Harold Black and The Negative-Feedback Amplifier: Ronald
Harold Black and The Negative-Feedback Amplifier: Ronald
Harold Black and The Negative-Feedback Amplifier: Ronald
Negative-Feedback Amplifier
Ronald Kline
August 1993 83
into oscillations) and devised a tance-capacitance tuned vari-
design rule to guard against able frequency audio oscilla-
this instability. In May 1928, tor described in this paper was
Hany Nyquist (1889-1976) and William Hewlett’s contribu-
other communication engineers tion to the paper, and was fur-
at AT&T conferred with Black thermore the foundation on
about using his amplifier for a which the Hewlett-Packard
n e w cable carrier system. Company was built” [ 181.
Nyquist, who received his Ph.D. T h e h i s t o r y of H - P ’ s
in physics from Yale in 1917, founding has elements of the
thought Black‘s design rule was stereotypical story of indepen-
too stringent and did an analysis dent inventors working alone
of negative feedback. This work in a garage. David Packard
led to what later came to be and Hewlett did start their
known as the “Nyquist criterion” company in Packard’s garage
for determining when an ampli- (Hewlett lived in a cottage on
fier with negative feedback was the grounds). But the influ-
stable. He published the paper ence of Stanford and Terman
containing the criterion in 1932 was considerable. Hewlett and
during the patent office delibera- Packard retumed to the area
tions on Black’s patent and after graduating from Stanford
joined Bell Labs in 1934 11 11. in 1934. Packard took a leave
Black recalled, “Although this of absence from GE to accept
criterion is simple in expression a fellowship in 1938, while
and application, Nyquist’s deri- Hewlett retumed to work un-
vation of it required a mathe- der Terman after finishing a
matical-physical intuition given Master’s degree at M.I.T. in
to few men” [ 1, p. 7231. Black’s I
1936. Terman encouraged the
classic paper on the negative A page jrom Harold Black’s notebook, pmhabh lute 1920. pair to form a company to mar-
feedback amplifier, published in (Photo: AT&T ArchivrJ) ket Hewlett’s variable-fre-
1934, referred to Nyquist’s pa- quency oscillator, lent them
per and his stability criterion $538, helped them get a bank
[121. vanced training in mathematics and phys- loan of $1000, and helped them work out
In that same year, during the develop- ics - a common aspect of the history of a deal with IT&T who bought their inter-
ment of a coaxial-cable camer system electronics in this period. national patent rights in exchange for un-
with a passband of 1 MHz and the possi- derwriting their U S . patent application.
bility of several hundred amplifiers, an- Hewlett-Packard and the An early customer for the audio-fre-
other Bell Labs theorist, Hendrik Bode Negative Feedback Amplifier quency oscillators was Disney Studios,
(1905-1982), led a group of mathemati- who ordered eight for the film “Fantasia.”
The application of the negative feed-
cians in the development of design tech- back principle was taken up fairly rapidly By 1940, the fledgling company had nine
niques that took full advantage of Black’s at Stanford University by electrical engi- employees and had moved out of the ga-
invention [ 131. Bode, an applied mathe- neering professor Frederick Terman and rage to develop a full line of products -
matician who received an M.A. from Ohio his students. In 1939, Terman, William based initially on the negative-feedback
State in 1926 and a Ph.D. in physics from Hewlett, Robert Buss, and Francis Cahill amplifier 1 191.
Columbia University in 1935 1141, pub- wrote a paper that described many uses for
lished his paper, “Relations Between At- negative feedback: in a laboratory audio- Common Themes
t e n u a t i o n a n d P h a s e in F e e d b a c k frequency amplifier, an audio-frequency The story of this amplifier illustrates
Amplifier Design,” in I940 [ 151. The pa- voltmeter, a tuned-radio receiver, high-Q many themes in the history of technology.
per, and a resulting book in 1945 (which circuits, and laboratory oscillators. Nega- Although the invention can be traced to a
included what engineers now call “Bode tive feedback resulted in low distortion, “flash of insight” by a single person, the
plots”), used the powerful tools of net- stable gain, and a small phase angle, while inventor was well trained in mathematics,
work theory to show how to design feed- protecting the circuits from the harmful engineering, and science, and had been
back amplifiers with the desired gain and effects of vacuum-tube aging, variable working with others in this area. The devel-
frequency response in a precise manner supply voltages, and so forth. These char- opment of the amplifier was truly a team
[16]. Thus, although Black is usually rec- acteristics were of high value in precision effort at Bell Labs; theorists with excellent
ognized as the inventor of the negative voltmeters, oscilloscopes, and oscillators. mathematical skills developed a theory that
feedback amplifier, its development and Terman, who often is called the founder of helped engineers understand the original in-
the recognition of its possibilities in com- what came to be known as “Silicon Valley” vention and develop it further. The applica-
munications, measurements, and control because of his promotion of commercial ties tion of the invention by Hewlett and Packard
systems were the result of a group effort between Stanford and local electronics firms not only started a new business, but rein-
between engineers and theorists with ad- 1171, recalled in the 1970s that the “resis- forced the connections between the univer-
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CORRECTION