Stuart William Seeley (June 23, 1901 – November 4, 1978) was a noted 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 ...

, best known for inventing the Foster–Seeley discriminator and

SHORAN SHORAN is an acronym for SHOrt RAnge Navigation, a type of electronic navigation and bombing system using a precision radar beacon. It was developed during World War II and the first stations were set up in Europe as the war was ending, and was o ...

. Seeley was born in

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, and received his B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from

Michigan State College Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. ...

in 1925. From 1915 to 1924 he was an amateur radio experimenter and commercial operator, then worked at

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

1925–1926, Sparks Withington 1926–1935, and the

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent pool, patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Westin ...

License Laboratory, starting in 1935. In 1936, Seeley invented the Foster–Seeley discriminator with D. E. Foster, publishing details in 1937. It helped reduce the cost of FM radio receivers to a level comparable to AM receivers. In 1938, while attempting to remove "

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" signals from an experimental

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

system, Seeley realized that he could measure distances by time differences in radio reception. In summer 1940, Seeley proposed building

, a bombing navigation system for the

United States Army Air Forces The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

. Contract was awarded 9 months later, and SHORAN given its first military flight tests in August 1942. First procurement was spring 1944, with initial combat operations in

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on December 11, 1944. Seeley received the 1948 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award "for his development of ingenious circuits related to frequency modulation", and the 1960 Magellanic Premium from the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communi ...

for

Shoran SHORAN is an acronym for SHOrt RAnge Navigation, a type of electronic navigation and bombing system using a precision radar beacon. It was developed during World War II and the first stations were set up in Europe as the war was ending, and was o ...

. In 2007 the Pittsburgh Antique Radio Society published a bibliography of Seeley's writings. The U.S. Patents of Stuart W. Seeley (with a bibliography of Seeley's writings), 2nd edition, 2007.

Selected works

* D. E. Foster and S. W. Seeley, "Automatic tuning, simplified circuits, and design practice," ''Proceedings of the IRE'', vol. 25, pages 289–313, March 1937. * "Frequency modulation", RCA Rev. vol 5, p 468, April 1941. * S. W. Seeley and J. Avins, "The ratio detector," ''RCA Rev.'', vol. 8, pages 201–236, June 1947. * "Shoran - A Precision Five Hundred Mile Yardstick", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 105, no. 4 (Aug. 15, 1961), pages 447–451.

References

Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Volume 26, Number 7, July 1938

* Charles Edward Miller, ''Valve Radio and Audio Repair Handbook'', Newnes, 2000, page 75. .

Genealogical record
{{DEFAULTSORT:Seeley, Stuart William 1901 births 1978 deaths People from Chicago American electrical engineers Michigan State University alumni Engineers from Illinois 20th-century American engineers 20th-century American inventors