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The cavity magnetron is a high-power vacuum tube used in early radar systems and subsequently in microwave ovens and in linear particle accelerators. A cavity magnetron generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field , while moving past a series of cavity resonators , which are small, open cavities in a ...
He was the leader of a group working on the cavity magnetron from April 1940 in north-west London. [7] The cavity magnetron was producing power of around 500W (E1188 version). Eric Megaw changed the design, coating the cathode with oxides (E1189 version) [ 8 ] and eight segments from six, to increase the power to 100 kW by September 1940 ...
Sir John Turton Randall, FRS FRSE [2] (23 March 1905 – 16 June 1984) was an English physicist and biophysicist, credited with radical improvement of the cavity magnetron, an essential component of centimetric wavelength radar, which was one of the keys to the Allied victory in the Second World War.
Electrically, this is similar to the two cavity oscillator klystron with considerable feedback between the two cavities. Electrons exiting the source cavity are velocity modulated by the electric field as they travel through the drift tube and emerge at the destination chamber in bunches, delivering power to the oscillation in the cavity.
This was developed by John Randall (1905-1984) and Harry Boot (1917-1983) at Birmingham University. Radars that could produce clear images of distant objects played a decisive role in World War II, by bouncing powerful, ultra-short radio waves off their targets. The cavity magnetron was the first practical device for producing such waves.
The magnetron was initially limited to aircraft operating over the UK or sea, so that if the aircraft was lost the magnetron would not fall into German hands. However, as the war progressed several new uses for the magnetron were developed, notably ground-mapping systems like the H2S radar .
As with many British inventions of this period, the magnetron was provided to the US for free when they entered World War II. [4] Initially Boot and Randall were awarded £50 each for the magnetron for "improving the safety of life at sea", but in 1949 Boot, Randall and Sayers received a £36,000 prize for their work.
After the invention of the cavity magnetron in early 1940, all of the British forces began development of radars using the system, which generated microwaves at around 10 cm wavelength. Among these were the Air Ministry teams who had developed both AI and ASV, and had now turned their attention to AIS and ASVS, the S standing for "senitmetric ...