Tag: perham collection
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Jo Jennings
At 12, Jo Emmett Jennings built his first radio receiver, with an oatmeal container to form the coil and a “catwhisker” detector. In 1931, the 20 year old ham operator was hired as the night and Sunday operator at San Jose radio station KQW. After graduating from San Jose State College in 1936, Jennings went…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Charles and Sybil Herrold
View items related to Charles & Sybil Herrold and KQW in History San Jose’s Collection Charles “Doc” Herrold (1875-1948) began experimenting with electronics even before studying physics and astronomy. In 1898, he dropped out of Stanford to devote himself to invention, devising an illuminator for deep sea diving, a remote control for explosives, a high…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Royden Thornberg
Royden Thornberg was born October 6, 1891, in San Francisco, California, and worked as a telegrapher, radio operator and inventor, as well as proprietor of the Thornberg Electrical Works on Natoma Street in San Francisco. Thornberg inherited the electrical business from his father, A. F. Thornberg. Much of their work between 1907 through 1915 involved…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Ralph Heintz
View items related to Ralph Heintz and Heintz & Kaufman in the Perham Collection of Early Electronics By the 1920s, pilots, explorers, and adventurers were pressing for improved communications, as the possibilities for shortwave radio significantly improved navigation and safety. Shortwave’s higher frequency needed less power, allowing for lighter and smaller apparatus; its shorter wavelength…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: William W. Hanscom
William Wallace Hanscom was a mechanical engineer in San Francisco who was initially involved in the manufacture and installation of electrical apparatus on board ships for the U.S. Navy and merchant marine. In 1909 he became a consultant engineer in the areas of building installations for light, heat and ventilation, power plants for steel foundries,…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Federal Telegraph Company
By 1909, the American Marconi Company had a virtual monopoly on wireless communications on the West Coast. That year, a small Palo Alto company, Poulsen Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company (soon renamed Federal Telegraph Company), emerged as a dangerous competitor. Recent Stanford graduate Cyril Elwell was determined to be a part of the West Coast…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Philo Farnsworth
In 1920, while working on his family’s Idaho farm, 13-year old Philo Farnsworth conceived of a way to electronically photograph an image, then reconstruct the picture elsewhere. He spent years poring over books provided by his science teachers to study electron theory and photoelectric materials. Although he designed a complete television system on paper, he…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Lloyd Espenschied
Lloyd Espenschied was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1889, and became an amateur radio operator in 1904. While living with relatives of his mother in Brooklyn, New York, he worked as a shipboard wireless operator for the United Wireless Telegraph Company during summer vacations. It was during this time that he heard Lee de…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Harold Elliott
Harold Farley Elliott was born in Durango, Colorado, on June 17, 1892, to Wilbur S. Elliott and Henrietta Farley Elliott. Elliott’s only sibling, Jean Elliott, was born in 1895. Elliott grew up in Prescott, Arizona and graduated from Prescott High School in 1911. He then attended Stanford University, where he graduated in 1916 with his…
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Perham Collection Creator Profile: Eitel-McCullough, Inc. (EIMAC)
It was 1929, and William W. Eitel had come to San Francisco to ask Ralph Heintz for a job. “What kind of work are you doing now?” asked Heintz. “I’m driving a grocery wagon.” “What other things do you have to recommend you?” “I’m a radio ham.” “Well, that’s good enough,” said Heintz. After only…
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