Smith Chart Art™

Many "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers" items available from my Cafe Press store.

Who would have guessed that Pamela Anderson would be wearing a T-shirt with a Smith Chart on it? Too bad it isn't an RF Cafe T-shirt!

Throughout the years, I have seen quite a few examples of art that depicts Phillip H. Smith's famous Smith Chart, created by techie types. Its array of circles and semicircles is attractive even to people who have no idea what it is. To wit, it is hard to conceive of Pamela Anderson appreciating the gravity of the Smith Chart design on the front of her T-shirt in this photo. From a purely technical standpoint, there appears to be a lot of ripple in the response, which being biased toward the upper half of the chart makes it inductive. Note from my "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers" design (to the right), where the bulk of the "Forbidden Region" areas lie on the shirt. Hmmm, maybe she does understand the Smith Chart ... but I digress. After an extensive Internet search using multiple search engines, I was able to come up with these other examples of Smith Chart Art™. If you know of any other works (including your own), please send me the information and I will add them to this page. Here is a good list of Smith Chart resources here.

Prof. Aziz Inan of the U. of Portland had his students create some Smith Chart art on the August 29th, 25th anniversary of Phillip Smith's death.

Smith Chart found on the Deviant Art website by chemb0t (Modern Alchemist)

Smith Chart on the Kanagawa Art Festival Poster 1984.

This milled wood Smith Chart coaster was sent to me by website visitor Enrique R, of Norcross, GA.

£2 coin from the British Royal Mint released in 2001 as a tribute to Guglielmo Marconi has a Smith Chart on the reverse side.

This Smith Chart was found on MySpace.

Agilent's Educator's Corner Smith Chart cartoon.

Smith Chart Sundial for the Columbia College in Columbia, MD, by Creative Form Liners - RF Cafe Website

Smith Chart Sundial for the Columbia College in Columbia, MD, by Creative Form Liners.

A Smith Chart tattoo on the arm of Christopher Sanabria.

Smith Chart found on the Deviant Art website - RF Cafe Website

Smith Chart found on the Deviant Art website by guiding structures.

Omicron Labs cartoon.

Smith Chart Mosaic at the entrance of the Hewlett Packard Labs building in Palo Alto, CA.

Smith Chart quilt, by Professor Cynthia Furse of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Utah (formerly at Utah State University). She has her students sign when they have finished their design projects. See Dr. Furse's video tutorial series on the Smith Chart.

Posted September 20, 2023
(updated from original post on 12/5/2008)

Copper Mountain Technologies Vector Network Analyzers - RF Cafe Website

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...