Traveling-wave tube
Tubo de onda progresiva
- Date
- 1942-1943 · confidence high
- Place
- Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Rudolf Kompfner
- Field
- Communication
What it is
Working for the British Admiralty during the Second World War, Kompfner built a vacuum tube able to amplify radio-frequency signals over a very wide bandwidth, absorbing energy from an electron beam traveling alongside the wave.
What it led to
- Broadband amplifiers for radar and telecommunications
- Transmitters of the first communications satellites (Telstar, 1962)
- Transmitters for long-range space probes