Karl Ferdinand Braun: Nobel Prize Winner and Inventor of Phased Arrays [Historically Speaking]

The Nobel Prize-winning electrical engineer and physicist Karl Ferdinand Braun was a leading innovator and industrialist in the early history of wireless telegraphy and the inventor of numerous technologies that are now vital to electronics and television. For example, he invented the point-contact junction, the cathode-ray tube, transmitter circuitry, and the phased array antenna. However, Braun is largely forgotten by the present generation except for articles such as this one. This contribution to the “Historically Speaking” column seeks to tell something of his life, inventions, and his concept of phased arrays for wireless telegraphy.