E. H. Armstrong — Edison medalist

IF we review the advances in electrical technology in the past 25 years, one development stands out from all others, electronics, and specifically the application of the three-electrode vacuum tube. It is appropriate to recall here that the original electronic tube was the two-electrode tube of Edison, in whose honor the Edison medal was established. Others subsequently applied this “Edison effect” in radio detection and introduced the control electrode, but the action was viewed as that of a trigger, as in the modern thyratron, which is of limited application. The real foundation for the unlimited development which we have witnessed was laid by the Edison Medal recipient, Doctor Edwin Howard Armstrong, in an article published in the Electrical World in December 1914. Here the common engineering tool, the characteristic curve, was employed for the first time to show how the tube amplifies; and the theory was substantiated by oscillograms which Armstrong had taken. The previously mysterious action of the tube as a rectifying detector with a grid capacitor was elucidated in the same way.