Harold Alden Wheeler

Harold Alden Wheeler (born May 10, 1903 in Saint Paul, Minnesota , † April 25, 1996 in Ventura (California) ) was an American electrical engineer.

His parents were William Archibald Wheeler and Harriet Marie Alden Wheeler (a descendant of John and Priscilla Alden). The family lived in Mitchell, South Dakota for a few years and then moved to Washington, DC

He studied physics at George Washington University , received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1925 and continued his studies at Johns Hopkins University until 1928 .

In addition, he worked at the radio laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and from 1922 with Louis Alan Hazeltine at the Stevens Institute of Technology after they had found out that they had independently invented the straight-ahead receiver Neutrodyne . In this case, the fluctuating capacity between the triode grids was neutralized. In 1924 he became the first employee of Hazeltine Corporation and in 1925 he developed the first receiver with automatic volume control . When he ran the Hazeltine Laboratory in Bayside, Long Island from 1930 to 1939, he received 126 patents. When it was relocated to Little Neck, Long Island in 1939, he became Vice President and Chief Engineer. Now he was working on FM and TV reception.

During the Second World War he worked on the equipment for friend-foe recognition . In 1946 he founded Wheeler Laboratories, Inc. in Great Neck and Smithtown on Long Island to develop microwave circuits, antennas for missile tracking systems and homing radar. When his company was taken over by Hazeltine in 1959, he became director and vice president there.