Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineering from the Past
Submitted by Bob Morrison, Editor

Copyright 1995 IEEE. Reprinted with permission from the IEEE publication, “Scanning the Past” which covers a reprint of an article appearing in the Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 83, No. 5, May 1995.

William D. Coolidge and Ductile Tungsten
Eighty-five years ago this month, William D. Coolidge presented a significant paper concerning the discovery of a new method of producing ductile tungsten at a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). The breakthrough which he reported had been achieved by a research team led by Coolidge at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, NY , and it was to have a major impact on production of electric lights, electronic tubes, and numerous other applications.

Coolidge was born in 1873 on a farm near Hudson, MA. He graduated in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1896 and spent a year as a laboratory assistant at MIT. He then accepted a graduate fellowship for study in Germany where he earned the Ph.D. in physics from the University of Leipzig in 1899. He then returned to MIT where he worked as a laboratory assistant to Prof. Arthur A. Noyes and did some teaching until 1905, when he joined the General Electric Research Laboratory. He soon began what proved to be a very difficult quest for a way to produce ductile tungsten suitable for filaments in incandescent lamps. He became assistant director of the Research Laboratory in 1908, and two years later, reported the successful outcome of the ductile tungsten project. (more…)

Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineering from the Past
Submitted by Bob Morrison, Editor

Copyright 1995 IEEE. Reprinted with permission from the IEEE publication, “Scanning the Past” which covers a reprint of an article appearing in the Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 83, No. 4, April 1995.

James K. Clapp
Sixty-five years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper on antenna-measuring instrumentation by James K. Clapp. At the time he was employed as an engineer with the General Radio Company of Cambridge, MA, where he spent most of his professional career.

Clapp was born in December 1897 in Denver, CO. He worked for the American Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company during 1914-1916. He served in the United States Navy from 1917 to 1919 and worked briefly for the Radio Corporation of America in 1920. He graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts institute of Technology (MIT) in 1923 and earned an M.S. at MIT in 1926. He taught communications engineering at MIT from 1923-1928. Also, he served as radio editor for the Boston Evening Transcript and as chief engineer of the newspaper’s radio broadcasting station. In 1928 he joined the engineering staff of the General Radio Company and the following year published a Proceedings paper on short-wave radio experiments. One of his first assignments at General Radio was to develop a commercial quartz crystal frequency standard.

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