Andrew Alford (5 August 1904 – 25 January 1992) was an American

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and

inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

. Born in

Samara, Russia Samara ( rus, Сама́ра, p=sɐˈmarə), known from 1935 to 1991 as Kuybyshev (; ), is the largest city and administrative centre of Samara Oblast. The city is located at the confluence of the Volga and the Samara rivers, with a population ...

, Alford invented and developed antennas for radio navigation systems, now used for

VHF omnidirectional range Very high frequency omnirange station (VOR) is a type of short-range radio navigation system for aircraft, enabling aircraft with a receiving unit to determine its position and stay on course by receiving radio signals transmitted by a networ ...

and

instrument landing system In aviation, the instrument landing system (ILS) is a precision radio navigation system that provides short-range guidance to aircraft to allow them to approach a runway at night or in bad weather. In its original form, it allows an aircraft to ...

s. Alford graduated from the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, University of Califor ...

in 1924. He received an honorary doctorate from

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subse ...

in 1975. *California Institute of Technology, 1927–28; *Fox Film Corporation, 1929–31; *Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company, 1934–41; *Air Navigation Lab, International Telegraph Development Corporation, 1938–41; *Harvard University Radio Research Lab from 1943 to 1945; *Direction Finder and Antenna Division, ITT, from 1943 to 1945; *Founded the Alford Manufacturing Company. He invented a balanced square antenna named the Alford Loop. In 1965, the first Master FM Antenna system in the world designed to allow individual FM stations to broadcast simultaneously from one source was erected on the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from " Empire State", the nickname of the ...

. The original system was co-invented by Alford and Frank Kear. In 1983 Alford was inducted into the

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also oper ...

for his invention of the Localizer Antenna System which guides aircraft during landings.

US Patents

* Localizer Antenna System {{DEFAULTSORT:Alford, Andrew 1904 births 1992 deaths Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Inventors from the Russian Empire American electrical engineers UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Harvard University staff 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors

See also

US Patents