Robert H. Marriott
By Michael N.
Geselowitz, Ph.D., Staff Director, IEEE History Center
As mentioned in
a previous column, this is the 125th
anniversary of IEEE. The IEEE in its modern
form was born in 1963 out of a merger of the
Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) and the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE).
The AIEE was itself founded in
1884—therefore that date was chosen for
historical purposes as the beginning of
IEEE. But where did IRE come from? It began
in 1912 largely as the result of the efforts
of an amazing man, Robert H. Marriott.
Marriott was
born on 19 February 1879 at Richwood, Ohio,
and started his radio experimental work in
1897, at the Ohio State University, where he
graduated with the Bachelor of Science
degree in 1901. Entering the nascent field
of radio, then known as wireless, he soon
distinguished himself as an engineer and
businessman. For example, he was the first
one to put into use in America the telephone
and detector method of radio reception.
In 1908,
Marriott recognized that the AIEE, then
almost 25 years old, did not meet the needs
of radio engineers. A small collective for
radio engineers, the Society of Wireless
Telegraph Engineers (SWTE) had been founded
in Boston by the radio entrepreneur John
Stone Stone in 1907, but Marriott realized
that something broader was needed. Since New
York was the center of the industry at the
time, Marriott distributed a circular asking
radio engineers to join a new, New
York-based professional organization modeled
on the AIEE. In 1909, with sixty charter
members, the Wireless Institute was born. At
least in terms of the name “Institute,” we
are also celebrating a centennial!
Recognizing
that radio by its nature transcended
boundaries of space, Marriott invited his
Boston colleagues to join him. Ninety-seven
years ago this month (13 May 1912), the SWTE
and the Wireless Institute merged to form
the IRE—though really the SWTE was absorbed
into its larger cousin. Marriott became the
first president of the new society, served
as its vice-president in 1913, and served on
the Board of Directors in 1914-1916,
1920-1922, and 1926-1932.
Of course,
Marriott stayed active in the field of
radio. Mr. Marriott did experimental work
for a number of early radio companies, and
was a radio aide of the U. S. Navy in
1915-1925, which caused him to become
involved part time in West Coast activities.
There he completed the first commercial
broadcasting station on the Pacific Coast,
which operated between Avalon, Catalina
Island, and the California mainland.
Marriott was instrumental in forming the
Seattle Section of the IRE, and became the
first Chairman of that Section in 1915, a
position he filled until 1919.
Marriott was a
consulting engineer of the Federal Radio
Commission in 1928 – 1929, and he continued
in private consulting until 1943, when he
retired and returned to the East Coast full
time. He was responsible for a number of
patents and was the author of many papers
and articles on radio which included a
series of popularizing articles in the
New York Herald Tribune in 1927 and
1928.
In recognition
of his service both to the field and to the
profession of radio engineering, Marriott
was made a Fellow of the IRE in 1915 (its
inaugural class), an AIEE Fellow in 1926,
and an IRE Life Fellow in 1949. He was also
an Honorary Member of the Radio Club of
America, and of the Veterans Wireless
Operators Association. Marriott died on 31
October 1951 at his home in Brooklyn, New
York.
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