Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/30414-celebrating-industry-diamond-anniversaries

Celebrating Industry Diamond Anniversaries

June 13, 2018

Pat Hindle

In July of 1958, a group of industry pioneers led by William “Bill” Bazzy and Theodore “Ted” Saad launched Microwave Journal. This month we celebrate our diamond anniversary in our 60th year of publishing with a cover feature focused on diamond technologies used in RF/microwave applications from GaN on diamond to diamond passive devices, to diamond materials in packaging. We would also like to celebrate other companies and organizations celebrating their diamond anniversaries this year including W.L. Gore, Rosenberger, C.W. Swift, DARPA and NASA.

Microwave Journal staff have designed a special cover for this celebration, using a matte finish background and a glossy surface treatment on the diamond graphic to accentuate the diamond’s “shine.” On the facets of the diamond, we celebrate some of the key inventors and engineers who laid the groundwork and science for the wireless industry: Marconi, Tesla, Hertz and Maxwell. In addition, we have implemented augmented reality on the cover using the free app, Layar. 

**Download Layar and scan the cover to experience our short animated tribute to these wireless innovators and the founders of Microwave Journal.

Microwave Journal

Microwave JournalThe First RF/Microwave Industry Journal

In the 1950s as radar and communications technology transformed into commercial applications after the war, the microwave community was expanding quickly. Many of these companies were looking for new customers and applications. Several forward-looking people came to believe that a new publication was needed to share information about the technology and the issues faced by these young businesses since this was not the focus of existing IEEE publications. They felt discussion within the community would open up new markets and generate new design techniques for microwave devices and components.

Ted Saad became a leading advocate for publishing technical information as he witnessed how the RadLab series from MIT Radiation Labs had become a foundation of microwave engineering at the time. By 1958, Ted had gained some editorial experience working with the IEEE Transactions, and had knowledge of technical article editing and reviewing.

Bill Bazzy learned communications and electronics engineering while serving in the military in the 1940s. As a young radio and television broadcast engineer in Boston, he participated in the growth of national broadcast networks, including working at RCA Technologies. Seeing a need for technology information to serve professionals in the broadcasting and communications industries, Bill and his brother Emil, who had a printing press, organized Horizon House Inc. to pursue their publishing venture.

Bazzy and Saad teamed up and made the decision to publish a trade magazine about microwave technology. The Bazzy brothers would handle the production of the magazine and the business of selling advertising. Bazzy would be the publisher and Saad would serve as the magazine’s first technical editor. They brought together a team of engineering colleagues that would solicit and review articles from the community at large, with notable contributions from industry pioneers such as Seymour Cohn, Henry Jasik, Ben Lax, Marshall Pease, Tore Anderson and Gershon Wheeler—and Microwave Journal was born. 

In the 1970s, Horizon House/Microwave Journal worked with IEEE MTT-S to launch an exhibition for the MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS), managing the event for close to 30 years until 2009. Horizon House/Microwave Journal continued to expand its exhibition activities, managing European Microwave Week on behalf of the European Microwave Association since 2003 and launching its own event platform, Electronic Design Innovation Conference (EDI CON), in China in 2013 and in the U.S. in 2016. In 2012, Microwave Journal launched a Chinese language version, Microwave Journal China, and in 2017, Signal Integrity Journal was introduced as an online magazine to serve high speed, digital design engineers, as the demand for design information about signal integrity, power integrity and EMI increased. 

Today, Horizon House consists of Microwave Journal/Signal Integrity Journal; Telecom Media Group, with its M2M events and IoT council; and leading technical book publisher Artech House. Horizon House has an office in London in addition to its Norwood, Mass. headquarters—all of which started with Bill and Ted’s vision for Microwave Journal 60 years ago.

W.L. Gore

W.L. Gore—A Team-Oriented Culture

W.L. Gore & Associates is a global materials science company that has been transforming industries and improving lives for 60 years. The company got its start developing products for the wire and cable industry. Their first product was an insulated ribbon cable, Multi-Tet cable, that won Gore a contract from the Denver Water Co. in 1960. Almost all of their products are based on the material polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and started in founder Bill Gore’s basement in 1958, but over the years have expanded into a variety of industries with its unique physical and electrical properties.

Since then, Gore has built a reputation for solving complex technical challenges in the most demanding environments—from revolutionizing the outerwear industry with GORE-TEX® fabric to creating medical devices that improve and save lives, to enabling new levels of performance in the aerospace, pharmaceutical and mobile electronics markets, among other industries. Gore employs more than 10,000 employees at over 50 facilities around the world, and is known for its strong, team-oriented culture and continued recognition from the Great Place to Work® Institute. 

Their organization is completely flat, with everyone carrying the title of associates and managers called sponsors. This non-traditional organizational structure and culture has been shown to be a significant contributor to Gore’s employee satisfaction and retention, with one of the best retention rates in the world (full-time volunteer turnover is only about 3 percent). Gore is easily recognized in many labs and trade shows by their iconic purple color and is well-known for making some of the highest performance, most rugged cables in the industry.



 

Rosenberger—Still Family-Owned

Rosenberger—Still Family-OwnedRosenberger, a family-owned company, was founded in 1958 and ranks today among the leading manufacturers of standard and customer-specific connectivity solutions in high frequency, high-voltage and fiber-optic technology. Their product range covers RF coaxial connectors, RF test & measurement products, RF connectors for automotive electronics, medical and industrial electronics as well as fiber-optic products and cable assemblies. Renowned companies in high-tech industries, e.g., telecommunication, data systems, medical electronics, industrial electronics, test & measurement, aerospace engineering or automotive electronics, trust the precision and quality of Rosenberger products.

Rosenberger was founded by Hans Rosenberger Sr. in Tittmoning, Germany and is still a family-owned enterprise. In 1968, the company moved to its current headquarters in neighboring Fridolfing and entered the high frequency technology sector. In the 1970s, high frequency products became Rosenberger’s main source of revenue and started large scale manufacturing of miniature connectors. The 1990s saw a rapid expansion with offices opening in the U.S., South America, China and Singapore.

Worldwide, the Rosenberger group operates manufacturing and assembly locations as well as Rosenberger sales offices in Europe, Asia and North and South America, where about 10,000 employees develop, produce and sell its products.

C.W. Swift—A Family Affair

Since the summer of 1958, when Chuck Swift, founder of C.W. Swift & Associates, opened his doors for business, the company has focused on quality and customer service. For 60 years, C.W. Swift has specialized in the distribution of quality RF and microwave electronics. Currently, under the leadership of his two sons, the company continues to provide outstanding customer service along with a wide selection of products, both hard to find items as well as those available through in-stock inventory.

Darpa

DARPA—Technology Development for the US

The launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet Union in 1957 had a great effect on the U.S. science and technology community. On February 7, 1958, four months after the Soviet launch boosted the intensity of the Cold War, Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy established the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), with the approval of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Its creation is as much attributed to a reaction to the Sputnik launch as it was a way to advance Department of Defense (DoD) technology. Their mandate was “to provide within the DoD an agency for the direction and performance of certain advanced research and development projects.” Over the years, DARPA has developed many technologies that have benefited everyday life from the invention of the Internet to miniature GPS to UAVs.

DARPA has advanced RF/microwave technology with programs such as the MIMIC program that commercialized GaAs ICs, the Nitride Electronic NeXt-Generation Technology program that advanced GaN device technology, the Innovative Vacuum Electronic Science and Technology (INVEST) program to develop the technology base for new generations of more capable vacuum electron devices and the DARPA Grand Challenge, which is an annual competition for autonomous vehicles. Last year, DARPA announced their Electronics Resurgence Initiative’s latest investments to keep electronics advancing along with Moore’s Law, while still keeping costs and investments at a reasonable level—continuing to be very active in supporting the electronics industry.

In September 2018, DARPA will highlight their achievements at a symposium called D60: Breakthrough Technology; Past, Present, Future. According to DARPA, the goals of the event are to strengthen and expand their innovation ecosystem—academia, industry and government partners—inform stakeholders about DARPA’s vision and priorities and learn from the Agency’s ongoing record of achievements and experience in the challenges of transforming new technology into today’s technology. The event will feature plenary sessions, technical office sessions, technical breakout sessions, an exhibit, an anniversary dinner and DARPA Riser Presentations that will be presented by the next generation of innovators at the organization.

NASA

NASA—Out of this World

Sputnik’s launch also led the U.S. government to focus and consolidate space exploration programs in different agencies and on January 31, 1958, the Army launched Explorer 1. The satellite measured and sent back data on temperature, micrometeorites and cosmic rays. With this success, Congress and President Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) late that summer and NASA was officially launched October 1.

In 1960, NASA launched the world’s first weather satellite, the Television and Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS); today, the U.S. has an extensive fleet of weather satellites operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In 1962, NASA launched Mariner 2, the first satellite to encounter another planet, as the spacecraft flew within 21,000 miles of Venus. On July 20, 1969, NASA was the first to land a person on the moon—achieving President John F. Kennedy’s end-of-decade challenge—as Neil Armstrong famously stepped off of Apollo 11’s lunar module onto the moon and said: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” NASA has since sent satellites to explore every planet in the solar system, in addition to the Sun and a number of moons, comets and asteroids, along with interstellar explorers. 

During the 1990s to early 2000s, NASA launched the Great Observatories, a series of four space-borne observatories designed to conduct astronomical studies over many different wavelengths including visible, gamma rays, X-rays and infrared. The first was the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that launched on the NASA Space Shuttle in 1990. The HST observed the universe with ultraviolet, visual and near-infrared wavelengths. The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was the second of NASA’s Great Observatories and was launched in 1991 aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. It collected data on some of the most violent physical processes in the universe observed by the high energies of gamma rays. The third Great Observatory, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, was deployed from a space shuttle and boosted into a high-Earth orbit in 1999. This observatory imaged high energy objects such as black holes, quasars and high-temperature gases using the X-ray spectrum (I was actually part of the MIT team that designed and manufactured the High Energy Transmission Gratings for Chandra). The Spitzer Space Telescope, the fourth and final in the Great Observatories program, was launched by a Delta rocket in 2003 to detect infrared energy radiated by objects in space between wavelengths of 3 and 180 microns.

Looking towards the future, NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope next year into an orbit almost a million miles away from Earth, where it will explore a wide range of science questions to understand our place in the universe. As a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, it will solve other mysteries of our solar system, observe distant worlds around other stars and probe the unknown structures and the origins of our universe. While the commercial space market has taken off and is working to replace some of the launch vehicle services that NASA provided, NASA is still very active in space research and will continue to be the leader in space technology.



Maury Microwave - 60 years and counting

Maury may be 60 years old, but they are innovating like a startup!  From their humble beginning as a custom filter and passive component engineering house, the company has become a leader in calibration, interconnect and device characterization measurement and modeling solutions.  Today, they offer the most versatile measurement and modeling software for RF power characterization; Industry leading active load pull system optimized for 5G measurements; turnkey noise parameter measurement system to 65 GHz; fast and accurate automated impedance tuners; test & measurement instrument amplifiers; phase-stable cable assemblies; the only comprehensive line of color-coded interconnects; and the broadest range of coaxial and waveguide VNA calibration kits and standards.

In 1957, Maury & Associates was founded by Mario Maury Sr, Mario Maury Jr, and Marc Maury as a custom engineering house.  By the end of the ‘60s, Maury had shifted from designing custom products to launching a comprehensive line of catalog products. The ‘70s experienced exponential growth fueled by US aerospace and defense industries.  In 1983 Hewlett Packard (HP) partnered with Maury to provide calibration kits for its newly-launched 8510 VNA, which would help propel Maury to leadership in calibration.  In 1987 Maury released the first commercial automated impedance tuner systems, ATS, which began their 30 year journey in measurement and modeling device characterization systems. In 2001 Agilent selected Maury as its exclusive partner in non-50 Ω test and measurement, a relationship that has only grown stronger over time.  In 2010 Maury signed strategic partnership agreements with Anteverta-mw and AMCAD Engineering to expand its measurement and modeling capabilities and disrupt the device characterization industry.  In 2013, Maury launched its Interconnect Solutions product line including color-coded cable assemblies, adapters and attenuators, which would introduce the Maury name to a much larger audience. In 2015 Maury acquired Anteverta-mw and opened a dedicated R&D and support office in Europe.  In 2018, Maury launched its line of test and measurement instrument amplifiers and the industry’s only active load pull system optimized for 5G measurements.  And 2018 is only halfway done!

Maury would like to recognize their employees, past and present, who have contributed their many talents, creativity and hard work over the past 60 years.