ID 1109157
Lot 355 | Henry Joseph Round (1881-1966)
Valeur estimée
£ 6 000 – 9 000
The archive of H.J. Round, radio pioneer
In five large A4 archive boxes. Provenance: Sotheby's, 17 July 1984, lot 411.
The principal archival source for the work of radio pioneer H.J. Round, including an important series of early letters describing his work in the Marconi Company in the 1900s, his working notebooks, patents, photographs and more.
Comprising:
c.60 letters to his parents, c.1901-1912, written chiefly from Babylon, Long Island, Chicago and elsewhere in the U.S.A., many of considerable length (some incomplete), concerning the progress of experimental work in at early Marconi stations and Round’s contributions; and a series of early postcards, c. 1900s;
over thirty working notebooks, the earliest 1906, the majority 1940s-1950s, containing Round’s draft calculations, sketches and specifications for projects;
numerous other autograph and typescript drafts, notes, reports, and articles on Wireless Telegraphy, including a series of autobiographical reflections; a quantity of letters sent to him by correspondents;
photographs, including some of Marconi's early stations and apparatuses;
printed copies of 93 patent applications, including those for Direction Finding (1909), Valve Crystals (1910), Ring Modulators (1913), Multi-Grid Valves (1913) and Automatic Tuning (1921);
printed books, pamphlets, telegrams and other papers.
The radio engineer and inventor H.J. Round joined the Marconi Company in 1902 and was sent to the United States, where he worked at Babylon, Long Island. Here he experimented with dust-core tuning inductances and devised the elements of direction finding. In his spare time at this station he constructed one of the first arc radio telephones. He was recalled to England and became one of the corps d'élite working personally with Guglielmo Marconi. Having greatly improved the performance of the Clifden (Ireland) high power transatlantic transmitter, Round was sent to South America in 1912, where he performed an outstanding feat of engineering at two wireless stations on the upper reaches of the Amazon. On his return to England, Round immersed himself in the problems of valve amplification, and in 1913–14 patented important valve improvements. Round was seconded to military intelligence at the outbreak of war in 1914 and was entrusted with the setting up of a network of valved direction-finding (DF) stations covering the entire western front and the design of the first telephony transmitters and receivers for airborne use. For services to his country Round was awarded the Military Cross in 1918.
It was with his newly designed transmitting valves, the MT1 and MT2, that in March 1919 a telephony transmitter which he had installed at Ballybunion, Ireland, became the first European station to span the Atlantic with telephony. On 23 February 1920, on a wavelength of 2500 metres, the world's first wireless telephony news service was inaugurated, closely followed on 15 June by the first public broadcast entertainment, a recital by the Australian prima donna, Dame Nellie Melba. Two years later the concerts from ‘Two Emma Tock’ (2MT) at Writtle in Essex led to the establishment of station 2LO at Marconi House in the Strand, London. Again, the transmitter was designed by Round. This was the first station to be taken over by the BBC on its formation in November 1922. The artificial echo system and the Sykes-Round microphone were two of Round's many contributions to the early stages of the art of broadcasting. In parallel with this work, Round was redesigning the Marconi high-power station at Caernarfon, updating it from spark to valve transmission, using fifty-six MT2 valves. On 19 November 1921, using the new equipment, signals from this station were received in Australia. Appointed chief of the Marconi Research Group in 1921, Round's output was prolific. He designed valve receivers for ships and constructed the first batch of maritime valved transmitters. His book, The Shielded Four-Electrode Valve was published in 1927. He designed the ‘straight eight’ broadcast receiver; a gramophone recording system (licensed to the Vocalion Company); and a large-audience public address system, which was used to relay King George V's speech at the Wembley exhibitions. He devised a talking picture system which was licensed to Stoll (Visatone) for recording sound on film during the 1930s cinema boom.
In 1931 Round set up in private practice as a research consultant. He worked on asdic for the Admiralty between 1941 and 1950, and on echo sounding for the Marconi Company from 1950 onwards, inventing new magnetostrictive devices for use in the production of echo sounders; he also worked on the first permanently magnetized nickel transducers and the first belt recording system for echo sounders. He filed a total of 117 patent applications, the last of which was recorded in 1962 when he was eighty-one (Baker & Hance, ‘Round, Henry Joseph (1881–1966), radio engineer and inventor’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2010)).
Lieu d'origine: | Etats-Unis |
---|
Lieu d'origine: | Etats-Unis |
---|
Adresse de l'enchère |
CHRISTIE'S 8 King Street, St. James's SW1Y 6QT London Royaume-Uni | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Aperçu |
| |||||
Téléphone | +44 (0)20 7839 9060 | |||||
Commission | see on Website | |||||
Conditions d'utilisation | Conditions d'utilisation |
Termes connexes
Questions fréquemment posées
Pour participer aux ventes aux enchères, vous devez d’abord, vous inscrire. Après la confirmation de l’adresse e-mail, complétez votre profil d’utilisateur en fournissant des renseignements personnels tels que votre prénom, nom de famille et l’adresse postale. Choisissez un lot qui vous intéresse et indiquez le montant maximum que vous voulez offir pour ce lot. Dès que vous confirmez votre choix, nous transférerons votre demande par voie électronique à la maison de ventes aux enchères appropriée. Si votre demande est acceptée, votre offre va participer aux ventes aux enchères. Vous pouvez vérifier le statut actuel de votre offre en tout temps dans votre cabinet personnel VIL sous l’onglet «Vos offres».
Les enchères sont réalisées par les maisons de ventes et chacune des maisons de ventes décrit ses conditions de vente. Vous pouvez voir les textes dans la rubrique «Information sur les ventes».
Les résultats des ventes aux enchères sont publiés dans quelques jours après la clôture de l’enchère. En haut de la page du site web VIL, vous trouverez l’onglet «Enchères». Cliquez sur cet onglet et naviguez vers la page des catalogues de ventes aux enchères où vous trouverez facilement l’onglet « Résultats des ventes ». Sur cet onglet, sélectionnez l’enchère qui vous intéresse et consultez l’état de vente du lot de votre choix.
Les informations sur les gagnants des enchères sont confidentielles. Le gagnant de l'enchère recevra une notification directe de la maison d'enchères responsable avec des instructions pour les mesures à prendre: une facture de paiement et la manière dont les marchandises ont été reçues.
Chacune de maisons de ventes aux enchères adhère à sa propre politique concernant les modes de paiement des lots remportés. Toutes les maisons de ventes aux enchères acceptent les virements bancaires; la plupart d’elles acceptent les paiements par carte de crédit. Dans un avenir très proche, vous trouverez des renseignements détaillés sous la rubrique «Information sur les ventes», à la page du catalogue et du lot.
Le mode de livraison du lot dépend de sa taille et ses dimensions. Les petits articles peuvent être livrés par la poste. Les objets plus grands sont expédiés par courrier. Les préposés à la livraison des maisons de ventes aux enchères vous proposeront différentes options selon votre cas.
Non. Les archives servent de référence pour l'étude des prix des enchères, des photographies et des descriptions d'œuvres d'art.