Physical Theory of the Electric Wave-Filter

Abstract

Note: The electric wave-filter, an invention of Dr. Campbell, is one of the most important of present day circuit developments, being indispensable in many branches of electrical communication. It makes possible the separation of a broad band of frequencies into narrow bands in any desired manner, and as will be gathered from the present article, it effects the separation much more sharply than do tuned circuits. As the communication art develops, the need will arise to transmit a growing number of telephone and telegraph messages on a given pair of line wires and a growing number of radio messages through the ether, and the filter will prove increasingly useful in coping with this situation. The filter stands beside the vacuum tube as one of the two devices making carrier telegraphy and telephony practicable, being used in standard carrier equipment to separate the various carrier frequencies. It is a part of every telephone repeater set, cutting out and preventing the amplification of extreme line frequencies for which the line is not accurately balanced by its balancing network. It is being applied to certain types of composited lines for the separation of the d.c. Morse channels from the telephone channel. It is finding many applications to radio of which multiplex radio is an illustration. The filter is also being put to numerous uses in the research laboratory. The present paper is the first of a series on the electric wave-filter to be contributed to the Technical Journal by various authors. Being an introductory paper the author has chosen to discuss his subject from a physical rather than mathematical point of view, the fundamental characteristics of filters being deduced by purely physical reasoning and the derivation of formulas being left to a mathematical appendix. — Editor.