Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

460 Radio Broadcast intention of getting the good will of the public, countenance the marketing of inferior apparatus at any price? A laboratory for testing radio apparatus and material is planned; a member firm may submit any of its technical problems to the laboratory staff for solution, it will be remembered that last month we mentioned the fact that the National Retail Dry Goods Association had requested the Bureau of Standards to formulate tests of radio receivers, which tests were to be carried out by the Electrical Testing Laboratories, so it seems that very soon the public should be getting receiving sets that are tested and guaranteed. A reorganization of the society was effected in Washington on July 26 resulting in a change of officers. The first president, Mr. Alexander Eisemann, a well known radio manufacturer, was replaced by Mr. W. H. Davis, of Pennie, Davis, Marvin and Edmonds, probably the most capable attorney engaged in radio litigation. The other new officers include Harold Powers, of the American Radio and Research Corporation, Cloyd Marshall of the Dubilier Condenser Company, and George Lewis of New York. It is to be hoped that with the change of officers there will be formulated a policy promising more to the radio public than did that contained in the original prospectus. At the meeting when the reorganization took place, army representatives urged upon the members the advisability of standardizing the smaller parts of radio equipment so that, in case of necessity, the tremendous amount of apparatus scattered throughout the country could at once be applied to outfitting the Army and Navy. We believe that the Chamber will do well to proceed cautiously on this standardization programme. In such a rapidly growing art, little standardization of parts can be effected without seriously hampering further development. Tubes, for example, have already been standardized too much; the present type of tube with its four terminals coming through close together and having the four-terminal base is acknowledged to be of poor design. Its electrical characteristics could be greatly improved by a different arrangement, but a change of construction now would result in the scrapping of much of the apparatus in use to-day. If an independent company were free to manufacture tubes to-day, they would by no means follow the present standardized form; a different construction, with different base, would greatly improve the action of the tube at high frequencies, so much so that the present standardized type would probably soon be discarded. As we see it, there is no likelihood of the military branches of the Government requiring our receiving sets during the next few years. The possibility is so remote that the development of radio equipment should be controlled by this consideration only in such matters as screw sizes and like details, and the sizes of units might be standardized without altering their electrical characteristics. Sets are changing so rapidly that before the next war our present equipment will be completely antiquated. Standardization should be applied only to those details in which nothing is to be gained by change. DID PETER COOPER HEWITT DISCOVER THE GRID? IN A recent annual report of Cooper Union there appeared a tribute to the late Peter Cooper Hewitt from his friend and fellow scientist. Professor M. 1. Pupin. It is evident that Pupin thought very highly of the inventive and scientific ability of Hewitt, almost as much as he did of the more human traits of his character. A visit to the Hewitt laboratory, which was dismantled shortly after the inventor's death, showed that he had been intensely interested in radio development; much of the apparatus installed in the laboratory had evidently been used in high-frequency experiments, especially in the phenomena occurring in vacuum tubes of various kinds. A pair of huge Tesla coils, which he had used at the two ends of his laboratory, as transmitter and receiver, showed that Hewitt had been interested in radiation phenomena since the early days of its demonstration bv Hertz; recent vacuum tube appliances showed that his interest in this line of work had been carried into the most recent developments. An extremely interesting note in Pupin's eulogy of the inventor of the mercury vapor lamp is that in which he states that Hewitt was the real discoverer of the grid and its functioning in a three-electrode tube. Pupin evidently had personal knowledge of this dis