Winston Edward Kock

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Winston Edward Kock (right)

Winston Edward Kock (born December 5, 1909 in Cincinnati , Hamilton County , Ohio , USA ; † November 25, 1982 ) was an American electrical engineer and researcher and novelist under the pseudonym Wayne Kirk .

Life

Winston E. Kock learned the piano from the age of four. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati and piano and organ at the Cincinnati College of Music .

In the early 1930s, Kock built an electronic organ with 70 tubes as part of his thesis. Since these were expensive, he used small neon tubes instead of vacuum tubes. He examined the intermittent glow discharge . In 1932 he received his diploma in electrical engineering and in 1933 his Master of Science .

In the spring of 1933 Kock went to the TU Berlin as an exchange student , where he was Karl Willy Wagner's assistant at the Heinrich Hertz Institute for Vibration Research and was doing his doctorate . There he also worked with Oskar Vierling . In exchange, Sigismund von Braun , Wernher von Braun's brother , went to Cincinnati .

In 1935, Kock filed a patent for the use of formant circuits in electronic organs. As early as December 1933, he had applied for a US patent from Berlin for the inductive glow discharge oscillator, which was granted to him in 1936 under the title Electrical musical instrument .

From Berlin he went, sponsored by the Baldwin Piano Company in Cincinnati , to the Indian Institute of Music & Arts (IIMA) in Bangalore , where he did research on timbres and the acoustics of musical instruments . In 1936 he became head of research at the Baldwin Piano Company.

Shortly after the USA entered the war at the end of 1941, Kock left the Baldwin Piano Company and started at Bell Telephone Laboratories , where he did research on fire-control radar for the US Navy. In 1949 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society . In 1951 he became director of Acoustics Research at Bell and in 1955 of Audio and Video Research . During this time Winston E. Kock was working on tape compression for voice transmission and initiated the development of a videophone over regular telephone lines, with limited commercial service starting in 1964. He was also involved in water noise projects .

Because of his interest in submarine detection, Kock moved to Bendix Corporation in 1956 , which played a pioneering role in sonar research. Between 1958 and 1962 he rose there to vice-president. Kock took part in the development of dunked sonar , which is submerged in the sea from helicopters. He also worked on radar, lasers, holography, and the drive mechanism for control rods in nuclear submarines. When NASA opened its research center in Cambridge , Winston E. Kock became the center's first director.

He returned to Bendix in 1966 and focused on research into acoustic holography , a field in which Kock gained international fame. After Kock retired there in 1971, he became director of the Herman Schneider Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati . He had already received an honorary doctorate from this in 1952 , and his estate is also kept in the university archive there.

Fonts

  • Electrical investigation of tone quality. 1932.
  • The inductive glow discharge oscillator and its application to the production of music. 1933. German: The inductive glow discharge oscillator and its possible applications. Barth, Leipzig 1934.
  • Sound waves and light waves. 1965. German: Sound waves and light waves: The basics of wave movement. Translated from the English by HD beans. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1971, ISBN 3-540-05358-1 . (Understandable Science, Volume 109: Natural Science Department)
  • Lasers and Holography. An introduction to coherent optics. 1969.
  • Seeing sound. 1971. German: Sound made visible. Translated from the English by H.-D. Beans. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 1974, ISBN 3-540-06629-2 . (Understandable Science, Volume 112: Natural Science Department)
  • Engineering Applications of Lasers and Holography. 1975.
  • A Real-Time Parallel Optical Processing Technique. 1975.
  • The Creative Engineer: The Art of Inventing. New York 1978.
  • under the pseudonym Wayne Kirk: Love's Warm Sun. The Story of a Bright Young Engineer and a Beautiful Young Girl. New York 1982.

literature

  • Institute of Radio Engineers: Year Book. Institute of Radio Engineers, New York, NY, 1955, p. 37.
  • Gale Group: Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, & Other Fields. in: Volume 122 of Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Scot Peacock. Gale, Detroit, 2003, p. 298.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Joachim Braun: Music Engineers. The Remarkable Career of Winston E. Kock, Electronic Organ Designer and NASA Chief of Electronics , PDF file; 1.63 MB, p. 3, accessed November 8, 2009
  2. ↑ United States Patent 2046463: Electrical musical instrument dated July 7, 1936, accessed November 8, 2009
  3. ↑ Deborah Rieselman: Firsts and discoveries at UC , accessed 8 November 2009
  4. ↑ Papers, 1933–1982, including correspondence, books, and articles of an inventor and alumnus of the College of Engineering , 20.00 lin. Ft. With Findbuch, Accession No. UA-88-25, accessed November 8, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Kock, Winston E.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kock, Winston Edward (full name); Kirk, Wayne (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American electrical engineer and author
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Cincinnati , Hamilton County , Ohio , USA
DATE OF DEATH November 25, 1982