Robert Clayton

Materials and passive components

This chapter reviews developments in the following fields: synthetic quartz; ferroelectrics; magnetic-film storage; microwave ferrite material; surface-acoustic wave device; crystal growing techniques; and superconductivity.

Lasers and optoelectronics

This chapter describes the Wembley Laboratorys work on lasers, which started in the early 1960s, and on optical fibres and cables, which started in 1970 and led to substantial new business for GEC.

Communications and electronics

This chapter describes in turn the work on telecommunications, on radio communications (which at various times embraced sound broadcasting, acoustics, radio interference, civil and military point-to-point communications, mobile communications, and computers), and on television and broadband microwave transmission.

Physics, mostly solid state, in the post-war period

There has always been a strong underlying physics research programme in the work of the Laboratories. This is evidenced from the 1920s onwards by the list of papers published (particularly the numbered communications) which complement the reports from the Laboratories to GEC units, GEC Head Office, and outside organisations for whom they were undertaking work. In the pre-war era this work was mostly associated with gas discharges for light-emittng devices and with thermionic valves. The physics programme was particularly strong again in the post-war period. Much of it was associated with valve and semiconductor research, but it is sufficiently important to merit a self-contained account. Inevitably there are some cross-references to Chapter 8 (Semiconductor Materials and Devices) and to Chapter 5 (Valves).

Glass and refractories

Glass is used as a transparent and chemically inert envelope for lamps and lamp fittings of all types, and for a wide range of power ratings from miniature lamps to television studio lamps of up to 10 kW. Because it is a superb electrical insulator at normal temperature it is used for glass-to-metal seals in lamps, and has been widely used in this manner for receiving and transmitting valves of all types. It continues to be used in CRTs and semiconductor devices. In these applications the versatility of glass as an hermetic sealant to itself or other glasses, metals and ceramics makes possible the efficient performance of electric al or electronic devices under onerous conditions, with up to 25 years lifetime. In its purest and most transparent form glass continues to be exploited in optical-fibre technology for telecommunications and for a wide range of sensors for control equipment.

Lamps, phosphors and photometry

By the time the GEC Research Laboratories were established it had long been evident to leaders in the electrical industry, such as Hugo Hirst, that there was great potential in the use of electricity for lamps and lighting. Although gas was still used for many lighting purposes, the advantages of electricity gave scope for substituting it for gas. There had already been forty years of development of incandescent filament lamps, but there was still considerable room for advances. As yet there were only hints as to what still lay ahead, but it had become clear from the work of Coolidge and Langmuir at GE in America that the coiled tungsten filament in a gas-filled envelope was the incandescent lamp of the future.