Bruce,
I never had heard of Clarence Hansell until--13 years ago-- I found
myself in a cubicle in a Silicon Valley chip company adjoining one
occupied by George Hansell, his son. George, then 65, overheard my
radio-related conversations with a co-worker, W6WA, and said he had been
interested in ham radio as a boy but was never licensed and why didn't
we go to lunch and we could tell him what kind of things we were
involved in. During that lunch, I mentioned Beverage antennas and George
said his father had worked for "a guy named Beverage", whom he as a boy
had known, and that he had "visited Mr. Beverage just before he passed
on" in 1993. As you might imagine, the conversation got really
interesting at that point.
Clarence Hansell was anything but flamboyant, had never sought personal
fame, had received a dollar for each patent, and I had never heard of him.
The next day, George brought in a box of "stuff" that included most of
his father's 325 or so US patents (a number exceeded only by Edison) and
photographs taken at Rocky Point, including one taken in 1929 on the
occasion of Marconi's visit to the facility. The group in the photo
included Marconi, Sarnoff, Beverage, Hansell and Philip Carter. Hansell
and Carter both worked for Beverage. It was Carter who had calculated
the classic 470 ohm termination value for the "Wave Antenna"--verified
by measurement--and who later was granted patents for the folded dipole,
vee beam vee beam arrays (including rhombic designs), conical, biconical
and many other antennas, including the famous experimental color TV
antennas on the Empire State building. All of these were, of course,
designed without computers; Carter was, I believe, the first to use
cylindrical (Bessel) and spherical (Legendre) harmonic functions in
antenna design.
I showed the group photo to all of our young and mostly Chinese chip
designers, none of whom had any idea who any of those people were! They
certainly had no idea of Hansell's incredible achievements, which
included the first crystal filter and design of a crystal-controlled 6kW
15m transmitter in 1923(?) with which he easily passed traffic to Europe
at midday with a vertical dipole mounted outside the laboratory. At
midday the 100kW Alexanderson alternators on 100 kHz at Radio Central,
driving a miles-long array of 400 foot towers, were of course useless.
That was the beginning of the end of VLF intercontinental traffic.
Hansell also made key contributions to metal smelting, auto electrical
systems, negative ion technology---and the RCA compatible color
television system. The latter is specifically mentioned in Beverage's
last interview (on the IEEE website), conducted when he was 99, with
which I am sure you are familiar. There was no limit to Hansell's
creative insight.
Using George Hansell's papers, I put together a slide presentation on
his father, Carter, Beverage, RCA, etc.and showed it to the NCCC. George
helped by introducing me to Carter's son--his boyhood friend--then
retired from Granger Associates and --like his Dad--a Stanford Ph.D, who
lent me a box of /his/ father's papers, including his original patents
with the wax seals. When I showed Carter's antenna patents, there were
gasps from the audience.
I really felt privileged to have had a glimpse into the personal lives
and careers of these giants, upon whose shoulders we younger engineers
stood--whether or not we realized it.
Garry, NI6T
On 7/13/2010 9:12 AM, Bruce wrote:
> Harold Beverage and Clarence Hansell used an amp meter near the end of the
> wave antenna (Beverage) at long wave station 1XAO at Belfast in the 1920's.
> They found that as the termination value was changed to the correct value,
> more RF from the feed end came to the far end. When correctly terminated,
> more of the 10 mile Beverage was picking up signals from 5XX England. Hansell
> also did wave antenna transmit experiments in 1925. (amp meters were not
> clamp on this time period.) Clarence Hansell's 1920's Belfast Maine log book
> is available at Stony Brook College.
>
> 73
> Bruce-K1FZ
> _______________________________________________
> UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
>
>
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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