Ernest Frederick Werner Alexanderson, Swedish-American electrical engineer and prolific radio and television inventor responsible for developing a high frequency alternator for generating radio waves.After education in Sweden at the High School and University of Lund and the Royal Institution of Technology in Stockholm, Alexanderson took a postgraduate course at the Berlin Charlottenburg Engineering College.
In 11901 he began work for the Swedish C & C Electric Company, joining the General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York, the following year.
There, in 1906, together with Fessenden, he developed a series of high power high frequency alternators, which had a dramatic effect on radio communications and resulted in the first real radio broadcast.
His early interest in television led to working demonstrations in his own home in 1925 and at the General Electric laboratories in 1927, and to the first public demonstration of large-screen (7 ft diagonal) projection TV in 1930.
Another invention of significance was the ‘amplidyne’, a sensitive manufacturing control system subsequently used during the Second World War for controlling anti-aircraft guns.
He also contributed to developments in electric propulsion and radio serials.
He retired from General Electric in 1948, but continued television research as a consultant for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), filling his 321st pattern in 1955.
Ernest Frederick Werner Alexanderson (1878 – 1975)
