Albert Hull

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Albert Wallace Hull
Born (1880-04-19)April 19, 1880
Southington, Connecticut
Died January 22, 1966(1966-01-22) (aged 85)
Residence United States
Nationality American
Known for magnetron
Notable awards 1930 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award
IRE Medal of Honor 1958

Albert W. Hull (19 April 1880 – 22 January 1966) is an American electrical engineer who made contributions to the development of vacuum tubes. He is most remembered for his invention of the magnetron.

Education and early career[edit]

Albert Wallace Hull was born on a farm in Southington, Connecticut. He was the son of Francis and Lewis Hull. He was the second oldest of 9 brothers, and had an older sister. Despite rural poverty all the brothers completed college, and two others, Thomas and Daniel also pursued lives devoted to science --- medicine and chemistry respectively.

He majored in Greek and after taking one undergraduate course in physics, graduated from Yale University. He taught languages at The Albany Academy before returning to Yale, to take a doctorate in physics. He then undertook research on photoelectricity whilst teaching physics for five years at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.


In 1914 Hull joined the General Electric Research Laboratory (GERL) in Schenectady, New York and remained there until his retirement in 1949.

Experimental work[edit]

During 1916, Hull began investigation into the use of magnetic control of thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) as an alternative to grid or electrostatic control and he had tested successfully magnetic control by applying a magnetic field parallel to the axis of the tube.

Initially, Hull's work on these novel electron tubes was part of an effort at General Electric to develop amplifiers and oscillators that might be used to circumvent the vacuum- tube triode patents of Lee de Forest and Edwin Armstrong.


He invented the dynatron which had three electrodes: a thermionic cathode, a perforated anode, and a supplementary anode or plate. In normal operation the supplementary anode was maintained at a lower positive voltage than the perforated anode. The secondary emission of electrons from the plate made the dynatron behave as a true negative resistance and so the tube could generate oscillations over a wide range of frequencies or be used as an amplifier. When a control grid was added between the cathode and the perforated anode, the device was called a "pliodynatron."


By 1920 his research led to his invention of the magnetron.[1] This took the form of a central cathode and a coaxial cylindrical anode split into two halves, with an axial magnetic field produced by an external coil. The Hull magnetron was tested as an amplifier in radio receivers and also as a low-frequency oscillator. It was reported in 1925 that a magnetron made at GERL could generate a power of 15 kW at a frequency of 20 kHz. At the time Hull anticipated that the magnetron would find greater use as a power converter than in communication applications.

Hull's split-anode magnetron didn't prove to be capable of high frequency or high power output and was little used. However, during World War 2 John Randall and Harry Boot built on Hull's concept to develop the modern cavity magnetron, the first device which could produce high power at microwave frequencies, and the resulting centimeter-band radar proved a crucial advantage for the Allies in aerial warfare.

Gas-filled electron tubes[edit]

During the 1920s, Hull also was a major contributor to the development of gas-filled electron tubes at the GERL. He discovered how to protect thermionic cathodes from rapid disintegration under ion bombardment. This discovery enabled the successful development of hot-cathode thyratrons (gaseous triodes) and phanotrons (gaseous diodes).


In the 1918 issue of the Proceedings of the IRE he published a paper on the dynatron vacuum tube which he had invented. During his career in electronics he was the author or coauthor of 72 technical publications and was awarded 94 patents.[2]

Career promotion[edit]

Hull was promoted to assistant director of the GERL in 1928 and was known for his collegial management style with minimal interference with the research agenda of his staff members.


He was awarded the 1924 Howard N. Potts Medal of the Franklin Institute.

He was awarded the 1930 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award and the IRE Medal of Honor in 1958 by the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) "For outstanding scientific achievement and pioneering inventions and development in the field of electron tubes."

He did consulting work and served on an advisory committee of the Army Ballistics Research Laboratories after retirement from General Electric and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He also served as president of the American Physical Society in 1942.

He died on 22 January 1966 at the age of 85.


  1. ^ Albert W. Hull, "The effect of a uniform magnetic field on the motion of electrons between coaxial cylinders," Physical Review, vol. 18, no. 1, pages 31-57 (1921). See also: Albert W. Hull, "The magnetron," Journal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, vol. 40, no. 9, pages 715-723 (September 1921).
  2. ^ "Obituary: Albert W. Hull". Physics Today 19 (3): 110–111. March 1966. doi:10.1063/1.3048094. 

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