Lloyd Espenschied

Infobox_Scientist
name = Lloyd Espenschied

---

caption =
birth_date = birth date|1889|4|2
birth_place =
death_date = death date and age|1986|6|1|1889|4|2
death_place =
residence = United States
nationality = American
field = Electrical engineering
work_institution =
alma_mater =
doctoral_advisor =
awards = IEEE Medal of Honor

Lloyd Espenschied (27 April, 1889 – June 1 1986) was an American electrical engineer.

Biography

He was born in St. Louis, Missouri and in 1901 he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to live with relatives of his mother. He became an amateur radio operator in 1904 and later worked as a shipboard wireless operator for the United Wireless Telegraph Company during summer vacations. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in 1909 with a degree in applied electricity and then worked as an engineer for the American affiliate of the German Telefunken Wireless Telegraph Company. Among his assignments was the installation of the Telefunken quenched spark system on ships of the US Navy. He joined the Engineering Department of AT&T in 1910 and remained with the Bell Company until he retired in 1954. At the Bell Company, he worked on the design of loading coils used to enhance telephonic communication by wire, and he also was a participant in long-distance radio telephone experiments using a vacuum-tube transmitter conducted by Bell engineers during 1915. He was sent to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to test reception from a transmitter in Arlington, Virginia. Starting in 1916 he worked with several colleagues, including Herman A. Affel, on a carrier multiplex system which was put in operation between Baltimore, Maryland, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1918. He applied for a patent in 1927 on the use of piezoelectric quartz crystals in band-pass filters. He and Affel jointly received a patent on a wideband coaxial cable system of transmission which was disclosed in a prize-winning paper published in AIEE's Electrical Engineering in October 1934. He also contributed to the development of wire distribution of radio programming used in network radio. He patented a collision avoidance system using reflected waves for railroad trains in 1924 and later applied similar techniques for a radio altimeter for aircraft which was produced commercially by the Western Electric Company beginning in 1937. He received the IRE Medal of Honor in 1940 'For his accomplishments as an engineer, as an inventor, as a pioneer in the development of radio telephony, and for his effective contributions to the progress of international radio coordination.' and the Pioneer Award of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Group in 1967.

Memberships

He joined the Wireless Institute, which later merged with the Society of Wireless Telegraph Engineers in 1912 to form the IRE. He was recorded as a discussant of the first paper published in the Proceedings as well as three other papers in the first volume. He became a Fellow of the IRE in 1924 and a Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in 1930.

Archive

*National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution