James Kilton Clapp (December 30, 1897 – 1965) was an American electrical engineer who worked for General Radio Corporation. He was born in Denver, Colorado and graduated from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1923, obtaining a master's degree there in 1926. He taught at MIT and then joined General Radio Corporation in 1928, until his retirement in 1957. He became a member of the

IRE Ire or IRE may refer to: Ire * Extreme anger; intense fury * Irē, the Livonian name for Mazirbe, Latvia * A town in Oye, Nigeria * ''Ire'' (album), a 2015 album by the Australian metalcore band Parkway Drive * Ire (Iliad), a town mentioned in ...

in 1928 and in 1933 was named "Fellow". Several of Clapp's inventions became the basis of General Radio products. He invented a quartz-

crystal oscillator A crystal oscillator is an electronic oscillator circuit that uses a piezoelectric crystal as a frequency-selective element. The oscillator frequency is often used to keep track of time, as in quartz wristwatches, to provide a stable clock ...

frequency standard in 1930, and patented a temperature control oven for crystal oscillators. Clapp's name is best known in the field of electronics for his description in 1948 of an improved form of

Colpitts oscillator A Colpitts oscillator, invented in 1918 by American engineer Edwin H. Colpitts, is one of a number of designs for LC oscillators, electronic oscillators that use a combination of inductors (L) and capacitors (C) to produce an oscillation at a certa ...

known as the

Clapp oscillator The Clapp oscillator or Gouriet oscillator is an LC electronic oscillator that uses a particular combination of an inductor and three capacitors to set the oscillator's frequency. LC oscillators use a transistor (or vacuum tube or other gain eleme ...

References

American electrical engineers 1897 births 1965 deaths 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni {{US-electrical-engineer-stub