|
Items in cart [4] |
Questions? Call 888-624-8373 |
| Copyright © 2009. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved. Terms of Use and Privacy Statement |
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter.
Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
Do not use for reproduction, copying, pasting, or reading; exclusively for search engines.
OCR for page 252
(I
OCR for page 253
OTTO H. SCHADE, SR.
1903-1981
BY WILLIAM M. WEBSTER
OTTO H SCHADE SR died in West Caldwell, New jersey, on April
28, 1981, following his seventy-eighth birthday. He was an eminent
authority on image evaluation in motion picture and television sys-
tems. He is best known for developing the concept of the modulation
transfer function, which is widely applied to the evaluation of opti-
cal, photographic, and electronic image systems and to studies of the
eye.
Otto H. Schade, Sr., was born in Schmalkalden, Germany, in
1903 and was educated in Germany. He came to the United States
in 1926 and worked with the firm of Atwater Kent in Philadelphia.
Five years later he joined the Radio Corporation of America
(RCA) Tube Department in Harrison, New Jersey, the start of a
lifetime career. Mr. Schade retired from RCA in 1968 as Staff Engi-
neer, a position first created for him. He continued as a consultant to
RCA until 1974. In the course of this career, Otto Schade presented
or published more than thirty papers and received eighty-five pat-
ents and numerous awards, including an honorary Doctorate of
Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
The first widely recognized achievement of Mr. Schade was the
subject of his presentation in 1936 before the Institute of Radio
Engineers on the electron optics behind the beam power tube, typi-
fied by the well-known 6L6. Many of his colleagues can recall that
this history-making vacuum tube was not the first important new
product developed at RCA's Harrison plant. Years before, the
253
OCR for page 254
254
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Harrison building complex was known as the Edison Lamp Works;
Mr. Schade's laboratory in Building 17-3 had also been used by
Thomas Edison. The burn marks on the wooden lab floor bore
testimony to the molten glass and vacuum technology practiced by
Edison a technology later used by Mr. Schade and his co-workers
in electronic developments dimly, if at all, envisioned by Edison
when he discovered the diode effect that today bears his name.
Other landmark accomplishments in electron tube design resulted
in Mr. Schade's "Analysis of Rectifier Operation" and "R-F Oper-
ated High-Voltage Supplies," both published in 1943. In 1958 he
began a study that resulted in successful manufacture of the Nuvistor
line of low-noise tubes for TV receiver tuners, designed to supple-
ment the emerging semiconductor products in "hybrid" equipment.
In 1938 he began specialized studies of television circuits, camera
tubes, picture tubes, and the analysis of television systems perfor-
mance. From 1944 to 1957 he worked on a unified general method
of image analysis and specification, including practical methods for
measuring the modulation transfer function and noise in optical,
photographic, and electronic imaging systems. In the August 1976
Sczentific Arner~can, William H. Price of Kodak wrote: "Much of the
mystery surrounding lens 'quality' was cleared up in 1951 when
Otto H. Schade, Sr., of the Radio Corporation of America,
described his investigation of lenses used in the entire chain of infor-
mation transmission represented by a television system." He adds
that with Otto Schade's concepts and a computer, "[now] we can
mathematically model the entire photographic system, beginning
with the subject and ending with the transfer function of the viewer's
eye. "
Mr. Schade subsequently developed an accurate method for calcu-
lating the resolving power of photographic and television systems to
assist in the evaluation of high-definition TV systems for the Air
Force. He developed new electron optics that provided uniform
resolution in TV camera tubes with larger formats (50 x 50 milli-
meters) and special high-resolution electron guns to realize resolu-
tions on the order of 100 line pairs per millimeter.
After his retirement from RCA in 1968, he continued his valuable
affiliation as a consultant for six more years.
OCR for page 255
OTTO H . SC MADE, SR.
255
In 1946 he received RCA's highest citation, the RCA Victor
Award of Merit, for his contributions in the field of television. Mr.
Schade, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engi-
neers and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers
(SMPTE), also received numerous other honors, including the
Modern Pioneer Award of the National Association of Manufactur-
ers (1940) and the Morris N. Liebman Memorial Prize of the Insti-
tute of Radio Engineers (1950~. He was the first recipient of the
David Sarnoff Gold Medal Award of the SMPTE ~ 1951).
In June 1953 Otto Schade, Sr., was invested with the honorary
degree of Doctor of Engineering by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
In 1960 he received the Progress Medal Award of the SMPTE for
his outstanding contribution in the engineering phases of the motion
picture and television industries, and in 1965 he received the Journal
Award of the SMPTE for his paper entitled "An Evaluation of
Photographic Image Quality and Resolving Power," published in
February 1964. In 1968 he received the David Sarnoff Outstanding
Achievement Award from RCA for the conception of electronic
techniques to determine accurately the response of the total televi-
sion system, including lenses and photographic films. In 1969 he
received the Technical Achievement Award from the American Soci-
ety of Magazine Photographers for "effecting a marriage of electron-
ics and optics making possible sophisticated designs of lenses." In
1969 he received the Vladimir K. Zworykin Award for outstanding
technical contribution to electronic television from the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Otto Schade, Sr., received two additional awards: "The Karl
Fairbanks Memorial Award to Dr. Otto H. Schade, Sr., who
through his work in industry has contributed significantly to the
advancement of photo-optical instrumentation engineering" (1974),
and the Special Recognition Award in 1975 "for the pioneering
application of frequency response concepts to the analysis and opti-
mization of electro-optic systems" by the Society for Information
Display (SID). He was elected to the National Academy of Engi-
neering in 1977.
His acclaimed television accomplishments are perhaps best repre-
sented by his formal treatises, "Electro-Optical Characteristics of
OCR for page 256
256
MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Television Systems," published in the RCA Review in 1948, and
"Image Gradation, Graininess and Sharpness in Television and
Motion Picture Systems," published in the Journal of the SMPTE in
four parts, from 1951 to 1955.
In 1975 RCA published "Image Quality: A Comparison of Pho-
tographic and Television Systems" as a definitive treatise and also as
a tribute to Mr. Schade.
By those who had the good fortune to work with Otto Schade, Sr.,
or even to know him in a passing fashion, he would be characterized
as a gentle, unassuming, thoughtful man who combined the Old
World ideals of perfection with understanding of the real world's
deficiencies. He was a superb teacher of the younger engineers who
worked with him and, often, of the older managers he worked for.
OCR for page 257
Representative terms from entire chapter:
otto schade
