Important Electronics Engineers from the past (or present) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: czdt8m
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 10:48:12 am
content: In EE,as in all disciplines, there have been people that have had a big impact, and have pioneered technology.I was reading abouthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowersrecently.A sad story as he built the first electronic computer in WWII, but was not recognised for his achievement untill fairly recently.Who is your favourite EE of all time and why?

author: Strada916
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 11:28:16 am
content: I have a few, but they are all pioneers of electronics/electricsNikola TeslaMichael FaradayDick Smith (Australian Business man, if it was not for him I would never seen my first kit.)Guglielmo MarconiSamuel MorseAlexander G Belljust a few

author: dr.diesel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 11:32:18 am
content: Quote from: czdt8m on November 13, 2013, 10:48:12 amZefram Cochrane

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 11:39:30 am
content: Historically, Sir John Ambrose Fleming.He invented the first successful thermionic valve, which gave birth to the entire electronics industry.Today? Dave Jones, obviously

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 11:44:32 am
content: Quote from: rolycat on November 13, 2013, 11:39:30 amIt could be argued that the invention of the valve actually slowed progress - maybe semiconductors would have happened earlier if work hadn't been diverted into the thermionic dead-end.

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 11:53:00 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on November 13, 2013, 11:44:32 amMaybe. But would functional transistors have been available by the time Tommy Flowers built Colossus?

author: AudioplatinumService
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 11:59:01 am
content: Jim Williams akawww.audioupgrades.com

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 12:00:37 pm
content: Bob PeaseBob Widlar

author: Kohanbash
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 01:57:06 pm
content: I see Thomas Edison has not made the list yet.Also John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley who are the inventors of the transistor should rank highly.I am not sure if he counts for this list but Forest Mims played a big role in getting amateurs involved in electronics. And some of those amateurs became professional EE's.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 02:49:33 pm
content: Quote from: rolycat on November 13, 2013, 11:39:30 amWhoa.. Lee DeForest ...

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 02:59:10 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on November 13, 2013, 02:49:33 pmNah, DeForest's triode came several years after the Fleming diode, which he copied, and he didn't even understand how it worked.Plus of course he's a Yank, so he can't be my hero

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 03:45:34 pm
content: Robert Noyce, Jean Hoerni, Federico Fagggin , Gordon Moore , Andy GroveCause they started i tel and made the first coomercially available SRAM, DRAM, PROM , EEPROM,Microprocessor, Microcontroller, DSP, Risc processor, Flash memory. You name it , intel came up with it...

author: Rory
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 03:48:58 pm
content: Edwin H. Armstrong, inventor of the regenerative circuit, the superheterodyne receiver, and modern frequency modulation.I have nothing but contempt for David Sarnoff, a prime example of an American corporate scumbag.

author: czdt8m
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 04:06:28 pm
content: I almost forgot about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard.Sadly what's left of their company today is far from what they envisioned.

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 04:12:07 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on November 13, 2013, 03:45:34 pmCharles Babbage, the father of the computer.Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn, inventors of the world's first random access digital storage device and the world's first stored program computer.Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson, chief architects of the ARM processor architecture.The British have always been good at inventing stuffand rubbish at exploiting itOne exception: Sir Robin Saxby, electronics engineer and the man who built ARM into a global chip design firm.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 04:55:40 pm
content: And nobody mentions Maxwell? Come on people!

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 05:48:04 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on November 13, 2013, 04:55:40 pmWell, strictly speaking he was a physicist, not an engineer.No-one has mentioned Volta, Coulomb or Ampère either, although Faraday got a vote early on.Another relatively unsung but brilliant electronics engineer was Alan Blumlein. Among other things he invented the first noise weighting networks, the ultra linear amplifier, and stereo sound. He also made major contributions to the development of television and the first ground scanning airborne radar system.

author: AG6QR
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 06:26:16 pm
content: How about anybody who has a popular oscillator named after them? Colpitts, Hartley, Clapp, Pierce, Wien, Hansen, Harris, Butler, Lampkin, Gunn, etc.I'll admit that I don't know a whole lot about these individuals other than their oscillator designs. And I suspect that many of these oscillators would have been invented by someone else if history had taken a different turn -- the basic oscillator designs are too good NOT to be invented.Still, I've got to respect these pioneers. I believe that every interesting electronic device contains at least one oscillator (perhaps that observation is just a definition of the word "interesting").

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 07:02:17 pm
content: Sebastian Ziani De Ferranti. Mostly because he is the one that did the most to get high pressure ac transmission of the ground in the UK at least and is also the one that gets forgotten.He is also the one to blame for you electricity bill, He invented the watt hour electricity meter.

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 07:19:36 pm
content: Lenz, who did a lot of work on electrical theory.Faraday and Davey as well, who did a lot of early electrical theory and practise.

author: czdt8m
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 07:28:15 pm
content: What about Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill, authors of The Art of Electronics?

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 07:55:13 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on November 13, 2013, 07:02:17 pmAlso because the company he founded produced the first commercially available electronic computer, although admittedly it was after his death.More importantly Ferranti developed the ZN414, that nifty little IC-masquerading-as-a-transistor which helped innumerable hobbyists to build their first radio in the seventies and eighties.

author: czdt8m
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 08:09:16 pm
content: Quote from: G7PSK on November 13, 2013, 07:02:17 pmIsn't that the ferrarismeter? Based on the research by Galileo Ferraris?

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 13, 2013, 08:32:02 pm
content: Jedlik Ányos first dynamoZipernowsky Károly first high efficiency transformer for power conversionTihanyi Kálmán plasma television (1936!!)Gábor Dénes holograpySzilárd Leó first theory of electron microscope, nuclear reactor, nuclear bomb, technically not an EE but still.

author: Rory
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2013, 09:20:41 pm
content: Don Lancaster... author of several cookbooks every engineer should have on the bookshelf.Walter Jung also. *thanks rolycat

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2013, 09:36:42 pm
content: Quote from: Rory on November 15, 2013, 09:20:41 pmCarl Jung?What the blue blazes has Carl Jung got to do with electronics engineering?You don't mean Walter Jung, do you?

author: Rory
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 15, 2013, 09:46:14 pm
content: Quote from: rolycat on November 15, 2013, 09:36:42 pmThank you. I had to go look on my bookshelf. Walter it is. (Try pulling obscure names out of the air when you've been crimping pins for D-sub connectors all day and you'll make mistakes too...

author: smashedProton
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 04:34:41 am
content: Willy Wonka

author: Vgkid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 04:52:55 am
content: Melville Eastham - founder of General Radio.

author: rolycat
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 05:07:14 am
content: Quote from: smashedProton on November 16, 2013, 04:34:41 amThat's 105%!

author: c4757p
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 05:11:57 am
content: Quote from: rolycat on November 16, 2013, 05:07:14 amWell in that case, perhaps it's notbutterscotch that he has.

author: moepower
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 05:31:29 am
content: Hi, though I'm strictly not electronics, but more electrical, my list is:Charles Steinmetz - contributions in ac power theoryNikola Tesla - ac power, 3-phase ac motors, transformers.James Maxwell Michael Faraday - physicists in electromagnetic theoryAC transformer development - Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy, Miksa Déri, Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, William Stanley - there's probably more.Transistor development - too many to list.

author: TMM
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 09:07:52 am
content: I stumbled across this the other daywell worth the watch

author: G7PSK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 16, 2013, 09:39:52 am
content: I owe a great debt to W.S Ibbetson B.Sc. A.M.I.E.E it was reading his book motor and dynamo control theory and practice 1921, that first got me interested in electricity and electronics and as he was writing for people who had not come across electrical equipment before he explained the theory in a way that a 9 year old in the early 1960's could very easily understand.My next favorite is F.J.Camm whose 1934 book Television and short-wave radio got me into radio.I still have both those books which I picked up at Heffers second hand book shop.