Sixty five years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper by Haraden Pratt on an aircraft radio beacon. By the time his paper was published, he was an engineer with Mackay Radio and Telegraphy Company of New York City, but he had worked at the National Bureau of Standards when the beacon system was under development. In addition to his technical contributions to radio, Pratt served the IRE and the IEEE in various capacities for more than forty year. (more…)

Sixty years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a classic paper on the theory of vacuum-tube amplifiers by Hendrik van der Bijl. At the time, he was in the laboratory of the Western Electric Company, the manufacturing unit of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. His paper disclosed some of the important work dealing with the design of vacuum-tube triodes which he had accomplished since joining Western Electric in 1913. Van der Bijl pointed out that the vacuum tube deserved much of the credit for the “recent rather remarkable developments in the art of radio communication.” He outlined a theory based on a fundamental equation which gave the plate current as a function of plate and grid voltages and the structural parameters of the tube. He observed that it would be quite difficult to achieve satisfactory operation of electronic devices “without an explicit mathematical formulation of the operation.” (more…)

Eighty five years ago this month, Lewis B. Stillwell, an eminent consulting engineer, spoke on the subject of “electricity and the conservation of energy” at a joint meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) and three other national engineering societies. According to Stillwell, conservation meant “utilization without unnecessary waste” and, more broadly, it meant the development of natural resources, such as water, in such a way as to enhance or increase the resource. (more…)

Sixty years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper on Class C vacuum-tube amplifiers by William L. Everitt. At the time Everitt was teaching electrical engineering at Ohio State University. He is generally regarded as among the most outstanding engineering educators of the 20th century and was a recipient of the IRE Medal of Honor in 1954. (more…)

Sixty years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper on the iconoscope, described as part of an all-electronic television system being developed at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The author of the January 1934 paper was Vladimir K. Zworykin, a Russian immigrant and a prolific inventor, who received the Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award from the IRE in 1934 for his contributions to television. He was later to receive the IRE Medal of Honor in 1951 and the IRE established the annual Vladimir K. Zworykin Award in his honor in 1950 (continued by the IEEE to the present). (more…)

Seventy years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper on long-wave radio measurements by Harold H. Beverage and Harold O. Peterson. Both of the authors were in the Engineering Department of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and Beverage already was known for his invention of the wave antenna destined to be known as the “Beverage antenna. ” (more…)

The University of Illinois formed the honorary society, Eta Kappa Nu, in 1904. Its principal objective is to encourage excellence in electrical and computer engineering; and it conducts programs that reward leadership and good citizenship at both the student and alumni levels. Student chapters undertake numerous projects, including tutoring fellow students and participating in National Engineers Week with technical demonstrations and exhibits. Eta Kappa Nu also recognizes outstanding electrical and computer engineering student, faculty, career engineer and engineering manager accomplishments, irrespective of their Eta Kappa Nu membership. In recent years, it has developed programs and services in cooperation with the IEEE that can be of mutual benefit to members of both organizations. A college chapter invites undergrad and graduate students to join, based primarily on superior scholarship. They may also elect career engineers for “meritorious work in the profession and allied pursuits.” (more…)

Sixty years ago this month the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper by Frederick B. Llewellyn concerning the theory of vacuum tubes at ultrahigh frequencies. At the time he was employed as a research engineer at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. He began the paper by reviewing the history of the analytical theory of vacuum tubes at lower frequencies. He stated that designers of electronic circuits had relied on “cut and try” methods until the introduction of the theory of equivalent circuits by van der Bijl and others who showed that, for purposes of analysis, a vacuum-tube amplifier could be treated as a fictitious generator with an internal impedance determined from the static volt-ampere characteristics. Llewellyn continued that the key to the success of this method was in the separation of alternating and direct current components, with the equivalent circuit applying only to alternating currents. (more…)

Sixty years ago this month, the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INSTITUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included Karl Jansky’s classic paper reporting reception of “electromagnetic waves of an unknown origin” but believed to be from “some source outside the solar system.” Jansky, a research engineer with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, stated that he initially had detected the mysterious waves in 1931 and had continued with a “comprehensive study of them ” during 1932. He had used a slowly rotating directional antenna, a receiver tuned to 14.6 m, and a chart recorder to obtain data on the direction and intensity of the waves as a function of time. Analysis of the data led Jansky to conclude that “the waves come, not from the sun, but from a direction which remains constant throughout the year.” He noted that the waves seemed to come approximately from the direction of Sagittarius in the Milky Way although his system was not accurate enough to identify a specific source. (more…)

by Blaine McCormick and Paul Israel

Thomas Edison is remembered more as an inventive genius than as a businessman. Some may know he was granted more patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office than any other person, 1,093 patents to be exact. Fewer know that he also started over 100 businesses and partnerships, some of which survive to this day. Edison is known around the world for inventing a practical and commercially successful incandescent electric light bulb. However, Edison also invented (or helped invent) entire industries, including the electric, music, motion picture, and battery industries. We will look at how Edison succeeded as an inventor primarily because he was better than his competitors at marshaling the forces and institutions of business. (more…)