News Briefs
January 1962 Radio-Electronics

January 1962 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

The January 1962 installment of Radio-Electronics magazine's "News Briefs" column begins with a wrap-up of the top stories from 1961. Included is the record 55 new satellites launched that year by the U.S. To put that in perspective, today, a rocket booster sometimes puts a couple dozen Starlink satellites into orbit on a single launch. Closed-circuit TV monitors for private homes were coming online - wired of course, not wireless. Today, wireless monitors are everywhere, and a small fraction of the cost of the early types. Color TVs were becoming a more common presence in households. In other news, audio loudspeaker innovator Peter Jensen passed away. A scheme for providing TV broadcasting to homes via satellites in geosynchronous orbit was in planning mode, which like Internet service, is ubiquitous worldwide with Starlink and a few others. Electroluminescent displays had become popular, and within a few years, they would be commonplace in automobiles and airplanes.

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News Briefs

Electronic Highlights of 1961

Satellite summary as of Nov. 1 shows that the US has launched 55 satellites and still has 31 in orbit around the earth and two in a solar orbit. Twelve of these are still transmitting. The Soviet Union has launched a total of 16 satellites. Thirteen are still in orbit around the earth and two are in a solar orbit. All are crammed with various types of electronic gear ranging from ordinary radio transmitters, receivers and repeaters to TV cameras, solar cells, radiation detectors and propagation measuring instruments.

Back on earth there has been a surge in transistorized CB transceivers. Pocket units with a range of up to 1 mile fall within the FCC low-power rules and can be used without an FCC license. FM multiplexing has put stereo broadcasts into thousands of homes across the US. Only a handful of stations are now broadcasting, but their number is expected to multiply rapidly.

Some new apartment houses and homes have closed-circuit TV for seeing who is at the front door.

Transistor use is ever growing, threatening tubes. Latest word is that two manufacturers are closing down tube operations, will produce only transistors in the future.

Color TV took an upswing with color manufacturers' getting out of the red for the first time. Field is also getting competitive with introduction of Zenith color receiver. A Japanese import using an RCA color picture tube also appeared.

Peter Jensen Passes

The co-inventor of our present electrodynamic loudspeaker and originator of the line of Jensen speakers died Oct. 25, 1961, aged 75.

Jensen was one of the earliest of the electronic pioneers and is one of the contenders for the title of inventor of wireless telephony. Working with Valdemar Poulsen (inventor of magnetic recording and the Poulsen arc), he transmitted voice over the Poulsen wireless equipment in the early 1900's. Staying up every night to play phonograph records for radio operators on ships at sea, he became unquestionably the world's first disc jockey.

He came to the United States in 1909 to install wireless equipment for Poulsen Laboratories. Remaining to become an American citizen, he worked with another engineer, Edwin L. Pridham to develop what became the Magnavox dynamic speaker. Later he went to Chicago and. began to make speakers under the Jensen name.

When World War II broke out, Jensen resigned from his own company and took a low-salaried post with the War Production Board, obtaining sound equipment for the Armed Forces. After the war he founded Jensen Industries and began manufacturing phonograph needles.

His native Denmark recognized his contributions to electronics by making him a knight and hanging a plaque at his birth place.

Jensen Industries, now making phonograph cartridges and accessories as well as needles, is being carried on by his son Karl.

Satellites for Home TV's?

Nuclear power could be used aboard television satellites to provide enough power to broadcast direct to home-style TV receivers over a large part of the earth, according to a recent study by RCA. Presently planned satellites are designed to beam low-power signals to highly sensitive relay stations on earth, where they could be stepped up to higher power and would be rebroadcast from local TV stations. Under the proposed plan, a transmitter on a satellite could broadcast direct to all home receivers in an area as large as Europe or the United States. The reactor powering the TV transmitters would also be used to drive an electric propulsion system that would help get the satellite into space and bring it a 22,300-mile-high orbit. At that altitude it would revolve around the earth once daily and could, therefore, be made. to remain over one spot. The antenna would of course be kept directed at the earth. Such a satellite, said Dr. Korman of RCA's Advanced Military Systems Office, could be developed for less than $100 million, which he called "a modest sum when compared with the multibillion dollar space program now under way."

According to a report in TV Digest, the Navy is expected to issue - some time early next spring - a progress report on a flat nonvacuum-tube electroluminescent panel that can achieve better definition and brightness than a television picture tube. The new display panel, it is stated, could be adapted to picture-on-the-wall TV. The new display device is being developed for the Navy by Lear, Inc. It is intended for use as an aircraft readout display that can be mounted on the windshield of the plane. The most important weakness uncovered so far, from the standpoint of the TV viewer, is that the new picture-on-the-wall "tube" alone would cost far more than the price of a complete present-day TV receiver.

IRE-AIEE to Unite?

The Boards of Directors of both the Institute of Radio Engineers and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers have voted unanimously to consider consolidation. The action took the form of resolutions stating in effect that the directors of both societies "have deemed it advisable to move actively toward consolidation of the activities of both organizations" and to appoint members of a joint committee to study the problems involved and report back. The committee consists of four members of each group. The united society would be the largest engineering group in the world. IRE now has 91,000 members, including 17,000 students. Membership of AIEE is 66,000, including 11,000 students. There is some overlapping; 6,000 engineers are members of both societies. Sentiment in both societies was pretty well summed up by Patrick E. Haggerty, president-elect of IRE, who said, "There are not two kinds of electrons; why should there be two societies to deal with that very same electron?"