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In its most basic form the Turnstile antenna is two half-wave dipole antennas that are perpendicular and driven 90 degrees out of phase. For a recent review see Crossed Dipole Antennas: A review (also available here).

Usually when used on Earth's surface the "X" is in the horizontal plane and the radiation linearly polarized, but out-of-plane (up and down) they also radiate, but with circular polarization.

I see reference to the inventor's publication as

  • G. Brown, “The turnstile,” Electron., pp. 14–17, Apr. 1936.
  • Brown, George (April 1936). "The Turnstile Antenna". Electronics.

and the 1935 patent is US2086976, but when I type those into a search engine I can not find the original paper, presumably in a journal or magazine titled simply "Electronics" in 1936.

I don't even know how to reference the journal, because "electronics journal" returns quite a lot of results.

Question: How can I find the full, complete, and unambiguous citation for the journal paper that I believe Brown published in 1936 that explains the Turnstile antenna?

Through the university's library system I may be able to read the article online once I can zero in on the specific journal, and perhaps with the help of a librarian, but there weren't too many engineering schools here in 1936 so I may not be able to get a hold of a bound copy.

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    $\begingroup$ worldradiohistory.com/Electronics%20_Master_Page.htm - it is an industry magazine, not a technical journal. $\endgroup$
    – Jon Custer
    Sep 16 '20 at 17:31
  • $\begingroup$ @JonCuster Thanks! The link isn't loading yet, which sometimes happens here because less-frequently accessed pages aren't cached I suppose i.stack.imgur.com/bqxCZ.png btw I deleted the question in History SE, for now at least. It seems I have some homework to do first. TW is a little different than the other places you mentioned for several reasons, and I don't think it qualifies at all as an "Asian Tiger" at least not immediately post WWII. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Sep 16 '20 at 17:48
  • $\begingroup$ @JonCuster It has far humbler beginnings and probably wasn't comparable at all to Korea, Japan, Singapore until much more recently, and the presence of the US military in TW provided a lot of radio and radar technology that a country like Japan would never have needed. I think it's quite a unique story! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Sep 16 '20 at 17:50
  • $\begingroup$ To be fair, none of them really went full-on Tiger until the 1960's, certainly post-Korean War. Taiwan has the whole China civil war that threw giant monkey wrenches into their society, with the benefit of strong US support to keep it separate. $\endgroup$
    – Jon Custer
    Sep 16 '20 at 17:51
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Electronics, (subtitled 'radio, communication, industrial applications of electron tubes ... engineering and manufacture') was published by McGraw Hill. Not a journal per se, more of an industry magazine. One place to find old copies is through World Radio History, which includes a pdf of the April 1936 issue in question. Indeed, on page 14 is the article The "Turnstile" by George H. Brown of RCA.

article header

Never underestimate the desire of radio enthusiasts, including ham folks, of archiving old issues of various magazines. And, if you are interested in the history of radio, be prepared to spend a looooong time looking at stuff on that site (as one example, the lead article in this issue discusses Pan Am's radio system including how that helped the Clippers fly across the Pacific).

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  • $\begingroup$ Excellent! The Wikipedia link pins down the publication nicely. I still can't get worldradiohistory.com to talk to me, but maybe I can find someone with a VPN to the US. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Sep 17 '20 at 19:45

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