This paper presents the life of Vladimir K. Zworykin and his contributions to the concept and development of electronic apparatus basic to modern television.

In 1930, The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) selected Peder O. Pedersen as the recipient of its Medal of Honor. He had become well known for his contributions to the development of the Poulsen arc system for wireless telegraphy and telephony. He also was a leader in engineering education in Denmark. He had become a Fellow of the IRE in 1915 and authored several papers published by the Proceedin...

In 1928, the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) selected Jonathan Zenneck as the recipient of its Medal of Honor. He was cited for "his contribution to original researches in radio circuit performance and to the scientific and educational contributions to the literature of the pioneer radio art." His research interests included cathode-ray tube instruments, coupled resonant circuits, and directive antennas. He also performed experimental and theoretical investigations of electric wave propagation over land and water surfaces. He authored about 200 technical papers and two influential books on electric waves and wireless communication. He became a Fellow of the IRE in 1914.

In 1924, the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) selected Michael I. Pupin as the seventh recipient of its Medal of Honor. He was cited for his "fundamental contributions in the field of electrical tuning and the rectification of alternating currents used for signaling purposes". An influential electrical engineering educator and inventor, he had served as the president of the IRE in 1917 and had received the Edison Medal from the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in 1920. He also received the Pulitzer Prize in 1924 for his autobiography entitled From Immigrant to Inventor and served as president of the AIEE in 1925. His pioneering work on the so-called loading coil used in telephony brought him considerable fame and financial rewards. He was a mentor of such well-known pioneers in radioelectronics as Alfred N. Goldsmith and Edwin H. Armstrong.

In 1926, the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) awarded its Medal of Honor to Greenleaf Whittier Pickard. The award was in recognition of his contributions to research on crystal detectors, antennas, wave propagation, and noise suppression. During his long career, he was a leader in the creation of the radio engineering profession and a prolific author of research papers published in the Proceedings of the IEEE. He served as the second president of the IRE during 1913.

In 1918, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) selected Benjamin Garver Lamme as the recipient of the Edison Medal. He was honored for his contributions to the design of electrical machinery. By then, he had been Chief Engineer of the Westinghouse Electric Company since 1903 and had earned a reputation as one of the foremost electrical power engineers of his generation.

Alexander Graham Bell was born 3 March 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1914, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) selected Alexander Graham Bell as the sixth recipient of the Edison Medal. He was the first to receive the award because of his contributions to electrical communication rather than to electric power. His strategic telephone patents led to the organization of a large industrial corporation, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which enjoyed a virtual monopoly on telephony in the United States for more than a century. The telephone evolved from a scientific curiosity when it first was invented into a vital communication system affecting business management, international relations, and the everyday lives of individuals.

Presents a biography of Fessenden and his contribution to radio broadcasting and science, during the period from the late 1870s up to his death in 1932.

This paper presents achievements and contributions of William D. Coolidge in the field of electrotechnology. Coolidge discovered a new method of producing ductile tungsten by a combination of reducing impurities and carefully controlled mechanical working. He also became known for his contribution to the development of improved X-ray tube and vacuum tube electronics. During the first world war, he...

The author gives a brief review of the life and work of Charles LeGeyt Fortescue with particular reference to his 1918 paper on the "Method of Symmetrical Co-Ordinates Applied to the Solution of Polyphase Networks" which grew out of his investigations of problems related to railway electrification, which began in 1913. As a postlude to the author's article, the paper presents Fortescue's own writi...

Charles F. Scott was President of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) from 1902-3. Already well known to the power engineering community for his invention of the Scott transformer connection and his investigation of high voltage transmission, he undertook a number of significant initiatives during his tenure as AIEE president. These were intended to enhance the status of electric...

Viewed from the perspective of an observer who has lived through nearly seven decades of the twentieth century, the diversity and pervasiveness of electrical and electronics applications have been a source of continual astonishment. Electrical engineers, scientists, and inventors have served as principal agents of change and seem destined to remain so in the twenty-first century. In 1831, just a century before I was born, the eminent English electrical scientist Michael Faraday (Fig. 1) reported his discovery of electromagnetic induction and the great Scottish theorist James C. Maxwell was born. The Faraday phenomenon became a cornerstone of electromagnetic science and led to the invention of the electric dynamo and the transformer which became and still remain vital elements in systems for the generation and distribution of electric energy. Alexander G. Bell’s (Fig. 2) telephone, introduced in the 1870’s, was another major invention based on electromagnetic induction. Maxwell’s famous synthesis, first published in the 1860’s, was expressed succinctly in his electromagnetic field equations. His theory provided a satisfying interpretation of diverse phenomena including electromagnetic wave propagation and found an early technological expression in Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless communication system in the 1890’s. The twentieth century has seen a steady development of several clusters of electrotechnology, most notably in the fields of power and control, communication, and computing. Electric energy with its remarkable flexibility has become ubiquitous in industry, transportation, and the home. Electric motors have become so prevalent in everyday life as to be taken for granted, except when they fail to operate properly. In the communications cluster, a sequence of systems has emerged beginning with wire telephony and followed by radio, television, radar, and wireless personal communication. The growth in these systems has been facilitated greatly by a dramatic extension of the boundaries of the useful electromagnetic spectrum by means of the broadband coaxial cable technology, microwave devices, and, more recently, optical fiber and lasers. The creation of communications satellites and the explosive expansion of internet usage are the latest chapters in the ongoing saga with social, cultural, and economic consequences which are still poorly understood.

Eighty-five years ago this month, H. D. Arnold (Fig. 1) awaited the results of field trials of a high-vacuum amplifier that he had designed for use as a repeater of long-distance telephony. He was at the time employed as a research engineer by the Western Electric Company and later would serve as research director at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. He was an early leader in the formulation of design principles for vacuum tubes and electronic circuits as they revolutionized both wire and wireless communication. He also initiated and participated in important research on speech and music and their reproduction by electronic means. Arnold was born in 1883 in Woodstock, CT, and graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, in 1906. He received the M.S. degree from Wesleyan in 1907 and the doctorate degree in physics from the University of Chicago, IL, in 1911. His mentor at Chicago was R. A. Millikan, known especially for his precision measurement of the charge of an electron using an oil-drop method. It was on Millikan’s recommendation that Arnold joined the staff of the Engineering Department at Western Electric early in 1911. Millikan wrote that Arnold was “one of the ablest men whose research work I have ever directed and had in class.” Arnold arrived just in time to participate in an urgent effort to devise a repeater needed for use in a planned transcontinental telephone circuit. Initially, Arnold experimented with a mercury-vapor discharge tube that produced some amplification in the laboratory (Fig. 2) but that proved unsuitable for commercial service. His interest turned to the three-electrode electronic tube when he observed a demonstration of the de Forest audion in October 1913. Convinced that a better vacuum would enhance performance, he employed a newly acquired Gaede molecular pump from Germany to produce a highvacuum triode that worked quite well. He also tested oxide-coated filaments and found that they produced good emission at lower temperatures than required by metallic filaments. Impressed by Arnold’s results, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) purchased the patent rights to the de Forest audion and began field tests of repeaters (Fig. 3) with the Arnold improvements in the fall of 1913. During the summer of 1914, vacuum-tube repeaters were employed in successful telephone com-

Silvanus P. Thompson (Fig. 1) was an eminent British electrical engineer of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries who authored widely used textbooks as well as biographies of contributors to electrical science and technology. His public lectures on topics in electrotechnology attracted large audiences and helped to increase interest in the developing field. His books were used in teaching electrical engineering in the United States, as well as in Britain and other countries, and he achieved the unusual distinction of being elected an Honorary Member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in 1914. Thompson, the son of a schoolmaster, was born in 1851 in York, England, and he received the B.A. degree from London University in 1869. He served as Master of Bootham School, York, England, from 1870 to 1875, when he completed requirements for the B.S. degree in physics from London University in 1875. Subsequently, he studied for a year at the Royal School of Mines and spent a semester at Heidelberg University in Germany. In 1876, he became a Lecturer in Physics at University College in Bristol, and after two years he was appointed Professor of Experimental Physics at the same school. He received the Ph.D. degree in science from University College, London, in 1878 and published his first book, Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, in 1881. During the fall of 1882, Thompson gave a lecture series on electric dynamos at the Royal Society of Arts. He published an expanded version of the lectures as a book entitled Dynamo-Electric Machinery in 1884. He included chapters on the algebraic and geometrical theories of dynamos along with information on machines produced by various manufacturers. The illustrations (Fig. 2) provide excellent examples of late-nineteenth-century engineering graphics. The book became a popular textbook and was published in seven editions during the next 20 years, as well as being translated into both French and German editions. In 1885, Thompson became Principal and Professor of Applied Physics and Electricity at the City of Guilds of London Technical College in Finsbury, where he spent the rest of his career. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1891, and during that same year he served as an Honorary Chairman of an electrical exhibition held in Frankfurt, Germany. A highlight of the Frankfurt