Radio History -Pioneers of the Radio Industry
This page is dedicated to showing the people who made radio history by either inventing some form of technology, or applying it in an entirely new way.
Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, who is generally thought of as known as the father of long distance radio transmission. He is responsible for developing Marconi’s law. In 1901 he led the team that completed the first transatlantic wireless telegraph transmission. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun. His Maroni Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company continues to this day but has been consumed by Ericsson.
Karl Ferdinand Braun was a german, educated at University of Marburg, and University of Berlin. He built the first cathode-ray tube (or CRT, also called the “Braun Tube”), and the cathode ray tube oscilloscope. Today CRT technology has been replaced by flat screen technologies on television sets and computer monitors, but for 100 years it was the preferred display technology.
In 1898 he diverted his attention to wireless technology, and he ultimately invented the crystal diode rectifier or cat’s whisker diode. In 1989, he, along with Guglielmo Marconi, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Frank Dawson Billey’s passion was the development and advancement of two-way communications by addressing challenges in the frequency control field using quartz crystal technology.
He made radio history by helping radio developers maintain the strict control over the operating frequency of their inventions.
Milton Feng made radio history by co-creating the first transistor laser, and several other important devices, the most important of which would be the world’s fastest transistor, and light emitting transistor (LET).
He is currently a professor at the U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is on the board of Supertex Inc.
Leonard Claude Simmonds was responsible for the growth of radio history icon A. C. Simmonds and Sons, which was started by his father. He was later involved in such success stories as Midland Canada, Dynacharge Inc., Glenayre Electronics Ltd., and ClubLink Corporation.
He is part of a radio history family that includes Robert Simmonds (one of the founders of Clearnet), Bruce Simmonds (Ex CEO of Clublink), and Don Simmonds, who founded Air IQ.
Val Dyadyuk has extensive experience in the RF system engineering and mm-wave design, and is currently the Microwave Systems Research Team Leader (formerly Mm-wave Technologies Research Team) and a member of the WNTL Leadership Team, at CSIRO. He has played a key role in the development of their mm wave E-band Receive Array prototype. Val started his career at the University of Radio Electronics in Ukraine.