sound recording and reproduction to the telephone field, but the lack of electronic amplifiers delayed its use outside this and the dictation fields (where headphones could be used) until the 1920s. However, commercial interest was great enough to provoke a number of court cases concerning patent infringement, in which Poulsen frequently figured as a witness.In 1903–4 Poulsen and Pedersen developed the arc generator for continuous radio waves which was used worldwide for radio transmitters in competition with Marconi's spark-generating system. The inspiration for this work came from the research by William Duddell on the musical arc. Whereas Duddell had proposed the use of the oscillations generated in his electric arc for telegraphy in his 1901 UK patent, Poulsen contributed a chamber of hydrogen and a transverse magnetic field which increased the efficiency remarkably. He filed patent applications on these constructions from 1902 and the first publication in a scientific forum took place at the International Electrical Congress in St Louis, Missouri, in 1904.In order to use continuous waves efficiently (the high frequency constituted a carrier), Poulsen developed both a modulator for telegraphy and a detector for the carrier wave. The modulator was such that even the more primitive spark-communication receivers could be used. Later Poulsen and Pedersen developed frequency-shift keying.The Amalgamated Radio-Telegraph Company Ltd was launched in London in 1906, combining the developments of Poulsen and those of De Forest Wireless Telegraph Syndicate. Poulsen contributed his English and American patents. When this company was liquidated in 1908, its assets were taken over by Det Kontinentale Syndikat for Poulsen Radio Telegrafi, A/S in Copenhagen (liquidated 1930–1). Some of the patents had been sold to C.Lorenz AG in Berlin, which was very active.The arc transmitting system was in use worldwide from about 1910 to 1925, and the power increased from 12 kW to 1,000 kW. In 1921 an exceptional transmitter rated at 1,800 kW was erected on Java for communications with the Netherlands. More than one thousand installations had been in use worldwide. The competing systems were initially spark transmitters (Marconi) and later rotary converters ( Westinghouse). Similar power was available from valve transmitters only much later.From c. 1912 Poulsen did not contribute actively to further development. He led a life as a well-respected engineer and scientist and served on several committees. He had his private laboratory and made experiments in the composition of matter and certain resonance phenomena; however, nothing was published. It has recently been suggested that Poulsen could not have been unaware of Oberlin Smith's work and publication in 1888, but his extreme honesty in technical matters indicates that his development was indeed independent. In the case of the arc generator, Poulsen was always extremely frank about the inspiration he gained from earlier developers' work.[br]Bibliography1899, British patent no. 8,961 (the first British telegraphone patent). 1903, British patent no. 15,599 (the first British arc-genera tor patent).His scientific publications are few, but fundamental accounts of his contribution are: 1900, "Das Telegraphon", Ann. d. Physik 3:754–60; 1904, "System for producing continuous oscillations", Trans. Int. El. Congr. St. Louis, Vol. II, pp. 963–71.Further ReadingA.Larsen, 1950, Telegrafonen og den Traadløse, Ingeniørvidenskabelige Skrifter no. 2, Copenhagen (provides a very complete, although somewhat confusing, account of Poulsen's contributions; a list of his patents is given on pp. 285–93).F.K.Engel, 1990, Documents on the Invention of Magnetic Re cor ding in 1878, New York: Audio Engineering Society, reprint no. 2,914 (G2) (it is here that doubt is expressed about whether Poulsen's ideas were developed independently).GB-N -
12 Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander
[br]b. 13 April 1892 Brechin, Angus, Scotlandd. 6 December 1973 Inverness, Scotland[br]Scottish engineer and scientific adviser known for his work on radar.[br]Following education at Brechin High School, Watson-Watt entered University College, Dundee (then a part of the University of St Andrews), obtaining a BSc in engineering in 1912. From 1912 until 1921 he was Assistant to the Professor of Natural Philosophy at St Andrews, but during the First World War he also held various posts in the Meteorological Office. During. this time, in 1916 he proposed the use of cathode ray oscillographs for radio-direction-finding displays. He joined the newly formed Radio Research Station at Slough when it was opened in 1924, and 3 years later, when it amalgamated with the Radio Section of the National Physical Laboratory, he became Superintendent at Slough. At this time he proposed the name "ionosphere" for the ionized layer in the upper atmosphere. With E.V. Appleton and J.F.Herd he developed the "squegger" hard-valve transformer-coupled timebase and with the latter devised a direction-finding radio-goniometer.In 1933 he was asked to investigate possible aircraft counter-measures. He soon showed that it was impossible to make the wished-for radio "death-ray", but had the idea of using the detection of reflected radio-waves as a means of monitoring the approach of enemy aircraft. With six assistants he developed this idea and constructed an experimental system of radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) in which arrays of aerials were used to detect the reflected signals and deduce the bearing and height. To realize a practical system, in September 1936 he was appointed Director of the Bawdsey Research Station near Felixstowe and carried out operational studies of radar. The result was that within two years the East Coast of the British Isles was equipped with a network of radar transmitters and receivers working in the 7–14 metre band—the so-called "chain-home" system—which did so much to assist the efficient deployment of RAF Fighter Command against German bombing raids on Britain in the early years of the Second World War.In 1938 he moved to the Air Ministry as Director of Communications Development, becoming Scientific Adviser to the Air Ministry and Ministry of Aircraft Production in 1940, then Deputy Chairman of the War Cabinet Radio Board in 1943. After the war he set up Sir Robert Watson-Watt \& Partners, an industrial consultant firm. He then spent some years in relative retirement in Canada, but returned to Scotland before his death.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1942. CBE 1941. FRS 1941. US Medal of Merit 1946. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1948. Franklin Institute Elliot Cresson Medal 1957. LLD St Andrews 1943. At various times: President, Royal Meteorological Society, Institute of Navigation and Institute of Professional Civil Servants; Vice-President, American Institute of Radio Engineers.Bibliography1923, with E.V.Appleton \& J.F.Herd, British patent no. 235,254 (for the "squegger"). 1926, with J.F.Herd, "An instantaneous direction reading radio goniometer", Journal ofthe Institution of Electrical Engineers 64:611.1933, The Cathode Ray Oscillograph in Radio Research.1935, Through the Weather Hours (autobiography).1936, "Polarisation errors in direction finders", Wireless Engineer 13:3. 1958, Three Steps to Victory.1959, The Pulse of Radar.1961, Man's Means to his End.Further ReadingS.S.Swords, 1986, Technical History of the Beginnings of Radar, Stevenage: Peter Peregrinus.KFBiographical history of technology > Watson-Watt, Sir Robert Alexander
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13 Wilkes, Maurice Vincent
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 26 June 1913 Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England[br]English physicist who was jointly responsible for the construction of the EDS AC computer.[br]Educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Stourbridge, where he began to make radio sets and read Wireless World, Wilkes went to St John's College, Cambridge, in 1931, graduating as a Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos in 1934. He then carried out research at the Cavendish Laboratory, becoming a demonstrator in 1937. During the Second World War he worked on radar, differential analysers and operational research at the Bawdsey Research Station and other air-defence establishments. In 1945 he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer and as Acting Director of the Mathematical (later Computer) Laboratory, serving as Director from 1946 to 1970.During the late 1940s, following visits to the USA for computer courses and to see the ENIAC computer, with the collaboration of colleagues he constructed the Cambridge University digital computer EDSAC (for Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Computer), using ultrasonic delay lines for data storage. In the mid-1950s a second machine, EDSAC2, was constructed using a magnetic-core memory. In 1965 he became Professor of Computer Technology. After retirement he worked for the Digital Electronic Corporation (DEC) from 1981 to 1986, serving also as Adjunct Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1981 to 1985. In 1990 he became a research strategy consultant to the Olivetti Research Directorate.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsFRS 1956. First President, British Computer Society 1957–60. Honorary DSc Munich 1978, Bath 1987. Honorary DTech Linkoping 1975. FEng 1976. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1981.Bibliography1948, "The design of a practical high-speed computing machine", Proceedings of the Royal Society A195:274 (describes EDSAC).1949, Oscillation of the Earth's Atmosphere.1951, Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Computer, New York: Addison-Wesley.1956, Automatic Digital Computers, London: Methuen. 1966, A Short Introduction to Numerical Analysis.1968, Time-Sharing Computer Systems: McDonald \& Jane's.1979, The Cambridge CAP Computer and its Operating System: H.Holland.1985, Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (autobiography).Further ReadingB.Randell (ed.), 1973, The Origins of Digital Computers, Berlin: Springer-Verlag.KFBiographical history of technology > Wilkes, Maurice Vincent
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14 Williams, Sir Frederic Calland
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 26 June 1911 Stockport, Cheshire, Englandd. 11 August 1977 Prestbury, Cheshire, England[br]English electrical engineer who invented the Williams storage cathode ray tube, which was extensively used worldwide as a data memory in the first digital computers.[br]Following education at Stockport Grammar School, Williams entered Manchester University in 1929, gaining his BSc in 1932 and MSc in 1933. After a short time as a college apprentice with Metropolitan Vickers, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study for a DPhil, which he was awarded in 1936. He returned to Manchester University that year as an assistant lecturer, gaining his DSc in 1939. Following the outbreak of the Second World War he worked for the Scientific Civil Service, initially at the Bawdsey Research Station and then at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern, Worcestershire. There he was involved in research on non-incandescent amplifiers and diode rectifiers and the development of the first practical radar system capable of identifying friendly aircraft. Later in the war, he devised an automatic radar system suitable for use by fighter aircraft.After the war he resumed his academic career at Manchester, becoming Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the University Electrotechnical Laboratory in 1946. In the same year he succeeded in developing a data-memory device based on the cathode ray tube, in which the information was stored and read by electron-beam scanning of a charge-retaining target. The Williams storage tube, as it became known, not only found obvious later use as a means of storing single-frame, still television images but proved to be a vital component of the pioneering Manchester University MkI digital computer. Because it enabled both data and program instructions to be stored in the computer, it was soon used worldwide in the development of the early stored-program computers.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1976. OBE 1945. CBE 1961. FRS 1950. Hon. DSc Durham 1964, Sussex 1971, Wales 1971. First Royal Society of Arts Benjamin Franklin Medal 1957. City of Philadelphia John Scott Award 1960. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1963. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1972. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Pioneer Award 1973.BibliographyWilliams contributed papers to many scientific journals, including Proceedings of the Royal Society, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Wireless Engineer, Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal. Note especially: 1948, with J.Kilburn, "Electronic digital computers", Nature 162:487; 1949, with J.Kilburn, "A storage system for use with binary digital computing machines", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 96:81; 1975, "Early computers at Manchester University", Radio \& Electronic Engineer 45:327. Williams also collaborated in the writing of vols 19 and 20 of the MIT RadiationLaboratory Series.Further ReadingB.Randell, 1973, The Origins of Digital Computers, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. M.R.Williams, 1985, A History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall. See also: Stibitz, George R.; Strachey, Christopher.KFBiographical history of technology > Williams, Sir Frederic Calland
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