San Francisco Bay Radio Essay

Due to the local naval bases and the strong maritime trade, the San Francisco Bay Area became one of the leading centers for the development of radio and radar.

Bell Labs was back east, in New York and New Jersey, but around the San Francisco Bay was perhaps the highest concentration of amateur or “ham” radio operators anywhere in the world. These amateur enthusiasts were constantly figuring out better ways to send or receive a radio signal.

Around 1920, there were many local, mostly young, men who had caught the radio bug. A few notable teenagers among them were Bill Eitel, Jack McCullough, Charles Litton, and Frederick Terman.

Bill Eitel picked up his mechanical skills in shop classes at Los Gatos High School and at his father’s granite quarry. Jack McCullough picked up his set of mechanical skills at the California School of Mechanical Arts (later, Lick-Wilmerding High School) in San Francisco. Charlie Litton was a child prodigy, who in 1915, at age 11, operated an amateur radio station from his parents’ Redwood City home. Later, he also attended the same school in San Francisco. Terman, the son of a Stanford professor, began operating his own amateur radio station in 1917 in Palo Alto at age 17.

These young men, along with many others, were fascinated with radio and competed intensely to
The brothers and the group with them would have access to the physics laboratory and to William Hansen, one of the premiere mathematicians on campus. The university and the group would split the profits from the group’s innovations 50-50. This agreement continued until the threat of war became great, at which time the entire Stanford klystron team went east to Sperry Gyroscope to advance its development. The klystron was urgently needed in order to perfect radar into the defensive weapon it could be, but was not