Mr. C. S. Franklin

Abstract

THE twenty-seventh award of the Faraday Medal has been made to Mr. Charles Samuel Franklin for his distinguished work in radio engineering, and in particular for his original studies of short-wave wireless transmitting and receiving circuits and his invention of the beam aerial, by means of which the practical use of short-wave transmission for communication purposes was established. Mr. Franklin was born in 1879 and received his engineering and scientific training at Finsbury Technical College under Prof. Silvanus Thompson. In 1899 he joined Marconi‘s Wireless Telegraph Co., then known as the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co., and was continuously associated with research and development in radio engineering with that Company until 1935, when he retired from active work. During his period with the Company, many outstanding developments stood to his credit, including reaction patents for wireless receiver circuits, the early British broadcasting stations, directional receiving systems for long-wave communication circuits, rotating beam aerials, shortwave wireless transmitting and receiving circuits, and in particular the beam aerial array associated with his name, which was the fundamental invention comprised in the beam system of wireless telegraphy. He also developed the concentric cable system, which is essential in television transmission practice. Mr. Franklin was the first recipient of the James Alfred Ewing Medal, instituted in 1936 in memory of Sir Alfred Ewing and awarded by the Institution of Civil Engineers for specially meritorious contributions to the science of engineering in the field of research.