William Henry Eccles

William Henry Eccles FRS (23 August 1875 – 29 April 1966) was a British

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and a pioneer in the development of radio communication. He was born in

Barrow-in-Furness Barrow-in-Furness is a port town in Cumbria, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Lancashire, it was incorporated as a municipal borough in 1867 and merged with Dalton-in-Furness Urban District in 1974 to form the Borough of B ...

Lancashire Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly. The non-metropolitan county of Lancash ...

, England. Following graduation from the

Royal College of Science The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from th ...

, London, in 1898, he became an assistant to Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian radio entrepreneur. In 1901 he received his doctorate from the Royal College of Science. Eccles was an advocate of

Oliver Heaviside Oliver Heaviside FRS (; 18 May 1850 – 3 February 1925) was an English self-taught mathematician and physicist who invented a new technique for solving differential equations (equivalent to the Laplace transform), independently developed ...

's theory that a conducting layer of the upper atmosphere could reflect radio waves around the curvature of the Earth, thus enabling their transmission over long distances. Originally known as the Kennelly–Heaviside layer, this region of the Earth's atmosphere became known as the ionosphere. In 1912 Eccles suggested that

solar radiation Solar irradiance is the power per unit area (surface power density) received from the Sun in the form of electromagnetic radiation in the wavelength range of the measuring instrument. Solar irradiance is measured in watts per square metre ( ...

was responsible for the observed differences in radio wave propagation during the day and night. He carried out experiments into atmospheric disturbances of radio waves and used wave detectors and amplifiers in his work. Eccles invented the term Diode to describe an evacuated glass tube containing two electrodes; an

anode An anode is an electrode of a polarized electrical device through which conventional current enters the device. This contrasts with a cathode, an electrode of the device through which conventional current leaves the device. A common mnemonic ...

and a

cathode A cathode is the electrode from which a conventional current leaves a polarized electrical device. This definition can be recalled by using the mnemonic ''CCD'' for ''Cathode Current Departs''. A conventional current describes the direction in wh ...

. Following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Eccles' main interest was in electronic circuit development. In 1918 he worked in collaboration with F. W. Jordan to patent the flip-flop circuit, which became the basis of electronic memory in computers.W. H. Eccles and F. W. Jordan (19 September 1919) "A trigger relay utilizing three-electrode thermionic vacuum tubes," ''The Electrician'', vol. 83, page 298. Reprinted in: ''Radio Review'', vol. 1, no. 3 , pages 143–146 (December 1919). In 1919, Eccles became vice-chairman of the Imperial Wireless Committee. He helped in the design of the first

long wave In radio, longwave, long wave or long-wave, and commonly abbreviated LW, refers to parts of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave broadcasting band. The term is historic, dating from the e ...

radio station, and became involved in the early work of the British Broadcasting Company (later the

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