Cyril Frank Elwell (August 20, 1884 – 1963) was an Australian-bornHugh G.J. Aitken, ''The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900-1932'' Princeton University Press, 2014, Chapter 3 ''Elwell, Fuller and the Arc'' American inventor and pioneer in development of radio. He had an American father and a German mother, then went to Fort St. Model Public School in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

, Australia. Elwell arrived in the United States in 1902. He applied to

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

and entered the

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

program there. In 1906, he organized fellow students to participate in repairs at the campus, owing to the

San Francisco earthquake At 05:12 Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). High-intensity sha ...

. He graduated in 1907. He founded the Poulsen Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company, later renamed

Federal Telegraph Company The Federal Telegraph Company was a United States manufacturing and communications company that played a pivotal role in the 20th century in the development of radio communications. Founded in Palo Alto, California in 1909 by Cyril Frank Elwell, t ...

in 1909. Elwell designed a large

transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...

for

electric arc furnace An electric arc furnace (EAF) is a furnace that heats material by means of an electric arc. Industrial arc furnaces range in size from small units of approximately one-tonne capacity (used in foundries for producing cast iron products) up to ...

reduction of iron ore; this became the topic of his thesis. He had published some technical papers on applications in electric metallurgy. In 1908 he switched interests to wireless communication after investigating a system for voice transmission by spark gap transmitter invented by Francis Joseph McCarty (1888-1906) in 1902. After demonstrating the concept and obtaining financial backing for further research, McCarty had been killed in an automobile accident. His investors had contacted Harris J. Ryan at Stanford, who referred them to Elwell. The apparatus Elwell had evaluated proved unsuitable, but he knew of the Poulsen

arc converter The arc converter, sometimes called the arc transmitter, or Poulsen arc after Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen who invented it in 1903, was a variety of spark transmitter used in early wireless telegraphy. The arc converter used an electric arc ...

, which differed from the spark gap in producing a

continuous wave A continuous wave or continuous waveform (CW) is an electromagnetic wave of constant amplitude and frequency, typically a sine wave, that for mathematical analysis is considered to be of infinite duration. It may refer to e.g. a laser or partic ...

. This, Elwell knew, would be more suitable for wireless transmission of voice. By 1910 Elwell had demonstrated voice communication between Stockton and Sacramento, California. Equipment and technique rapidly improved and by 1911 Federal Telegraph was prepared to bid on contracts to provide Navy communication to Hawaii. After a dispute with the board of directors, Elwell resigned from Federal Telegraph in 1913 but continued radio research, joining the short-lived Universal Radio Syndicate. During World War I, he was a consulting radio engineer for the French and Italian governments. Between 1915 and 1923, he was the Managing Director of 'C. F. Elwell, Ltd.' In June 1924, renowned Scottish inventor and television pioneer

John Logie Baird John Logie Baird FRSE (; 13 August 188814 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly dem ...

bought from Elwell a thallium sulphide (Thalofide) cell, developed by

Theodore Case Theodore Willard Case (December 12, 1888 – May 13, 1944) was an American chemist and inventor known for the invention of the Movietone sound-on-film system. Early life and education Theodore Willard Case was born in 1888 in Auburn, New Yo ...

in the USA. The Thalofide cell was part of the important new technology of 'talking pictures', i.e.

Phonofilm Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s. Introduction In 1919 and 1920, Lee De Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patents on a sound-on-film proce ...

. Elwell was one of the founders of the

Mullard Mullard Limited was a British manufacturer of electronic components. The Mullard Radio Valve Co. Ltd. of Southfields, London, was founded in 1920 by Captain Stanley R. Mullard, who had previously designed thermionic valves for the Admir ...

company, manufacturers of vacuum tubes. After his term as director at Mullard, he returned to the United States in 1947 and was a consulting engineer for

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

. He died in 1963.

References

External links

Francis McCarty

Cyril Frank Elwell Papers
housed at

Stanford University Libraries The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. S ...

People from Melbourne American electrical engineers 1884 births 1963 deaths Silicon Valley people {{engineer-stub

References

Further reading

External links