Albert H. Taylor
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Dr. Albert Hoyt Taylor (born January 1, 1879 in Chicago, Illinois; died December 11, 1961) was an American electrical engineer who made important early contributions to the development of radar.
Dr. Taylor did his undergraduate work at Northwestern University, graduating in 1902. From 1903-1908 he taught at the University of Wisconsin before going to Germany for his graduate studies, receiving a Ph.D. degree from the University of Göttingen in 1909. He then joined the faculty at the University of North Dakota, where he built an experimental radio station and studied antennas and wave propagation.
In 1917 Dr. Taylor accepted a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve, where he was able to continue his radio research at various locations. In 1919 he became head of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory at Anacostia (near Washington, DC); although he resigned from the Navy in 1922, he stayed at Anacostia as a civilian. In the fall of 1922, Dr. Taylor and Leo C. Young were conducting communication experiments when they noticed that a wooden ship in the Potomac River was interfering with their signals; in effect, they had demonstrated the first continuous wave (CW) interference radar.
The next year the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) was founded and Dr. Young became head of its Radio Division. In the early 1930s, the idea of pulse radar occurred to Taylor and Young, as it had to German and British scientists. Taylor instructed an assistant, Robert W. Page to construct a working prototype - a problem solved by 1934. By 1937 his team had developed a practical shipboard radar that became known as CXAM radar - a technology very similar to that of Britain's Chain Home radar system.
In 1929 Dr. Taylor was President of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), and from 1936 to 1942 he served on the Communication Committee of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Both of these organizations were predecessors to what is now the IEEE.
Dr. Taylor remained at NRL until his retirement in 1948. He died in 1961, a few weeks before his 83rd birthday.
[edit] Awards
- 1927 - Morris Liebmann Memorial Prize from the IRE, for research on short waves
- 1942 - IRE Medal of Honor, for "contributions to radio communication as an engineer and organizer, including pioneering work in the practical application of piezoelectric control to radio transmitters, early recognition and investigation of skip distances and other high-frequency wave-propagation problems, and many years of service to the government of the United States as an engineering executive of outstanding ability in directing the Radio Division of the Naval Research Laboratory"
