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Title: Penicillin Post by: WA4WAX on October 05, 2025, 11:02:52 PM In the first half of the 1940's penicillin became plentiful and cheap. RF is the reason why.
Title: Re: Penicillin Post by: w8khk on October 07, 2025, 12:19:31 AM Matt,
But was it Amplitude Modulated RF? Inquiring minds wish to know! Title: Re: Penicillin Post by: WA4WAX on October 11, 2025, 08:42:04 PM Probably not modulated. RF drying was the idea of George Harold Brown. This allowed for trillions of units (yes, trillions) to produced each year. On the cheap no less.
Millions of lives saved. Oh, it did much to reduce the census at state mental hospitals after WWII. What was in the cabinet? Maybe a pair of 810s? :-) https://ethw.org/George_Brown Title: Re: Penicillin Post by: WA4WAX on October 20, 2025, 10:46:02 PM Walt often spoke of G H Brown. brown was a big influence for him.
Title: Re: Penicillin Post by: w8khk on October 22, 2025, 12:03:57 AM Walt often spoke of G H Brown. brown was a big influence for him Yes, George H Brown, and Harry F. Olson were fantastic intellects. George's autobiography, "And Part of Which I Was" melded the technical expertise, humor and wit of George, truly an interesting read. For example, when developing the "turnstile" antenna array in the front yard of the RCA Laboratories site in Princeton, NJ, the original ideas were sketched on a 2x6 board, part of the scaffold on which they were working. When filing the patent, he was advised the ORIGINAL drawing must accompany the patent application. George took a skil-saw and cut the section of 2x6 from the scaffold, and mailed it to Washington. On another occasion, when Magnavox was attempting to fine-tune the color of their prototype kinescope receiver, preparing for an FCC demonstration, Brown took a banana from the fruit dish being used as a color sample, and painted it blue. When the Magnavox engineer called the studio to inquire about the color discrepancy, Brown simply stated "The color of the banana on our monitor looks identical to the one in the bowl at the studio". As a young kid, I accompanied dad, (W2DU, SK), to visit the labs on several occasions, and had the privilege of chatting with both Brown and Olson. Later on, I was lucky to be in the audience in the RCA auditorium for a presentation by Albert Einstein. Small world, fond memories of a time long ago. At that time, Einstein made no mention of the cat story about the telegraph. The cat was no longer involved with the advent of radio. |