Talk:Otto Schmitt

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There is no question that Schmitt was a very clever fellow and the following is not intended to diminish his deserved reputation. There was an excellent biographical review of Schmitt about one or two years ago in the IEEE Medical Biology Magazine by someone at Medtronics that gives far more detail (but unfortunately, the article is written by someone with more enthusiasm than technical reliability). Nonetheless, the assertion that Schmitt was the inventor of the cathode follower may not be correct.

It is likely that many people have allowed that they were the true inventor. In the early 1950's I inquired of then gray-bearded associates, "who really invented the cathode follower?" One MIT Rad Lab alumnus stated clearly and unequivocally that a "fellow named White" held the patent. Presumably he was referring to Eric White (EMI, England). But he was unable to provide any supporting evidence. The book, "The Life and Works of A. D. Blumlein," R. C. Alexander, Focal Press (Div. of Heinnemann-Butterworth), 1999, p. 150, categorically states that Alan Dower Blumlein filed (4 Sep 1934) British patent 448,421 for the cathode-follower. Blumlein presumably assigned rights to EMI (his employer). A close associate of Blumlein at EMI, Eric White, may well have been a co-inventor. Alternatively, the referenced patent may be one of several patents claiming to be first. In the above work Alexander claims that Blumlein and White were first to use the "cascode" amplifier (disputing the Wikipedia cascode entry that attributes its invention, inter alia, to F. V. Hunt (at Harvard, inventor of the LP record), based upon his 1939 article in Rev. Sci. Inst., of 1939.) I knew Hunt and am quite sure that he would not have made a false claim of priority, and it is of course quite possible that others may have invented the circuit at roughly the same time, or perhaps even considerably earlier. Surely, Schmitt, White, Blumlein, and Hunt don't need any more laurels: all four were prolific inventors who made important contrinutions. But perhaps the attribution to Schmitt is premature and warrants further verification. In any case, it might be useful to combine write-ups on the cathode-follower, the cascode amplifier, and,(for lack of a better name) the "emisscode" (transistor cascode with the input stage with a low-impedance emitter-input (grounded base stage) feeding a second grounded-base stage after someone with better access to ~50 - 70 year old literature makes a more thorough review. /s/fneddy@charter.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fneddy (talk • contribs) 17:30, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Harkness?
The name Harkness appears out of the blue very early in the article. An introduction might be in place... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.57.143.106 (talk) 07:37, 23 August 2016 (UTC)