|
July 1946 Radio-Craft
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Craft,
published 1929 - 1953. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.
|
"Electrical Pipeline" is as apt
a layman's description for waveguide as "electrical hose" is for coaxial cable.
What would be a good commoner's name for twin lead? "Ladder Line" and "Window
Line" are descriptive of the type with open regions between supports, but
neither relates to a water analogy that would be familiar to Joe Six-Pack. I'm
open to suggestions. Module 11 of the Navy Electricity and Electronics Training
Series (NEETS), entitled "Microwave Principles," does a very nice job
introducing and explaining how waveguide works. It discusses rectangular,
elliptical, and circular waveguide. Bell Telephone Laboratories, which was
responsible for some of the most profound and world-shaping innovations of the
20th Century, pioneered the use of waveguide in commercial telecommunications
systems. This promotion appeared in a 1946 issue of Radio-Craft
magazine.
Bell Telephone Laboratories - Electrical Pipeline
 Microwaves make their journey from apparatus
to antenna not by wire, cable, or coaxial - but by waveguide.
Long before the war, Bell laboratories by theory and experiment had proved that
a metal tube could serve as a pipe-line for the transmission of electric waves,
even over great distances.
War came, and with it the sudden need for a conveyor of the powerful microwave
pulses of radar. The metal waveguide was the answer. Simple, rugged, containing
no insulation, it would operate unchanged in heat or cold. In the radar shown above,
which kept track of enemy and friendly planes, a waveguide conveyed microwave pulses
between reflector and the radar apparatus in the pedestal. Bell laboratories' engineers
freely shared their waveguide discoveries with war industry.
Now, by the use of special shapes and strategic angles, by putting rods across
the inside and varying the diameter, waveguides can be made to separate waves of
different lengths. They can slow up waves, hurry them along, reflect them, or send
them into space and funnel them back. Bell laboratories are now developing waveguides
to conduct microwave energy in new radio relay systems, capable of carrying hundreds
of telephone conversations simultaneously with television and music programs.
Bell Telephone Laboratories
Exploring and Inventing, Devising and Perfecting for Continued Improvement and
Economies in Telephone Service
| Bell Telephone
Laboratories Infomercials |
|
|
|
Posted November 4, 2021
|
