Radio and Electronic Devices Are Westinghouse War Weapons
September 1942 Radio-Craft

My civilian career began at Westinghouse's Oceanic Division in Annapolis, Maryland. It was long ago bought out by Northrop Grumman and re-named Undersea Systems. Their AQS-24 towed sonar system looks outwardly very much like the AQS-14 that I worked on while there in the 1980s. Our parent organization was the Westinghouse Electronics Systems Division in Baltimore, MD, adjacent to the Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) tarmac so that military aircraft could fly in and out to be retrofitted with radar systems. Headquarters for Westinghouse was (and still is) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where progenitor George W. founded it. Having had its roots in locomotive air braking systems, Westinghouse became a major defense electronics contractor during World War II and thereafter. Both military and commercial electronics were designed, developed, and produced at the various locations around the country, but as with most founding American companies has slowly petered out over the last few decades. 

Westinghouse still makes lots of products, but not in the military market. I still look favorably on the old "circle-bar-W" logo whenever I see it. "You can be SURE ... if it's Westinghouse."

Radio and Electronic Devices Are Westinghouse War Weapons

Wartime developments in the communications field will exert a vast , influence on design and construction of post-war radio apparatus. Lessons learned in production of special radio equipment developed for military purposes will probably find many important applications in homes and industry.

This is the prediction of Walter C. Evans, vice-president of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, as he surveys activities of his company's Radio Division in the war effort. The number of Westinghouse employees engaged in turning out radio apparatus has more than doubled in the past year, he reports, and production has been expanded from one plant to three.

"Just as the first World War ushered in the present era of commercial radio broadcasting, the radio industry is certain to gain after this war by the utilization of a number of new principles and techniques which have been developed for war requirements," the executive said.

Radio research men today are working on developments which will prove as startling when peace returns as the telephone and electric light were in an earlier generation, according to Dr. W. H. McCurdy, manager of radio engineering for the Westinghouse Lamp Division. "Now enlisted for the duration, these devices, like the telephone and electric light, may some day change the mode of living for millions of Americans," he said.

Westinghouse has been able to improve production of precision sets called for in Government requirements. All such sets are built with extreme accuracies and strength, because they must operate in all kinds of weather and over a wide range of altitudes. When on sea duty they are exposed to corrosion by salt air and must be protected accordingly. They must be strong enough to stand up under the severe service they get when vessels roll and pitch in storms and when subjected to concussion of gunfire.

While the full productive capacity of the Westinghouse Radio Division is turned to the war - on a 24-hour basis - in a small corner of one plant a five-kilowatt transmitter, contracted for before the war, is being completed for station WABI, Bangor, Me. It is of the type developed in 1941, equipped with metal rectifiers, all air-cooled tubes, stabilized feedback in audio system, variable compressed gas condensers and complete fuseless overload protection. Similar transmitters were installed at WINS, New York, N. Y.; WNBF, Binghamton, N. Y.; WCSH, Portland, Me.; WCAO, Baltimore, Md.; and KGDM, Stockton, Calif.

Electronic Method Speeds War Work

By combining a number of simple parts familiar to all radio experimenters, engineers have been able to produce new devices or "tools" to control or speed up production.

Using only a glass tube, a photocell, a light source, and a milliammeter, P. R. Kalischer, Westinghouse research metallurgist, can determine grain sizes of metallic powders as small as 1/25,000 inch in about 1/30 the time usually required for such an analysis. Since the quality of a metal part produced by powder molding is dependent on the uniformity of the metal grains, this determination of particle-size distribution is especially important.

Photocell and light source are mounted on opposite side of the glass tube, and the output of the photocell is read by the milliammeter. To analyze a powder specimen, Kalischer mixes 1 gram of it in the tube with 100 cubic centimeters of acetone, to which a small amount of a wetting agent (isopropyl xanthate is one of the best) is added. The tube then is clamped between the photocell and the light source. As the particles settle, the liquid clears and transmits more light to the cell.

From timed readings of cell current a time-opacity curve is plotted for that specimen. By comparing this curve with similar curves for standard powders of known particle size, Kalicher can determine both average particle size and relative quantities of particle of different sizes in the test specimen.

The usual method of measuring particle size is to float the powder in glycerine and measure the settling time. Such a test requires about 8 hours, and doe not give accurate information about relative quantities of grains of different sizes. The simplified Kalischer method takes only 15 minutes.

Use of a wetting agent is important, because it helps the acetone to surround each metal grain completely. Without it, the settling rate might be affected by tiny air bubbles surrounding the grains.

To increase production and safeguard quality of steels treated in atmosphere furnaces, an electronic tube developed by Westinghouse electronic research engineers provides a continuous check on the purity of the hydrogen gas flowing over the metal. (See July issue of Radio-Craft, page 649). Such scientific control is especially important where the dew point of the treating gas must be maintained in the critical region of -40° C to -70° C, or for precise furnace conditions such as required for bright annealing, and for chemical processes, using purified dry hydrogen or similar controlled gases.

To give the metal proper characteristics, steel is often heated in an atmosphere of highly purified hydrogen that is practically free of moisture and oxygen. Ordinarily, to measure moisture in the gas where dew points are less than 0° C, a cooled and polished metal plate is inserted in the gas stream and the temperature noted when condensation of moisture first occurs. However, below -40° C this method becomes largely guesswork and even skilled testers disagree on values of the same gas. The electronic method, insures reliable and accurate determination of moisture and oxygen content in hydrogen (or disassociated ammonia) gas.

In operation, the gas flows through a 2-element tube containing a tungsten filament and plate. Electrons flying from the hot filament to the plate continually bombard the gas. If the gas is pure dry hydrogen all the electrons reach the plate. But any oxygen or water vapor in the gas, immediately picks up some of the electrons and forms negative ions, thereby reducing the electron current. This change of current in the plate circuit indicates the degree of impurity in the gas (see diagram).

Advance of Electronic Devices

Wartime research is speeding up the arrival of an Age of Electronics, a new era in which man will harness the power of electrons to run great industries, eradicate diseases and create new wonders in transportation and communication.

The new Age of Electronics had dawned in research laboratories long before the start of World War II. It is fully under way now, advanced perhaps half a century by the determination of American engineers to build the weapons that will win the war. Today the products of electronics research are being turned against the Axis. Tomorrow they will multiply their usefulness to combat ignorance, poverty and drudgery.

Engineers have put the invisible electrons to work at such widely separated tasks as killing germs, smashing atoms, X-raying high-speed bullets in flight, generating new sources of light, and improving radio and controlling industrial machinery.

New Eyes and Hands

Some electronic tubes, the photo-electric cells, serve as eyes and hands for industry. Faster than any human reflex, they can count objects at the rate of 50,000 a minute. They can sort a ten-center cigar from a nickel one, automatically pick out a good poker hand or nab a thief in the act of cracking a safe. Such tubes are masters at the art of detection and their jobs range from locating icebergs at sea to providing damning evidence that a motorist has exceeded the lawful speed limit. /p>

Other jobs electronics research has made possible are the production of magnesium from sea water, doubling the speed of aluminum production, X-raying bullets as they crash through armor plate and providing a gentle barrier around a baby's crib to prevent the attack of deadly germs. Radio, television and the transmission of photographs by electricity are familiar applications of electronic devices. Both "black light" and the cold fluorescent lamps depend on electronic principles for operation, as do the pliotron, or artificial fever tube, the kenotron, which permits the precipitation of smoke and dust, and the Sterilamp, used to destroy bacteria and mold spores. All these electronic devices are operated by the use of glass or metal tubes which create and control a stream of electrons - infinitesimal, negatively charged particles of matter. A radio tube is the most familiar electronic tube, but there are hundreds of others, devised to perform myriad functions.

Industrial Uses

Quality is as much an American demand as mass production - but maintaining quality under the pressure of high-speed production poses many problems of manufacturing control that Westinghouse electronics research is helping to solve.

These controls are industry's eyes, ears and fingers-but far exceeding in keenness and nimbleness even the best of human faculties. They are the intricate family of electronic phototubes - all the variations of the "electric eye" that opens doors, protects machine-tool workers from injury, and delivers a perfectly printed newspaper.

The tubes are used in two general ways. Under one system, such as counting objects coming off a production line, a beam of light which activates the tube is interrupted when the assembly line item gets in its path. This automatically operates a counter. A similar tube may be used to activate one of many other devices employed in industrial and mechanical control.

The second system utilizes reflected light on the cathode of the tube. This method makes possible a continuous, automatic check on the color of products coming off an assembly line, for example, because every color and shade of color has a different light reflective value. It insures absolute uniformity of the color of fabrics from a loom. It checks the perfect register of colors in color-printing processes, and sorts cigars for uniformity, and matches enameled parts.

Phototubes also guard the safety of factory workers, by shutting off machines when a worker's hand comes too close to a moving part. They open kitchen doors and automatically maintain illumination levels inside buildings by opening and closing skylights and turning electric lamps on and off.

Metal Production Speeded

A barrel-sized steel tank that sifts electrical charges through a pool of mercury is speeding production of two vital war metals by helping to "rescue" magnesium from the ocean and to extract aluminum from mineral bauxite. This "electrical alchemist" - known as the Ignitron - 10 years ago was only a laboratory curiosity, but now is an important industrial tool for producing the lightweight metals urgently needed for military aircraft.

Millions of pounds of magnesium are now being extracted from sea water pumped from the Gulf of Mexico. Magnesium hydrate is precipitated from the water, converted into magnesium chloride and reduced to magnesium by an electrolyzing process employing an Ignitron. About four and a half million tons of this important metal can be "rescued" from a cubic mile of sea water, metallurgists say. Ignitrons have been adapted to the spot welding of stainless steel and aluminum, processes that require precisely measured amounts of electric power.

X-Rays See Through Inch of Steel

The familiar X-Ray, long used for dental examinations, studying bone fractures, and for disclosure of hidden flaws in industrial castings and forgings, is now also helping ballistics experts to study the behavior of bullets in flight. A new high-speed X-ray tube has been developed that can penetrate an inch of steel in a millionth of a second, and thus take pictures of actual bullets in flight through gun barrels. or when crashing in to armor plate. /p>

Using a battery. of high-powered condensers to build up an enormous electrical charge, this new electronic tube takes a jolt of 300,000 volts at 2,000 amperes, and converts it into a stream of X-radiations.

Although now used only in the study of ballistics, the new tube promises to be an important tool in the hands of the nation's industrial engineers after the war. With it, they will be able to study the inner workings of machines in motion, and thus improve the efficiency and durability of automobiles, electric power generating equipment, motors, and other mechanical and electrical devices.

Medicine and surgery will benefit, too, from this electronic advance, engineers believe, because physicians can study bones and organs of the body in motion.

Even the nation's dinner table may be better loaded in the future because of advances in the study of X-radiations; it has been found that entirely new mutations of plants can be produced by exposing seed to these electronic rays, Engineers believe this may lead to entirely new food-plant forms, or greater productivity of farm lands.

Ultra-Violet Fights Disease

Engineers have already developed electronic ultra-violet-ray tubes that can kill the bacteria of a host of diseases, and are on the threshold of pitting these ultra-short-wave rays against the disease viruses, which no man has ever seen.

This germ-killing ultra-violet lamp, whose invisible rays have the power to sterilize air in a matter of seconds, is called the Sterilamp. It is a slender glass rod filled with a mixture of inert gases and mercury vapor. When the tube's electrodes release a stream of electrons into this mixture, the tube emits ultra-violet radiations of a wave length that is lethal to 99 per cent of all bacteria which come within their range.

Special applications of these ultraviolet lamps in combination with floodlighting over hospital operating tables materially reduce post-operative infections by sterilizing the air and the open surfaces of the wound. Barriers of ultraviolet radiations thrown across doors and corridors in hospital contagious wards check the spread of air-borne infectious diseases.

"You can be SURE ... if it's Westinghouse."

Posted January 4, 2022
(updated from original post on 11/18/2014)