Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor: Roy Weagant
Previous StoryNext StoryBack Back to the Taylor IndexInfoAge Homepage Back to the InfoAge Homepage

Dr. A. Hoyt Taylor:
"...and Roy Weagant" 

 evans logo

Roy Weagant continues his work on balanced loops

This had been underway before the Navy took over the station. Weagant’s theory was that static originated from overhead. During the period when I was on duty at Belmar, the Bureau of Steam Engineering had made arrangements for Mr. Roy Weagant to continue his work on balanced loops, which had been underway before the Navy took over the station. Weagant’s theory was that static originated from overhead, while signals came pretty much along horizontal paths, and that it should be possible to set up two large loops, suitable for long waves, at a considerable distance apart and balance their outputs in such a way as to cancel out the atmospheric disturbances, or static, and yet permit reception of signals. Really, what Weagant had was what should be more properly known as the binocular loop system. In the opinion of most engineers, his theory of the origin of static was quite erroneous, but the system did show definite advantages in reception which could be traced to the high directivity which a binocular loop system possesses over and above the directivity of a single loop.

Weagant was a man of great ingenuity; a clever and able experimenter. He filed patents on his system of reception, while I filed patents on what we called the Belmar balanced ground wire system, wherein I combined in balancing arrangements, the advantages of both loop and buried wire. This system of balancing buried wires, or balancing a buried wire against a loop, was described in a paper which I published in December of 1919 in the IRE. It followed up the paper published in August of the same year. The filing of my patent, at the suggestion of the Navy Department, precipitated an interference with Weagant; as a matter of fact, there was triangular interference involving Weagant, John V. L. Hogan, and myself. This dragged out for a number of years, but I am happy to say that it never involved any acrimony or rupture of friendly relations between the three engineers involved.

The issue was finally settled by a compromise, wherein the patent was issued to me and was purchased by RCA. RCA then licensed the Navy for all rights to manufacture and use apparatus under this patent and under related RCA patents. The Navy obtained this privilege for a small sum of money. Everyone was satisfied with this except the lawyers, who were getting good fees and would have been glad to continue the fight indefinitely.

We did not do much high speed-work with Europe, but now and then we got good transmission conditions and stepped up, with automatic senders, operated by punched tapes, to fifty or sixty words a minute.
Page updated December 30, 2003  page created September 02, 2000

Previous StoryNext StoryBack Back to the Taylor IndexInfoAge Homepage Back to the InfoAge Homepage