Walter Guyton Cady

Walter Guyton Cady ( born December 10, 1874 in Providence, Rhode Iceland, † December 9, 1974 in East Providence ) was an American physicist and electrical engineer. He was a pioneer in the field of piezoelectricity, so coherently, he developed the first quartz crystal oscillators and crystal filters.

Cady studied at Brown University until 1895, then from 1897 to 1900 at the Humboldt University in Berlin and received his doctorate with a thesis about the energy of the cathode rays. He then returned to the U.S. and taught from 1902 to 1946 at Wesleyan University physics. Besides teaching, his work activities focused on the piezoelectricity, it based on piezoelectric resonators and gas discharges. First he experimierte with Rochelle salt, which as quartz has piezoelectric properties, but realized subsequently that quartz is better suited as a resonator in oscillator circuits. In 1921 he developed the first crystal oscillator, the following year, followed by publications dealing with quartz crystals as a source of normal frequency.

Cady was in 1932 president of the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE ). During the Second World War he worked with piezoelectric transducers in radar technology. From 1951 until his retirement in 1963 he worked at Caltech. Cady held more than 50 patents.

Works

• Walter Guyton Cady: Piezoelectricity: An introduction to the theory and applications of electromechanical phenomena in crystals. Dover Publications, 1964.