VIDEO INTEIRO DO PROJETO ICARO - CRAM

Pessoal não deixem de acessar o site da CRAM e assistir a cobertura completa de filmagem do projeto ICARO, projeto esse em parceria com o IPMET, CPMET, vale a pena assistir, Julio RCP

DIA INTERNACIONAL DO RADIOAMADOR

O RADIO CLUBE DE PELOTAS AVISA QUE NÃO DEVEMOS ESQUECER QUE DIA 18 DE ABRIL COMEMORAMOS O DIA INTERNACIONAL DO RADIOAMADOR JUNTAMENTE COM O ANIVERSÁRIO DE FUNDAÇÃO DA  
 UNIÃO INTERNACIONAL DE RADIOAMADORES A ( I.A.R.U. )

PROJETO ÍCARO

ESTE PROJETO É INTERESSANTÍSSIMO, APRONTEM SEUS RECEPTORES E APONTEM SUAS ANTENAS, QUEM SABE CAPTAMOS ALGUM SINAL, BOA ESCUTA.

Projeto ÍCARO - Introdução ao Conhecimento da Atmosfera pelos RadiOamadores

Resumo:

Um balão meteorológico será lançado a partir do Instituto de Pesquisas
Meteorológicas da UNESP (campus de Bauru) e transportará, até a altitude de
aproximadamente 25km, uma radiossonda e um beacon em fonia (transmissor de
voz), com o indicativo especial ZW2WEB. A radiossonda transmitirá para uma
estação receptora de dados meteorológicos os valores de pressão, temperatura,
umidade, velocidade, direção do vento e posicionamento. Em terra, uma estação
radioamadora fará o uplink dessas informações que serão retransmitidas pelo
beacon em fonia. Qualquer estação radioamadora ou de radioescuta, munida de um
receptor em VHF na frequência de 144,270 MHz será capaz de receber as
informações e montar um log com os dados meteorológicos e, com isso, será
capaz de identificar duas camadas da atmosfera e a transição entre elas:
troposfera, tropopausa e estratosfera.

Objetivos principais:

Apesar da transmissão de dados via fonia não ser eficiente, é o modo mais
simples para a disseminação de informações. O projeto Ícaro visa incentivar o
conhecimento da atmosfera, com a disseminação dos dados do voo e outras
informações, do modo mais abrangente, visando integrar e motivar a comunidade
radioamadora a buscar novos conhecimentos e a realizar novos experimentos.

Execução do Experimento:

O local será a partir do Instituto de Pesquisas Meteorológicas – IPMet, da
UNESP, campus de Bauru e está previsto para ser realizado no dia 28/04/2012 a
partir das 16h (19h GMT).

O lançamento do balão está sujeito às condições meteorológicas que devem ser
satisfeitas: sem chuva e com vento na superfície abaixo de 5 m/s. O balão será
inflado com hidrogênio e a taxa de subida deverá ser entre 4 a 5 m/s
(aproximadamente 1000 pés/minuto).

Nos dias que antecederem o lançamento, os meteorologistas do IPMet farão um
acompanhamento especial do desenvolvimento das condições meteorológicas e,
caso haja a impossibilidade de lançamento no dia previsto, uma nova data será
agendada. Caso a previsão meteorológica seja favorável ao lançamento, será
realizada uma reunião a aproximadamente 6 horas antes do horário previsto do
lançamento para uma melhor avaliação das condições meteorológicas, com uma
especial atenção à previsão dos ventos de superfície.

Satisfeitas as condições meteorológicas, o horário exato do lançamento será
determinado mediante coordenação com a autoridade de controle aéreo local (APP
Bauru) e com acompanhamento pelo CINDACTA II durante todo o voo.

Caso haja algum imprevisto de ordem meteorológico ou técnico, o lançamento
poderá ser adiado para mais tarde ou para o dia seguinte. No caso de ainda não
ser possível o lançamento, uma nova data será definida.

Além da radiossonda e do beacon, o vôo contará com paraquedas, refletor de
radar passivo e sinalização luminosa (flash de xenônio).

Participação no experimento:

A participação no experimento Ícaro será homologada com um certificado de
participação (QSL) comemorativo a ser enviado a todas as estações de
radioamadores ou radioescutas que reportarem o recebimento de, pelo menos, uma
das transmissões feitas pela estação ZW2WEB, com o envio das seguintes
informações mínimas:

-Local da estação receptora (QTH);
-Hora (QTR);
-Tipo de rádio e antena utilizados
-Reportagem do sinal (intensidade e qualidade da recepção)
-Informação recebida (Localização do balão, pressão, temperatura, umidade,
etc)

É interessante, se possível, que a estação participante reporte quando começou
a receber os dados do experimento e quando parou de receber para se ter uma
ideia do alcance do beacon em função da altitude do balão.

As informações poderão ser enviadas via correio para:

IPMet – UNESP
A/C: Projeto Ícaro
Caixa Postal: 281
Bauru – SP
CEP: 17015-970

Ou via e-mail para:
pu2tmt@gmail.com (Irineu)

Serviço:

Mais informações sobre o vôo, sobre a atmosfera e todos os dados os dados do
experimento serão disponibilizados em um link dedicado ao projeto Ícaro na
página do IPMet:

http://www.ipmet.unesp..br

http://www.ipmet.unesp.br/icaro (em implantação)

Prefixo Especial : ZW2WEB
Frequência: 144,270MHz
Data de lançamento prevista: 28/04/2012 após às 16:00h
Local: Instituto de Pesquisas Meteorológicas – IPMet / Câmpus da UNESP de
Bauru
Duração estimada do vôo: 180 minutos (1h30)

Responsáveis:

Coordenação científica, lançamento, resgate e coordenação com controle aéreo:
Demilson Quintão (PY2UEP)
Coordenação Radioamadorística: Edson Wander Pereira (PU2MWD)
Execução do experimento (beacon e antenas): William Schauff (PY2GN)
Fonia (Beacon) e Integração com Grupos Escoteiros : Irineu (PU2TMT)
Divulgação na Mídia Radioamadorística: Adinei Brochi (PY2ADN)

CONCURSO INTERCONTINENTAL DE TELEGRAFIA

NÃO DEIXE DE PARTICIPAR DO:

CQMM DX CONTEST

CQ MANCHESTER MINEIRA DX CONTEST

REGULAMENTO NO ENDEREÇO:                                                                                   www.cqmmdx.com/wp-content/files/CQMM-2012-Portugues.pdf 

DIAS 21 E 22 DE ABRIL - PRÓXIMO SÁBADO E DOMINGO

 *******************  YURI GAGARIN CONTESTE  *********************
                                             SOMENTE TELEGRAFIA

TEXTO EXTRAIDO DO QST RÚSSIA  ( http://gc.qst.ru/en/section/32 )

Contest Rules

The Yuri Gagarin International DX Contest 2012

The contest is dedicated to the memory of Yuri Gagarin, who realized the first human flight to space, on April 12, 1961.

RULES

1. Date: from 21.00 UTC on April 14th till 21.00 UTC on April 15th, 2012.
Stations of categories A, B and D may operate 20 of the 24 hours.
Off times must be a minimum of 60 minutes during which no QSO is logged.
2. Bands: 1.8, 3.5, 7.0, 14, 21, 28 MHz and radio amateur satellites.
3. Modes: CW only.
4. Contest Call: <CQ GC> (CQ Gagarin Cup).
5. Categories:
A    Single operator - Single band.
B    Single operator - Multi bands.
C    Multi operators - Multi bands, single transmitter.
D    SWL - Multi bands.
During the contest:
All multi-band categories may also utilize radio amateur satellites. These QSOs are counted as an additional band.
Categorie C must remain on the same band for at least 5 minutes after the first QSO has been made.
Categories A, B and C can make only one QSO with the same station on that band.
6. Exchange: RST and ITU zone number.
7. QSO points:
QSO with own <P-150-C> country count 2 points.
QSO with a different <P-150-C> country in the same continent - 3 points.
QSO with a different continent - 4 points.
Satellite`s QSO - 100 poins.
QSO points on:
1.8  MHz and 3.5MHz multiplied by 3;
7 MHz - 2;
14, 21 and 28 MHz - 1.
For SWL:  Complete logging of one station only the callsign of the second station count 1 point. Complete logging of both sides of  a QSO - 3 points. The same callsign may be logged only 1 time on each band.
8. Multipliers: each different ITU zone, QSO with radioamateurs stations: R3K, RS3A, RT3F and UP7Z worked on each band gives 1 point for multiplier. SWLs have no multipliers.
9. Final score:
The total number of QSO points on all bands times the total number of multipliers worked on all bands.
10. Awards: The Special trophy will be awarded to the winner in the B & C categories.
Different kind of medals will be awarded to the world's top three scoring stations in the A, B, C and D categories.
Certificates will be awarded to top three and each country's winner in each category.
Certificates will be awarded to all the Contest participants who log not less than 250 QSOs or 250 SWLs.
11. Logs:
Electronic logs are to be sent via e-mail as the enclosure to the letter. File format - text of the operator's contest program but Cabrillo format will be much appreciated.
In the field "subject" of your e-mail letter it is necessary to mention your callsign and category (for example - ra3aaa B). In the text of the letter it is necessary to show your final score
calculation, rig and antennas data, as well as your comments and wishes.
E-mail address: gc12(at)bk(dot)ru
The final date of logs sending - May 15, 2012.
The results of <Gagarin Cup> are to the http://gc.qst.ru and http://www.qrz.ru/contest/

Este artigo foi copiado na integra, retirado de " microwaves101.com " no qual cita o feito de Landell de Moura por sua contribuição a sociedade.

Microwave Hall of Fame
Part I

Updated July 5, 2011

Isn't about time that the word "Hall of Fame" gets applied to people that actually contributed something to society, rather than overpaid people that do nothing but sing or play ball? Here's an introduction to some of the innovators upon whose broad shoulders you stand when you work in the microwave industry: famous engineers, mathematicians and scientists that provided the foundations for the microwave industry.
If you want to nominate a Microwave God to this humble hall of fame, send info to Microwaves101.com and you will win a free pen knife if he (or perhaps she?) makes the cut. There is room for an unlimited number of inductees, so start shooting them in. No microwave managers please!
On this page, you'll find the classics--most of these guys you should know for their contributions to electrical engineering as a whole. History-makers around WWII have their own page, and modern-day geniuses now have a page to call their own. Check them all out!

Go on to the second page of the Microwave Hall of Fame.
Go on to the third page of the Microwave Hall of Fame.
Go to our main microwave history page.

Long before any study of microwaves occurred, Scotsman John Napier, born in 1550, developed the theory of logarithms, in order to eliminate the frustration of hand calculations of division, multiplication, squares, etc. We use logarithms every day in microwaves when we refer to the decibel. His "numbering rods", constructed of ivory, became known as "Napier's Bones", and comprised the world's first slide rule. Some of his neighbors suggested that he was in league with the powers of darkness... a trait that has often been associated with successful microwave engineering! The Neper, a unitless quantity for dealing with ratios, is named after John Napier.

Microwave antennas often use a Cassegrain reflector. Not much is known about Laurent Cassegrain, a Catholic Priest in Chartre, France, who in 1672 reportedly submitted a manuscript on a new type of reflecting telescope that bears his name. The key features are a secondary convex mirror suspended above the primary concave mirror, that focusses light into the eyepiece which is located in a hole in the primary mirror. The Cassegrain antenna is an an adaptation of the telescope.

Lazzaro Spallanzani, born in 1727 in Italy, had a huge influence on many of the physical sciences, which is even more remarkable because he was an ordained Jesuit priest. Here in the Microwave Hall of fame, Spallanzani is remembered because his Lettere sul volo dei pipistrelli acciecati, published in 1794, recorded correspondence about his experiments on the remarkable sense of direction of bats. Bats use sonar to move about in the dark, which some might argue was the inspiration for radar.

Alessandro Volta was born in Italy 1745. Volta was the first one to ask and answer the question, "if I stack a bunch of dissimilar metals such as zinc and silver in salt water, can I make some cool sparks if I connect it with this newfangled invention called "wire"?" This represented the development of the voltaic pile, the first wet-cell battery, which was the power source for all early experimentation in electricity. The emperor of Austria made Volta director of the philosophical faculty at the University of Padua in 1815 for this fine work. His name is presently used more than any other person in this Hall of Fame, in our estimation, because the units of electromotive force (Volts) are named in his honor. Volta died in 1827. Nominated by Arne Lüker.

Hans Christian Oersted was born in 1777 in Denmark, and was a lifelong academic specializing in the physical sciences, as well as an amateur philosopher, a follower of Kant. Oersted's discovery in 1820 that an electric current would deflect a compass needle was the first proof that electricity and magnetism are like beautiful twin sisters Mary-Kate and Ashley Olson, irresistible to engineers, and always touching each other! The unit of magnetic field strength was named the Oersted in his honor. One of Denmark's greatest thinkers, Oersted founded the Polytechnical Institute in Copenhagen in 1829, which is now known as the Technical University of Denmark.

Also born in 1777 was Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss. Born in Braunschweig, Germany, Gauss is regarded by many as the most prominent mathematicianever. His numbers work is too numerous to even be listed here and much of it seems esoteric to engineers, such as his solution to circumscribing a 17-sided polygon inside a circle. (This is what he wanted on his grave stone)! He also proved that any integer can be expressed as the sum of no more that three triangular numbers, not something that you might use ever day. His name is used every day in discussions of probability theory (Gaussian distribution). He also was a major contributor to physical sciences, inventing the heliotrope (for measuring long distances using sunlight) and developed accurate methods for measuring terrestrial magnetism. He helped install a telegraph system in Europe, at the same time accomplished painter Samuel Morse was working on his system in the United States. Let's not forget Maxwell's equations includes two that are derived from Gauss (magnetic and electric induction). The CGS unit of electromagnetic induction is the "Gauss", in his honor. Gauss died in 1855.

Georg Simon Ohm was born in Erlangen, Bavaria (a region of Germany), on March 16, 1787. Ohm's experimentation with voltage and direct current led him to the fundamental relationship that they are exactly proportional in a perfect conductor. Ohm's Law (V=IR) is as basic to the study of electronics, as Newton's Law (F=mA) is to classical physics. Ohm's Law applies at DC, where he measured it, and just as well at microwave frequencies. Semiconductors have been known to bend Ohm's law, but it took more than a century for this to happen. Ohm's idiot colleagues apparently dismissed his work, causing him both poverty and humiliation. He died in 1854, but his name is still used approximately one billion times each day! Nominated by Arne Lüker.

Michael Faraday, born in 1791, is credited as the discoverer of magneto-electric induction, the law of electrochemical decomposition, the magnetization of light, and diamagnetism, among many other contributions to chemistry and physics. He did his research at the Royal Academy at London, for a stipend of 300 quid per year from the British government! Faraday's name is immortalized in the Farad, the unit of capacitance.

Christian Andreas Doppler was born in Austria in 1803. Being too much of a pencil-neck for the family stonemason business, he learned mathematics at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute. His theory of the apparent shift in frequency when source or observer was in motion relative to the other was proved using musicians on trains and train platforms listening for what notes the others were playing. He correctly predicted that the concept would prove valuable in astronomy in determining celestial motion because of color shifts. Doppler radar is used everyday, by pesky police radars for one trivial example. He died young at age 49.

At the same time Faraday was working on EM theory, Princeton Professor Joseph Henry was also playing with large electromagnets, developing one that lifted 750 lbs., partly because he was the first person to consider source and load impedance matching to maximize power transfer. In his own words, one of Henry's experiments "illustrates most strikingly the reciprocal action of the two principles of electricity and magnetism". He was also the first curator or the Smithsonian Institute, and his work on self-induction is remembered today because the unit of inductance is the Henry. Henry lived a full life, from 1797 to 1878.

In 1873, country-boy misfit James Clerk Maxwell laid the foundations of modern electromagnetic theory in his work, "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" in Scotland, which he wrote as a retired college professor. Born in 1831, and nicknamed "Dafty" by his childhood peers, Maxwell theorized that, if combined, electrical and magnetic energy would be able to travel through space in a wave. If Maxwell were here today, he would be pleased to see his equations routinely solved many thousands of times per second by today's three-dimensional structural simulators using finite element analysis. Dr. James C. Rautio, founder of Sonnet Software, Inc. (one of our sponsors!), seems to have made the study of Maxwell a personal quest. He's a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE for 2005, and his talk entitled The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, is not to be missed, animated with at times with different voice impressions of 19th century Scotsmen (div ye ken?) You can download a copy of an excellent public-domain biography of Maxwell, written in 1882 by his friend Lewis Campbell, thanks to James Rautio, who personally scanned it into a pdf. Its tucked up under "products" on the Sonnet web site. For those of you that don't read much, it has some great contemporary pictures!

In June 1876, a U. S. patent was applied for: "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically… by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound." Three weeks later Alexander Graham Bell's famous sentence, "Watson, I want to see you", was spoken into the first telephone. The same month, Custer's army became human pincushions. Bell was born a Scot in 1847 and came to the "New World" by way of Canada, later settling in Boston. His portfolio of inventions is second to none, but his life's work was mainly centered on helping the deaf. The term bel (and decibel) was named by Bell Labs scientists to honor him. Bell thought the phone was too great a distraction, and refused to permit one in his study! Bell died in 1922.

By the 1880s, electrification of the world had begun, first for lighting, and just as important, for motors. In the United States, a huge rift developed between supporters of direct current systems (being deployed by Edison), and supporters of alternating current (to be deployed by Westinghouse). Eventually, Nikola Tesla proved to the world that alternating current and his polyphase system of generation, distribution and power delivery using the induction motor were the answer to long distance, reliable electrical distribution. New York City was wired with direct current for a time, and unreliable DC trolleys and their sparking commutators gave the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers baseball team (today's L. A. Dodgers) their name. During this time period, "Wizard of Menlo Park" Thomas Edison performed despicable acts on neighborhood pets to show the dangers of alternating current, and eventually arranged for the first prisoner execution on August 6, 1890, using (of course) alternating current. Convicted killer William Kemmler took eight minutes to die, even though the procedure had been tested on a horse the day before. To see the botched execution from the movie Green Mile, click here (fair warning, this is a truly ugly event). The late 1800s/early 1900s were certainly the most interesting of modern times for technology. You can read about this time period in books such as Tesla, Man out of Time, by Margaret Cheney.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz in his cabin near Schenectady. Looks like the museum incorrectly painted the replica table white! Steinmetz was a socialist, which is what brought him to the United States (he had to flee Germany after writing political essays). He was also an environmentalist, an anti-racist, a protagonist of electric cars to reduce pollution, and a big fan of cigars. He preferred to live in a camp near General Electric's Schenectady plant, using a canoe as his fair-weather office. He had 200 US patents.

Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865 - 1923) was a German-born mathematician measuring just four feet tall, but was giant of a technologist. For a time, he was the brains of the Edison Electric company. He realized the major benefit of alternating current over his boss's narrow-minded, DC approach, which is the ability to efficiently transform up and down in voltage so that power transmission could be performed at very high voltage at reduced loss. Edison was indeed a victim of his "not invented here" attitude. Through a merger orchestrated by railroad robber-baron J. P. Morgan between Edison Electric and Thomson Houston Electric Company of Lynn Massachusetts, Edison's name was removed from the combined company, General Electric. Although Tesla must be credited with inventing the induction motor which changed the world (due to its inherent, year-after-year reliability), Steinmetz was the first to provide a mathematical interpretation of how an electric motor worked, using the phasor concept. His work on hysteresis allowed motor designers to optimize motor efficiency without continuous tinkering with prototypes.

Edison might be spinning in his grave these days, as high-voltage DC transmission line haves made a comeback of sorts. Once the problem of up/down converting is solved (which is an expensive proposition), DC has two advantages over AC: lower peak voltage for the same power (less opportunities to arc), and the skin depth at DC is infinite. Every gram of copper in a DC transmission line is used to move power equally, this is not true for AC. Therefor DC has a loss advantage which can be appreciable for large diameter lines. Here's some info on HVDC power transmission lines.

In 1884, British physicist John Henry Poynting (1852-1914) published his description of the Poynting Theorem, which describes the vector that bears his name. The Poynting vector determines the direction and magnitude of electromagnetic radiation, and gave rise to what is known as the Right Hand Rule to determine power flow. Today, metamaterials routinely demonstrate lefthandedness, yet still obey Poynting's Theorem, even though he probably could not have envisioned this development. Among his other accomplishments, Poynting wrote a physics text book that was in print for 50 years!

Several years after Maxwell's famous treatise, German Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) conducted experiments that proved Maxwell's theories were correct. Hertz began testing these theories by using a high-voltage spark discharge (a source rich in high-frequency harmonics) to excite a half-wave dipole antenna. A receive antenna consisted of an adjustable loop of wire with another spark gap. When both transmit and receive antennas were adjusted for the same resonant frequency, Hertz was able to demonstrate propagation of electromagnetic waves. And thanks to Philip, we now have Mr. Hertz's correct photo!

In another experiment, Hertz used a coax line to show that electromagnetic waves propagated with a finite velocity, and he discovered basic transmission line effects such as the existence of nodes in a standing wave pattern a quarter wavelength from an open circuit and a half wavelength from a short circuit. He then went on to develop cylindrical parabolic reflectors for directional antennas, as well as a number of other radio frequency (RF) and microwave devices and techniques.

Others soon built on Hertz's work. In 1894, 20 year old Guglielmo Marconi began experiments in Italy sending a wireless signal using Morse code, at first for short distances, and ultimately thousands of miles. Marconi was the son of a wealthy Italian businessman and an Irish mother who was part of the Jameson family whose distilled products were (and are) well known. He had limited education and no formal training as engineer or scientist, just an idea that wireless communications would one day render the telegraph obsolete, and the wherewithal and family support to pursue his dream. Marconi brought together the "perfect storm" of engineering curiosity (notice we didn't say "scientific"), confidence, financing and ego that comes along once in a lifetime to rattle the establishment out of bed and change the world. His only equal today would be be Bill Gates.

Marconi faced resistance, resentment and reprisals from many well-known scientists of the era, and almost lost his personal fortune. His high-tech startup of the '90s, The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company (a U.K. company) was soon renamed Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company. This business began by installing company-owned and operated wireless communications onto ships to communicate with huge installations on key coastlines, while the founder pursued ground communications across the Atlantic. It is ironic that Marconi's methods of trial and error for tuning his equipment would have taken much longer if not for access to transatlantic cables owned by the telegraph companies his technology would compete with. Marconi received the Nobel physics prize of 1909 for his work, shared with German Ferdinand Braun. By 1911, "Marconigrams" had helped capture a famous murderer and in 1912 enabled the rescue of Titanic survivors. Marconi was the first experimenter to notice that transmission during daylight hours was more prone to noise than at night, which was later explained by Heaviside as due to the "Marconisphere" (now known as the ionosphere). Approximately 350 civilian Marconi wireless operators were killed at sea during the first World War, as the wireless shed was a crucial target for maritime marauders. Although Marconi was the singular force behind long distance wireless communications, he admitted he didn't really know how it all worked. Some years later the scientific community discovered that Marconi's idea that longer wavelengths would travel farther around the globe was incorrect, and Marconi's amazing 300,000 watt steam-powered spark gap transmitters, building-sized capacitor banks and multi-mile antenna elements were unnecessary at higher frequencies (short waves). Marconi died in 1937, to learn more about his life and that of murderer Harvey Crippen, go to our book page and order Thunderstruck. Marconi's company has long since has been chopped up and digested into BAE and Ericsson among others.

Father Landell de Moura is a little known pioneer of wireless transmission of voice. In 1900 he publicly demonstrated voice transmission while others were merely transmitting Morse code. In 1901 he received a patent in Brazil for "equipment for the purpose of phonetic transmissions through space, land and water elements at a distance with or without the use of wires". He then traveled to the United States where he was awarded three patents in 1904: the "Wave Transmitter" which is the precursor of today's radio transceiver, the "Wireless Telephone" and the "Wireless Telegraph". His sketches have survived, and his equipment has been duplicated in modern times to show he was on the right track. Read his fascinating Wave Transmitter patent here. Nominated by Ricardo, an Electrical Engineering student at University of Campinas, Brazil, and fan of microwaves101.com!

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, born in Canada in 1866, was a huge pioneer of wireless. He was the first inventor to demonstrate transmission of voice in December 1900 (Marconi thought that Morse Code was good enough for all communication needs), and his first transmission involved a weather report! He was the first to think in terms of continuous wave (CW) transmissions instead of the pulsed spark-gap transmitters of the day. He built some clever high speed alternators to provide up to 200 kHz, 250 kW signals for transmission, before anyone had developed a useful oscillator. He also developed the theory of heterodyne detection, and coined the word. Did we mention that he invented 500 other things too? A rare combination of genius and entrepreneur, thanks to Brian, he is now in the Microwave Hall of Fame! Brian wishes to point out that Fessenden, Tesla, Charles Steinmetz and Ernst Alexanderson all worked for Edison. Is the top genius the one who can make business out of the genius of others? How many similar genius’s worked for Bill Gates and helped him make his billions and whom we will only hear about 100 years from now if ever?

Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850-1918) worked on wireless telegraphy. His inventions include the first semiconductor, the point-contact diode used in "crystal" radios; before that receivers had to use something called a "coheror" to convert RF to baseband. He also invented the first cathode-ray tube to provide a visual display, the precursor to radar screens, oscilloscopes and video screens alike. Today the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik in Berlin carries out some great work in microwave technology, especially in flip-chip coplanar-waveguide MMICs. Braun shared the 1909 Nobel prize for physics with Marconi.

Lee de Forrest (1873-1961) was a prolific inventor (180 patents) and is regarded as inventor of the three-terminal tube, which he called the audion. Many regard him as the father of radio. By adding the grid to Fleming's diode "valve", de Forest showed how to control the signal but did not achieve amplification with the audion. Later inventors, most notably Armstrong, built on de Forest's discoveries and radio soon became a rage; even non-electronics companies such as Radio Flyer cashed in on the name. De Forest disliked the word "wireless", and helped populate the new word "radio" which was derived from radiation. Many early radio inventors were pawns of giant industrial companies such as Westinghouse, AT&T and General Electric, and the fight over patent rights was fierce and discredited some of the best minds in the field. De Forest suffered as much as any, going through four marriages, but lived a long life and saw radio move from curiosity, to invaluable war and peacetime communication tool, to mass media outlet. Lee spent many good years in Hollywood, among other honors won an Oscar for developing a way to add sound to motion pictures. Late in life he became disillusioned with radio, as he was neither a fan of pop music nor advertising. Nominated by Brian!

Lee de Forest

Mad scientist Oliver Heaviside's research in transmission-line theory was first applied to telegraphs, including the transatlantic cable, but microwave engineers use his concepts to this day. A mathematician, he rewrote Maxwell's messy equations into their simple, vector-calculus form. He predicted the E-layer of the ionosphere, which allows propagation of electromagnetic waves around the curvature of the earth. A trendsetter years ahead of Ed Wood, he painted his nails pink!

Leo Hendrik Baekeland was born in Ghent, Belgium on November 14, 1863 to poor parents, yet earned his doctorate at University of Ghent by the age of 21. He emigrated to the U.S in 1889, and made his original fortune selling a process for photographic paper to George Eastman for $1,000,00 in the 1890s. Later experimentation by Baekeland resulted in discovery of the very first plastic, a thermoset compound created from formaldehyde and phenol that became known as Bakelite. Bakelite was a huge enabler for bringing radio to the masses, not just as a substrate for mounting electrical components due to its insulating property, but also as the material for mass producing cabinets. Click this link to go to the radio museum and notice the progression from hand crafted wood cabinet to molded enclosure during the 1930s. There's at least one Bakelite museum! Baekeland died in 1944, we can't help but wonder what his coffin was made of!

Although Marconi was awarded the Nobel prize in 1909 for his "wireless telegraphy" work , the U.S. Supreme Court revoked Marconi's patents since Serbian-American genius Nikola Tesla had taken out a patent for radio communications as early as 1897. Doesn't Tesla look smug in this picture? Tesla's life has taken on legendary status, having obtained more than 700 U.S. patents. Perhaps because he was jerked around by Thomas Edison to the tune of $50,000 early in his career, we can thank Tesla for perfecting alternating-current power distribution and fluorescent lights. Some of his other inventions include a unique steam turbine, liquefaction of nitrogen, and the awesome Tesla coils from which he coaxed 10,000,000 volts to light up the Colorado sky. No other inventor has has more articles written about him. Nikola Tesla is quite possibly the greatest engineer that ever lived; you can quote the Unknown Editor on that. You can find over 100 articles with "Tesla" in the title on the IEEE web site. Here's a second web site with info on Tesla that we found useful. Watch David Bowie play Tesla in the movie The Prestige!

By 1894, Sir Oliver George was conducting experiments noting that directional radiation was obtained when he surrounded a spark oscillator with a metal tube. In 1897, Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt) proved mathematically that waves could be propagated inside a hollow metal tube. Rayleigh also noted the infinite set of modes of the TE or TM type which were possible, and the existence of a cutoff frequency. Waveguide was essentially forgotten, however, until it was rediscovered independently in 1936 by George C. Southworth at AT&T (Bell Telephone Labs) and W.L. Barrow at MIT.

A lot was happening in microwaves around the previous turn of the century. J.A. Fleming, who had worked with Maxwell, Marconi, and Thomas Edison, invented an "electrical valve", better known today as a diode tube (and those wacky Brits still refer to tubes as valves!) Fleming also came up with an equation that expressed the impedance characteristics of high frequency transmission lines in terms of measurable effects of electromagnetic waves.

Up until this point, focus had been on sending and receiving communication signals. As the new century progressed, scientists worked with longer and longer wavelengths to achieve greater and greater distances.

In India, however, J.C. Bose was working with shorter and shorter waves. In 1895 Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder. The wavelengths he used ranged from 2.5 cm to 5 mm. Think about that. He was playing at 60 GHz over one hundred years ago! Bose's investigations included measurement of refractive index of a variety of substances. He also made dielectric lenses, oscillators, receivers, and his own "polarization device."

In 1911, only three years after building the first helium liquifier, Heike Kamerlingh-Onnes discovered that mercury loses its electrical resistance entirely when cooled below 4.2 K in a liquid helium bath. Why do we include the discoverer or superconductivity in the microwave hall of fame? Stick around, the best in microwaves is yet to come with the advent of high-temperature superconductors!

A scientist from Kcynia Poland, Jan Czochralski, was many years ahead of his time. In 1916 he developed a method for growing single crystals, which was basically forgotten until after World War II. Today the semiconductor industry depends on the Czochralski method for manufacturing billions of dollars worth of semiconductor materials. He was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer but was later acquitted and died in Poland in 1953. What a wacky world, Bill Gates is the richest man on earth and most people don't even know how to pronounce "Czochralski!"

Walter Schottky's name is embedded in solid-state physics (Schottky effect, Schottky barrier, Schottky contact, Schottky diode). Born in 1878 in Germany, he was a contemporary of Einstein and Max Planck. His work included superheterodyne receivers, noise theory, and radio tube work such as invention of the tetrode, but his most important contribution to microwaves is no doubt his investigation of metal-semiconductor rectifying junctions (published in 1938), which is the basis for the gate contact of all MESFETs. He died in 1976, one year ahead of Elvis.

Harry Nyquist was born in Sweden in 1889, and emigrated to the U.S. when he was 18 years old. First schooled at University of North Dakota (uff-da!) and later earning a Ph.D. from Yale, he settled in to a long career at ATT and later Bell Labs. Nyquist's 1928 paper Certain topics in Telegraph Transmission Theory nails down a fundamental law of telecommunications: the highest frequency that can be accurately sampled is one half the sampling frequency (the Nyquist Frequency). His other most notable contribution to electronics is the Nyquist Stability Theorem (1932), which determines when a feedback amplifier will and won't be stable. He also contributed to noise theory, the fax machine, and television, earning 138 patents and several major awards (as if the Microwaves101 Hall of Fame wasn't enough!) Nyquist died in 1976. Thanks to Zach at LockMart!

While still in high school, Edwin Howard Armstrong erected a 125 foot radio mast at his parents' house in Yonkers, New York, to receive the weak radio signals of the day. While still in college in 1912, he invented a feedback circuit based on Lee DeForest's three-terminal audion tube that provided the first usable electrical amplifier. Think about this: before Armstrong, the only "amplifiers" that existed were the mechanical relays used to boost voltage on long telegraph lines! Armstrong won the triple crown of electrical engineering, soon inventing the superheterodyne receiver, then inventing frequency-modulation (FM) broadcasting. He cashed in on his patents, in spite of a corporate war between AT&T and RCA over who really invented the feedback amplifier, Armstrong or DeForest, but he spent more time in court than Perry Mason. On January 31, 1954 he committed suicide by leaping from a building; an ironic end to a brilliant man who often scared his co-workers by fearlessly scaling antenna installations. Dirtbag lawyers and corporate greed aside, the IRE (predecessor of IEEE) gave credit to Armstrong for the key inventions of radio. Nominated to the Hall of Fame by OAH of Towaco NJ! Read Empire of the Air by Tom Lewis for more info on the history of radio.

As radio applications grew more sophisticated (and popular), stations started broadcasting regular commercial programs. By 1920, the US Department of Commerce stepped in and began issuing radio licenses, and in 1921 formally declared a special service category (and corresponding transmission wavelength) for commercial stations.
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