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I wrote an article on the history of magnetic amplifiers: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-vacuum-tubes-forgotten-rival https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-vacuum-tubes-
by kens 2mo ago
I wrote an article on the history of magnetic amplifiers: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-vacuum-tubes-forgotten-rival https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-vacuum-tubes-forgotten-rival
The quick summary is that magnetic amplifiers started in the US in 1901, but Germany came up with much better magnetic alloys during World War II. This led to a post-war boom in mag amps, which were used in industrial control, aerospace, and computers such as the Univac Solid State. These magnetic materials also led to core memory. Transistors mostly killed off mag amps, although PC power supplies used them into the 1990s.
- leoc 2mo agoSpeaking of core memory, it was a magazine ad for Deltamax which got Jay Forrester to start his work on core memory: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZLpbhsE72I&t=2408s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZLpbhsE72I&t=2408s , 40m08s). Ernst Albers-Schönberg https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/archival_objects/1427123 https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/archival_objects/142... from General Ceramics whom Forrester got to work on formulating an alloy for the Whirlwind cores had previously worked at Steatit-Magnesia AG in Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeramTec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CeramTec https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steatit-Magnesia https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steatit-Magnesia . > Dr. rer. nat. Ernst Albers-Schönberg > ehem. Vorstandmitglied der Steatit-Magnesia AG, Lauf > ehem. Dir. of Research Indiana General Corp. USA p. ii in Elektrokeramik: Werkstoffe · Herstellung · Prüfung · Anwendungen 2nd ed., 1976, ISBN 978-3642809507 ( https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/ferrite_core_memory_some_history.html https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/ferrite_core_memory_some_h... also has interesting pointers from Ernst Erb and Emilio Ciardiello about the early history of magnetic core memory development.) What connection if any is there between pre-1946 German work on magnetic amplifiers and magnetic alloys and the pre-1946 German leaps forward in audio tape recording onto Magnetophons?