John Sargrove (1906–1974) was a British

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

and

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...

pioneer.

Life and career

His parents were ethnically Hungarian, and he was originally named John Adolphe Szabadi, but changed his name to Sargrove in 1938. While employed at British Tungsram Radio Works Ltd (originally British Tungsram Electric Lamps Ltd) he experimented with the idea of creating circuits by spraying metal onto

bakelite Bakelite ( ), formally , is a thermosetting polymer, thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from a condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde. The first plastic made from synthetic components, it was developed by Belgian chemist ...

. He was able to create

resistor A resistor is a passive two-terminal electronic component that implements electrical resistance as a circuit element. In electronic circuits, resistors are used to reduce current flow, adjust signal levels, to divide voltages, bias active e ...

capacitor In electrical engineering, a capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy by accumulating electric charges on two closely spaced surfaces that are insulated from each other. The capacitor was originally known as the condenser, a term st ...

s, and

inductor An inductor, also called a coil, choke, or reactor, is a Passivity (engineering), passive two-terminal electronic component, electrical component that stores energy in a magnetic field when an electric current flows through it. An inductor typic ...

s, as well as the electrical connections between them, on a single bakelite blank by this process. This work was carried out around 1936 and 1937, several years prior to the development of the

printed circuit board A printed circuit board (PCB), also called printed wiring board (PWB), is a Lamination, laminated sandwich structure of electrical conduction, conductive and Insulator (electricity), insulating layers, each with a pattern of traces, planes ...

Paul Eisler Paul Eisler (3 August 1907 – 26 October 1992) was an Austrian inventor born in Vienna. Among his innovations were the printed circuit board. In 2012, ''Printed Circuit Design & Fab'' magazine named its Hall of Fame after Eisler. Early life and ...

in 1943. Sargrove also experimented with the development of a 'universal'

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, thermionic valve (British usage), or tube (North America) is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. It ...

. His long-term goal, however, was automating the production of

radio Radio is the technology of communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 3 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmitter connec ...

s by the development of what he termed Electronic Circuit Making Equipment (ECME). By 1947 Sargrove had completed the design of all the ECME, and formed a company, Sargrove Electronics Ltd, to build the equipment and then produce radios. The ECME built by Sargrove produced all of the radio circuitry by the sprayed-circuit process, and assembled all of the radio parts except for inserting the vacuum tubes into their sockets and attaching the speaker, thus greatly reducing the amount of human labour required and thereby lowering the cost of the radios. An ECME device could produce three radios a minute, and even test the radio circuitry. Sargrove continued to design increasingly sophisticated ECME to produce more complex radios, and began work on ECME for the production of televisions. However, a large order of radios by the Indian government was cancelled in 1947 following Indian self-governance, and investors withdrew their backing of Sargrove Electronics Ltd, which then went into liquidation.

References

Popular Science article on Sargrove's ECME
* * : ''Method of manufacturing electrical network circuits'' 1949-07-05 1906 births 1974 deaths British electronics engineers {{UK-engineer-stub