Ralph Vinton Lyon Hartley (November 30, 1888 – May 1, 1970) was an
electronicsElectronics is a branch of science and technology that deals with the controlled flow of electrons. The ability to control electron flow is usually applied to information handling or device control. Electronics is distinct from electrical science and technology, which deals with the generation,...
researcher. He invented the
Hartley oscillatorThe Hartley oscillator is an LC electronic oscillator that derives its feedback from a tapped coil in parallel with a capacitor . Although there is no requirement for there to be mutual coupling between the two coil segments, the circuit is usually implemented as such...
and the
Hartley transformIn mathematics, the Hartley transform is an integral transform closely related to the Fourier transform, but which transforms real-valued functions to real-valued functions. It was proposed as an alternative to the Fourier transform by R. V. L. Hartley in 1942, and is one of many known...
, and contributed to the foundations of
information theoryInformation theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on compressing and reliably storing and communicating data...
.
Hartley was born in Spruce, Nevada, USA and attended the
University of UtahThe University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, receiving an A.B. degree in 1909. He became a
Rhodes ScholarThe Rhodes Scholarship named after Cecil Rhodes is an international award for study at the University of Oxford and was the first large-scale programme of international scholarships...
at
St Johns__FORCETOC__St John's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel...
,
Oxford UniversityThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
, in 1910 and received a B.A. degree in 1912 and a B.Sc. degree in 1913. He married Florence Vail of
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
on March 21, 1916.
He returned to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and was employed at the Research Laboratory of the
Western Electric CompanyWestern Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
.
Ralph Vinton Lyon Hartley (November 30, 1888 – May 1, 1970) was an
electronicsElectronics is a branch of science and technology that deals with the controlled flow of electrons. The ability to control electron flow is usually applied to information handling or device control. Electronics is distinct from electrical science and technology, which deals with the generation,...
researcher. He invented the
Hartley oscillatorThe Hartley oscillator is an LC electronic oscillator that derives its feedback from a tapped coil in parallel with a capacitor . Although there is no requirement for there to be mutual coupling between the two coil segments, the circuit is usually implemented as such...
and the
Hartley transformIn mathematics, the Hartley transform is an integral transform closely related to the Fourier transform, but which transforms real-valued functions to real-valued functions. It was proposed as an alternative to the Fourier transform by R. V. L. Hartley in 1942, and is one of many known...
, and contributed to the foundations of
information theoryInformation theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Historically, information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on compressing and reliably storing and communicating data...
.
Biography
Hartley was born in Spruce, Nevada, USA and attended the
University of UtahThe University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, receiving an A.B. degree in 1909. He became a
Rhodes ScholarThe Rhodes Scholarship named after Cecil Rhodes is an international award for study at the University of Oxford and was the first large-scale programme of international scholarships...
at
St Johns__FORCETOC__St John's College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Sir Thomas White, a merchant, in 1555, whose heart is buried in the chapel...
,
Oxford UniversityThe University of Oxford , located in the UK city of Oxford, is the oldest surviving university in the English-speaking world and is regarded as one of the world's leading academic institutions. Although the exact date of foundation remains unclear, there is evidence of teaching there as far back...
, in 1910 and received a B.A. degree in 1912 and a B.Sc. degree in 1913. He married Florence Vail of
BrooklynBrooklyn is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located southwest of Queens on the western tip of Long Island. An independent city until its consolidation with New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents, and second largest in area...
on March 21, 1916.
He returned to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and was employed at the Research Laboratory of the
Western Electric CompanyWestern Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
. In 1915 he was in charge of radio receiver development for the
Bell SystemThe Bell System was the AT&T monopoly that provided telephone service in the United States from 1877 to 1984 when it was broken up into separate companies by a Federal mandate....
transatlantic
radiotelephoneA radiotelephone is a communications device that allows two or more people to talk using radio. There is disagreement about the definition of the term...
tests. For this he developed the Hartley oscillator and also a neutralizing circuit to eliminate triode singing resulting from internal coupling. A
patentA patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention....
for the oscillator was filed on June 1, 1915 and awarded on October 26, 1920.
During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
he established the principles that led to sound-type
directional finderA radio direction finder is a device for finding the direction to a radio source. Due to radio's ability to travel very long distances and "over the horizon", it makes a particularly good navigation system for ships, small boats, and aircraft that might be some distance from their destination...
s.
Following the war he returned to
Western ElectricWestern Electric Company was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management...
. He later worked at Bell Laboratories. He performed research on
repeaterA repeater is an electronic device that receives asignal and retransmits it at a higher level and/or higher power, or onto the other side of an obstruction, so that the signal can cover longer distances.-Description:...
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." After about 10 years of illness he returned to Bell Labs in 1939 as a
consultantA consultant is a professional who provides advice in a particular area of expertise such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, medicine, finance, life management, economics,...
.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he was particularly involved with
servomechanismthumb|right|200px|Industrial servomotor
The grey/green cylinder is the brush-type DC motor. The black section at the bottom contains the planetary reduction gear, and the black object atop the motor is the optical [[rotary encoder]] for position feedback...
problems.
He retired from Bell Labs in 1950 and died on May 1, 1970.
Awards
- IRE Medal of Honor
The IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contribution or an extraordinary career in the IEEE fields of...
, 1946, for his oscillator and information proportionality law. This was an award from the Institute of Radio EngineersThe Institute of Radio Engineers was a professional organization which existed from 1912 until January 1 1963, when it merged with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers to form the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ....
which later merged into the Institute of Electrical and Electronics EngineersThe IEEE is an international non-profit, professional organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. It has the most members of any technical professional organization in the world, with more than 365,000 members in around 150 countries.-History:The IEEE is incorporated in...
; the award became the IEEE Medal of HonorThe IEEE Medal of Honor is the highest recognition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers . It has been awarded since 1917, when its first recipient was Major Edwin H. Armstrong. It is given for an exceptional contribution or an extraordinary career in the IEEE fields of...
.
- Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation between scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for...
Publications
Probably incomplete.
- Hartley, R.V.L., "Transmission of Information", Bell System Technical Journal, July 1928, pp.535–563.
- Hartley, R.V.L., "A More Symmetrical Fourier Analysis Applied to Transmission Problems," Proceedings of the IRE 30, pp.144–150 (1942).
- Hartley, R.V.L., "A New System of Logarithmic Units", Proceedings of the IRE, January 1955, Vol. 43, No. 1.
- Hartley, R.V.L., "Information Theory of The Fourier Analysis and Wave Mechanics", August 10, 1955, publication information unknown.
- Hartley, R.V.L., "The Mechanism of Gravitation", January 11, 1956, publication information unknown.
- Hartley, R.V.L., "A Wave Mechanism of Quantum Phenomena", Physical Review
Physical Review is an American scientific journal, publishing research on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical Society .- History :...
, Volume 33, Page 289, 1929 (abstract only)
- Hartley, R.V.L., "Oscillations in Systems with Non-Linear Reactance", The Bell System Technical Journal, Volume 15, Number 3, July 1936, pp 424 - 440