Scanning the Issue - A History of Some Foundations of Modern Radio and Electronic Technology

(Hammond and Purington, p. 1191) — The PROCEEDINGS presents this month a major contribution to the early history of radio. The authors describe for the first time important pioneering work carried out in the Hammond Laboratories during the period 1912–1928 which, because of its military nature, has not previously been disclosed. This work, which began with radio-controlled ships and torpedoes, led to a number of notable original developments in the realm of control and homing devices, nondetector applications of the triode, intermediate-frequency type systems and FM and related circuitries, which in retrospect could be viewed as the precursors of many of our modern radio-electronic techniques. Equally important, this paper sheds additional light on the early work of many major pioneers of radio. In particular, it brings out hitherto untold important contributions of Fritz Lowenstein in converting de Forest’s grid-audion detector into an amplifier prior to 1912 and in getting a triode to oscillate early in 1912.