C. E. Burnett

C. E. Burnett (1961). Photo from RCA Engineer, vol. 7, no. 3 (Oct-Nov 1961), inside front cover, via worldradiohistory.com.

American

1909 —2004

C. E. Burnett was an RCA engineer who in 1937 photographed standing patterns on a television picture tube and published them as “Electron Patterns” in Electronics. He was granted a patent on a “Device for Making Designs” in 1942, and Ben F. Laposky later named the 1937 feature as the first suggestion of using the oscilloscope for design.

Full Bio

C. E. Burnett was an engineer in the tube division of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) at Harrison, New Jersey, from 1933. He came to RCA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his master’s thesis used Vannevar Bush’s differential analyzer, an analog computer.

To study the resolution of television picture tubes, Burnett built a circuit that switched the beam of a 9-inch tube on and off with a family of frequencies all locked to one master oscillator, so that the patterns on the screen stood still. He photographed them straight off the screen in exposures of about 15 seconds. Electronics printed nine of them as “Electron Patterns” in June 1937, a month after his talk at the Institute of Radio Engineers convention in New York, and his paper in the Proceedings of the IRE for August 1937 closed with a supplement of ten more. In 1938 Radio-Craft presented them as designs for fabrics and fashion accessories, and in 1939 Burnett applied for a patent on a “Device for Making Designs,” granted in 1942. Ben F. Laposky later named the 1937 Electronics feature as the first suggestion of using the oscilloscope for design.

From about 1948 Burnett worked for RCA in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he ran the cathode-ray and power tube department. He became a vice-president of RCA in 1969 and retired in 1974.