Maurice Ponte and Henri Gutton, pioneers of early French studies on resonant magnetron (1932–1940)

After a quick reminder of French scientists who pioneered the UHF domain in the 20's, emphasis is put on the decisive role of Maurice Ponte at SFR/CSF, who revived Okabe's magnetron concept in 1932 and built up a lot of high efficiency oscillating valves working within the range 3 m – 70 cm. Two years later H. Gutton succeeded him and began to work on multi-segment, resonating anode design. Between 1934 to 1938 he tested a large variety of anode architectures, resulting finally in the 8-segment anode and oxide-coated cathode M-16 which in late 1939 delivered a peak power record of 1 kW at λ = 16 cm