Grote Reber

Grote Reber was born on December 22, 1911 in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton, Illinois. His father was a lawyer and the part owner of a canning factory. He died when Reber was 21. His mother was an middle school teacher and had among her students Edwin Hubble, who her son would later discuss cosmology with. Reber earned a degree in electrical engineering from the Armour Institute of Technology (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1933. Reber excelled at mathematics and electronics and after graduation he worked a series of jobs at Chicago area radio manufacturers.

In his spare time Reber was an amateur radio enthusiast and after contacting 150 countries with his radio he was looking for a new challenge. He read about Karl Jansky who had discovered cosmic radio emissions coming from the region of the constellation Sagittarius. Reber took the summer of from his engineering job and used $2000 of his own money (the equivalent of  his annual salary) to build a 32 foot parabolic radio radio antenna in the vacant lot next to his mother's house. After series of failures in 1939 Reber was able to detect galactic radio emissions and used his antenna to make maps of the radio emissions from the sky. Reber was forced to make his observations during the night and early morning hours due to interference from automotive starters. In 1943 Reber detected radio emissions from the sun.

After his mother died in 1945 Reber accepted a position working for the National Institute of Standards in Washington D.C., but he soon grew frustrated with the growing atmosphere of McCarthyism in the nation's capital. In 1951 he moved to Hawaii, where he researched astronomy and atmospheric physics at an observatory at the top of Haleakala, a volcanic peak on Maui. In 1954 Reber moved to Tasmania, where he could exploit the ionospheric transparency for his studies.

Initially Reber had trouble getting his articles published. Reber was a pioneer in the field of radio astronomy and it took a while for his findings to be accepted. Today radio astronomy is a major field of study. Awards won by Reber include the Cresson Medal given by the Franklin Society and the Bruce Medal awarded by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Ohio State University.

Reber died on December 20, 2002 in Tasmania, Australia, two days before his 91st birthday.


References:

Kellermann, Kenneth; "Grote Reber, 1911-2002"; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society(2003)35:1472-3

Tyson, Anthony J., "Grote Reber"; Physics Today; August 2003

Grate Reber Wikipedia Entry

Edwin Howard Armstrong

Edwin Howard Armstrong was born on December 18, 1890 in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.  His father was the president of the American office of Oxford University Press and his mother was a former school teacher.  Armstrong was a shy child who was interested engines and other mechanical things.  In 1902 he moved with his family to Yonkers, New York.  A case of rheumatic fever left him with a tic in one eye.  At age 14, inspired by the work of Guglielmo Marconi, Armstrong decided at he would be an inventor and built a wireless apparatus in the attic of his family's home and constructed a 125 foot tall antenna mast on his family's lawn.  Armstrong attended public schools in Yonkers, graduating from Yonkers High School.  After graduation he commuted by motorcycle to the engineering school at Columbia University.

At Columbia Armstrong studied under inventor Micheal Pupin and during his junior year invented the regenerative circuit. The regenerative circuit was an improvement on the audion, a radio tube circuit that was used in wireless receivers and invented by Lee DeForest.  With the audion the receiver signal was weak and required the use of headphones in order to hear the broadcast.  Armstrong's regenerative circuit amplified the signal and loudspeakers could be used to listen to the broadcast. The regenerative circuit could also be used to create radio transmitters.  Armstrong graduated with a engineering degree in 1913 and filed for a patent for the regenerative circuit.  After graduation he stayed at Columbia teaching and working as Pupin's assistant.

During the first world war Armstrong served in the United States Army Signal Corps.  He was sent to Paris, France where he worked to intercept enemy shortwave radio signals setting up his receiver on the Eiffel Tower.  While serving in the Army he developed his second major invention, the superheterodyne circuit, which made radio receivers easier to tune and is still used today.  Armstrong rose to the rank of major and was awarded the French Legion of Honor ribbon.  After the war he returned to Columbia where he eventually succeeded Pupin and in 1920 he sold the rights to his two inventions to Westinghouse.  He also sold the rights for another invention, the super regenerative circuit, to newly founded RCA for a large block of stock.

As the 1920s wore on Armstrong increasingly became involved in patent infringement lawsuits.  Lee DeForest filed a patent on the regenerative circuit a year after Armstrong's patent and sold the rights to AT&T.  AT&T sued Armstrong and the case went through a dozen courts eventually reaching the United States Supreme Court, where Armstrong lost his case due to the justices' misunderstanding of technical details of the circuit.  The Institute of Radio Engineers, which had awarded its first gold medal to Armstrong, refused to accept the verdict and take back its medal.

While the legal battle continued Armstrong was working on another invention.  Instead of using radio wave amplitude modulation (AM radio) for tuning he developed a receiver that was tuned by radio wave frequency modulation (FM radio).  Frequency modulation reduced background noise allowing for clearer reception.  The great depression of the 1930s made it impossible for Armstrong to sell his new invention and it was not until 1940 that Armstrong built the first FM station in Alpine, New Jersey, but it was not for another two years that the Federal Communications Commission allocated frequencies to Armstrong.

FM radio did not take off until after World War II when Armstrong again found his patents infringed.  Being ill, bereft of money, and facing another long legal battle Armstrong committed suicide on new years eve of 1954, jumping out the window of his New York City apartment.


References:

Curley, Robert, editor; "Edwin H. Armstrong"; The 100 Most Influential Inventors of All Time; Britannica Educational Publishing; The Rosen Publishing Group; 2009

Lessing, Lawrence P.; "Armstrong Bio" at users.erols.com; originally published in the American Dictionary of Biography published by Charles Scribner Sons; 1977

Edwin Howard Armstrong Wikipedia Entry

Denis Papin

Denis Papin was born in Blois, France on August 22, 1647, the son of a royal official. Although his family was Cavinist he attended a Jesuit school in Blois and in 1661 went to the University of Angers where he graduated with a medical degree in 1669. He practiced medicine for two years, until he accepted the offer of Christiaan Huygens to come and work as his assistant. The position was a combined research assistant/curator post at the newly established French Academy. He published several papers jointly with Huygens detailing their experiments with an air pump, and he published a book detailing his experiments to determine the weight of atmospheric air in 1674.

The following year Papin went to London, probably because of his Protestantism, which made his life in France difficult. In London he obtained a similar position to the one he had in France at the Royal Academy, with the assistance of Robert Boyle, who had read his book. At the Royal Academy he continued his experiments on atmospheric weight and did experiments with steam. During his tenure at the Royal Academy he invented a pressure cooker that extracted nutrients from bones and other things not normally digestible by humans. This was probably the most profitable invention of his but he gained little in the way of payment for it. One interesting feature of this invention was a valve by which excess steam could be let off, similar to valves used in later steam engines to prevent dangerous over pressurization.

In 1681 he went to Venice, but returned to London three years later. Later he was invited to take the chair in mathematics at the University of Marburg, where he married his cousin who was a widow with a daughter. The remittance for this position was less than what he required for his new family. In 1696 he moved to Cassel there he was able to complete experimental designs including a centrifugal pump, a diving bell and a submarine boat. He also concieved of ways that mechanical power could be transported over a distance by means of a vacuum tube. He received requests from mine owners for assistance in removing water and ore from their mines. Although he cannot be credited with the invention of the steam engine, his researches were pivitol in its development. He remained in Cassel until 1707 when he returned to London, leaving his family in Germany. He presented a few papers to the Royal Academy, but he was largely destitute.

The last surviving evidence of his existence is a letter dated January 27, 1712. It is believed that he died thereafter and was interred in a paupers pit grave.

References:

Ewart, Henry C.; "Denis Papin: A Life's Work and it's Moral"; The Sunday Magazine(1880)9:316-319

Matschooss, Conrad; Great Engineers; Ayer Publishing, 1970

Denis Papin nndb database entry

Denis Papin Wikipedia Entry

Ernest Orlando Lawrence

Ernest Orlando Lawrence was born in Canton, South Dakota on August 8, 1901, the son of Carl Gustavus and Gunda Lawrence. His parents were Norwegian immigrants and his father was superintendent of schools. He attended Canton High School and then St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. In 1919 he went to the University of South Dakota, working his way through college by selling kitchenware. Originally he studied for a medical career but switched to physics. He graduated in 1922 with a B.A. in Chemistry. He then went to the University of Minnesota where he earned an M.A. in physics in 1923. He then went to Yale finishing his Ph.D. in physics in 1925 completing a thesis on photoelectricity.

He remained at Yale for three more years as a National Research Fellow and assistant professor. In 1928 he left the relative comfort of his Yale position as an assistant professor to become an associate professor at the University of California Berkley. Two years later he became a full professor at Berkley, being the youngest professor at Berkley. In 1936 became director of the university's radiation laboratory. He remained at these positions until his death.

Lawrence's early research dealt with photoelectricity and the ionization potentials of gaseous metals. In 1929 he invented the cyclotron, a device which accelerates atomic particles without using high voltages. Cyclotrons use an alternating voltage to accelerate particles, and a perpendicular magnetic field holds the particles in a circular path so that they can re-encounter the accelerating voltage many times. Thus the particles are gradually sped up by multiple encounters with the accelerating voltage. Cyclotrons, because the accelerated particles move in a circular path, take up less space than linear accelerators. Cyclotrons are used to create non-naturally occurring elements by bombarding atoms with atomic particles to create larger atoms. Cyclotrons have also been used in medicine to bombard cancerous tumors with radioactive particles.

During World War II Lawrence worked to help develop the atomic bomb. His radiation laboratory actively took part in the research for the development of the bomb. A early proponent of electromagnetic separation of uranium isotopes he developed calutrons, a specialized type of mass spectrometer, to separate the isotopes. He also introduced J. Robert Oppenheimer into what would become the Manhattan Project.

In 1939 Lawrence won the Nobel Prize "for the invention and development of the cyclotron and the results obtained with it especially with regard to artificial radioactive elements." Other honors received by Lawrence include the Enrico Fermi Prize awarded by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1957 and the Sylvanus Thayer Award presented by the United States Military Academy. Element 103 (atomic number 103) is named Lawrencium after Lawrence.

In 1958 Lawrence was appointed by President Eisenhower to take part in the negotiations with the Soviet Union over and atomic weapons treaty. Despite suffering from colitis Lawrence decided to go to Geneva, to take part in the negotiations. Falling ill while he was in Geneva Lawrence was rushed back to America for medical treatment. Lawrence died one month later on August 27, 1958.

References:

Alvarez, Luis, "Ernest Orlando Lawrence"; in Biographical Memoirs (1970) National Academy Press

"A Few Important Events in Lawrence's Life" at lbl.gov

Ernest Lawrence Nobel Prize Biography

Ernest Lawrence Wikipedia Entry

Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval

Carl Gustaf Patrik de Laval was born on May 9, 1845 in Blosenberg, Sweden to a family of soldiers whose French ancestor had ridden with Gustavus Adolphus. At eighteen he entered the technical department of the University of Upsala, graduating three years later. His first position was as a draftsman at the Stora Kopparberg Company, but his health forced to give up the confining position for something with more opportunities for exercise. He returned to the University of Upsala for further study, graduating in 1872 with Ph.D. in Chemistry.

In 1875 he took a job as an engineer at Klosterverken Iron Works and shortly thereafter he developed a centrifugal device for separating cream. Needing more time to perfect his device he resigned his position at Klosterverken, and after much persistence was able to obtain a small loan that enabled him to manufacture his device. The device proved to be such a success that it was not long before Separator Company, Limited was on secure financial footing. For his invention of this separator device and other labor saving devices for dairy farmers, de Laval has been called "the Edison of dairying".

In search of a method to drive the centrifugal separator, which required high speeds, de Laval developed a steam turbine. The turbine was driven by high pressure steam shooting through a cone shaped nozzle developed by de Laval, that is now used on rocket engines. Able to turn, at what at the time was a frightening speed of 24,000 rpm, the turbine had to be reduced to one-tenth speed to drive the separator and did not prove to be useful for this purpose. However there were many other uses for the turbine and a separate industry developed.

Not content to rest on his laurels de Laval was constantly seeking new inventions, including milking machines and a process for treating low grade Swedish zinc ores, none of which were as successful as his cream separator. During his lifetime he received many honors, including from the King of Sweden, the Cross of Commander of the Order of Wasa and that of Knight in the Order of the North Star and he was made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1886 and received its gold medal in 1892.

De Laval died on February 2, 1913.

References:

"Karl Gustaf Patrik de Laval" from the Journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1913) Vol. 35, Issue 1, p 16-18

"Inventor of the Separator Dead" from the Holstein-Friesian Register (1913) Vol.35, Part 1, p.692

Gustaf de Laval, Wikipedia Entry