Ralph Vinton Lyon Hartley (November 30, 1888 – May 1, 1970) was an American

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

researcher. He invented the Hartley oscillator and the Hartley transform, and contributed to the foundations of

information theory Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. ...

Biography

Hartley was born in

Sprucemont, Nevada Sprucemont is a ghost town in Elko County, in the U.S. state of Nevada. The GNIS classifies it as a populated place. History The community took its name from nearby Spruce Mountain, as it is located on the western foothills of the mountain. Var ...

, and attended the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

, receiving an A.B. degree in 1909. He became a

Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Established in 1902, it is the oldest graduate scholarship in the world. It is considered among the world' ...

at St Johns,

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, in 1910 and received a B.A. degree in 1912 and a B.Sc. degree in 1913. He married Florence Vail of

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

on March 21, 1916. The Hartleys had no children. He returned to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

and was employed at the Research Laboratory of the

Western Electric Company The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ...

. In 1915 he was in charge of

radio receiver In radio communications, a radio receiver, also known as a receiver, a wireless, or simply a radio, is an electronic device that receives radio waves and converts the information carried by them to a usable form. It is used with an antenna. Th ...

development for the

Bell System The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundr ...

transatlantic

radiotelephone A radiotelephone (or radiophone), abbreviated RT, is a radio communication system for conducting a conversation; radiotelephony means telephony by radio. It is in contrast to ''radiotelegraphy'', which is radio transmission of telegrams (messa ...

tests. For this he developed the Hartley oscillator and also a neutralizing circuit to eliminate triode singing resulting from internal coupling. A

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

for the oscillator was filed on June 1, 1915 and awarded on October 26, 1920. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

Hartley established the principles that led to sound-type directional finders. Following the war he returned to

Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...

. He later worked at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

. He performed research on

repeater In telecommunications, a repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it. Repeaters are used to extend transmissions so that the signal can cover longer distances or be received on the other side of an obstruction. Som ...

s and voice and carrier transmission and formulated the law "that the total amount of information that can be transmitted is proportional to frequency range transmitted and the time of the transmission." His 1928 paper is considered as "the single most important prerequisite" for Shannon's theory of information. After about 10 years of illness he returned to Bell Labs in 1939 as a

consultant A consultant (from la, consultare "to deliberate") is a professional (also known as ''expert'', ''specialist'', see variations of meaning below) who provides advice and other purposeful activities in an area of specialization. Consulting servi ...

. In spite of his illness during most of the 1930s, Hartley had formed a theoretical and experimental research group at Bell Laboratories starting in 1929 to investigate nonlinear oscillations and what later became known as parametric amplifiers. This research was mostly parallel to the work being done at the same time in Soviet Russia by Leonid Mandelstam and in Europe by Balthasar van der Pol. A short review and extensive bibliography was published by Mumford in 1960. The Bell Laboratories work was carried on under Hartley's guidance during the 1930s and 1940s by John Burton and Eugene Peterson (who themselves had begun investigations of nonlinear circuits as far back as 1917 when they had observed unusual characteristics while working with E.F.W. Alexanderson's magnetic modulators, an early form of magnetic amplifier). Peterson later got John Manley and Harrison Rowe involved in this line of research during the 1940s which culminated in the now famous

Manley–Rowe relations The Manley–Rowe relations are mathematical expressions developed originally for electrical engineers to predict the amount of energy in a wave that has multiple frequencies. They have since been found to describe systems in non-linear optics, flu ...

and several papers by the latter two authorsManley J.M., Rowe H.E., "General Energy Relations in Nonlinear Reactances", ''

Proceedings of the IRE The ''Proceedings of the IEEE'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The journal focuses on electrical engineering and computer science. According to the ''Journa ...

'', Volume 47, December 1959, pp 2115–2116 on the topic of parametric circuits in the mid 1950s. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

he was particularly involved with

servomechanism In control engineering a servomechanism, usually shortened to servo, is an automatic device that uses error-sensing negative feedback to correct the action of a mechanism. On displacement-controlled applications, it usually includes a built-in ...

problems. He retired from Bell Labs in 1950 and died on May 1, 1970. His legacy includes the naming of the

hartley Hartley may refer to: Places Australia *Hartley, New South Wales * Hartley, South Australia ** Electoral district of Hartley, a state electoral district Canada *Hartley Bay, British Columbia United Kingdom * Hartley, Cumbria * Hartley, Pl ...

, a unit of information equal to one decimal digit, after him.

Awards

* IRE Medal of Honor, 1946, for his oscillator and information proportionality law. This was an award from the

Institute of Radio Engineers The Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) was a professional organization which existed from 1912 until December 31, 1962. On January 1, 1963, it merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) to form the Institute of Electrical ...

which later merged into the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

; the award became the

IEEE Medal of Honor The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contributi ...

. * Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

Publications

''Probably incomplete.'' * Hartley, R.V.L.,
The Function of Phase Difference in the Binaural Location of Pure Tones
" ''

Physical Review ''Physical Review'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research as well as scientific and literature reviews on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical ...

'', Volume 13, Issue 6, pp 373–385, (June 1919). * Hartley, R.V.L., Fry T.C.,"The Binaural Location of Pure Tones", ''

'', Volume 18, Issue 6, pp 431 – 442, (December 1921). * Hartley, R.V.L., "Relations of Carrier and Side-Bands in Radio Transmission", ''

'', Volume 11, Issue 1, pp 34 – 56, (February 1923). * Hartley, R.V.L.
"Transmission of Information"
''

Bell System Technical Journal The ''Bell Labs Technical Journal'' is the in-house scientific journal for scientists of Nokia Bell Labs, published yearly by the IEEE society. The managing editor is Charles Bahr. The journal was originally established as the ''Bell System Tech ...

'', Volume 7, Number 3, pp. 535–563, (July 1928). * Hartley, R.V.L., "A Wave Mechanism of Quantum Phenomena", ''

'', Volume 33, Issue 2, Page 289, (1929) (abstract only) * Hartley, R.V.L., "Oscillations in Systems with Non-Linear Reactance", ''

The Bell System Technical Journal The ''Bell Labs Technical Journal'' is the in-house scientific journal for scientists of Nokia Bell Labs, published yearly by the IEEE society. The managing editor is Charles Bahr. The journal was originally established as the ''Bell System Tech ...

'', Volume 15, Number 3, pp 424 – 440, (July 1936). *Hartley, R.V.L., "Excitation of Raman Spectra with the Aid of Optical Catalysers", ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'', Volume 139, pg 329 - 329, (20 February 1937) * Hartley, R.V.L., "Steady State Delay as Related to Aperiodic Signals", ''

'', Volume 20, Number 2, pp 222 – 234, (April 1941). * Hartley, R.V.L., "A More Symmetrical Fourier Analysis Applied to Transmission Problems," ''

'', Volume 30, Number 2, pp. 144–150 (March 1942). * Hartley, R.V.L., "Note on the Application of Vector Analysis to the Wave Equation", '' Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', Volume 22, Issue 4, pg 511, (1950). * Hartley, R.V.L., "The Significance of Nonclassical Statistics", ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

'', Volume 111, Number 2891, pp 574 – 576, (May 26, 1950) * Hartley, R.V.L., "Matter, a Mode of Motion", ''

'', Volume 29, Number 3, pg 350 - 368, (July 1950). * Hartley, R.V.L., "The Reflection of Diverging Waves by a Gyrostatic Medium", ''

'', Volume 29, Number 3, pp 369 – 389, (July 1950), * Hartley, R.V.L., "A New System of Logarithmic Units", ''

'', Volume. 43, Number 1, pg 97, (January 1955). * Hartley, R.V.L., "New System of Logarithmic Units", '' Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', Volume 27, Issue 1, pp 174 – 176, (1955) * Hartley, R.V.L., "Information Theory of The Fourier Analysis and Wave Mechanics", August 10, 1955, publication information unknown. * Hartley, R.V.L., "The Mass of a Wave Particle", July 30, 1955, unpublished manuscript, copies available from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park MD * Hartley, R.V.L., "The Mechanism of Gravitation", January 11, 1956, unpublished manuscript; copies available from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park MD * Hartley, R.V.L., "The Mechanism of Electricity and Magnetism", June 14, 1956, unpublished manuscript, copies available from the Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park MD * Hartley, R.V.L., "Rotational Waves in a Turbulent Liquid", '' Journal of the Acoustical Society of America'', Volume 29, Issue 2, pp 195 – 196, (1957) * Hartley, R.V.L., "A Mechanistic Theory of Extra-Atomic Physics",''

Philosophy of Science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

'', Volume 26, Number 4, pp 295 – 309, (October 1959)

Notes

References

Ralph V. L. Hartley, Legacies, IEEE History Center
updated July 7, 2011 * US Patent 1,356,763, Oscillation Generator, October 26, 1920, United States Patent and Trademark Office

page images can be downloaded. * US Patent 1,666,206, Modulation System, April 17, 1928, United States Patent and Trademark Office

page images can be downloaded. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hartley, Ralph 1888 births 1970 deaths Alumni of St John's College, Oxford American Rhodes Scholars American electronics engineers Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science IEEE Medal of Honor recipients American information theorists Scientists at Bell Labs University of Utah alumni 20th-century American inventors Fellows of the American Physical Society Inventors from Nevada

Biography

Awards

Publications

See also

Notes

References