Mr. Ben Hapgood Tongue

Fellow Radiophiles:

I have been in a delightful email exchange with Mr. Ben Hapgood Tongue, who co-founded BlonderToungue with Mr. Isaac S. Blonder.

Ben has a very interesting personal page.

He was a very creative and prolific inventor in the fields of high frequency amplifier design, filter design, and spectrum analysis.

Several of Ben's patents focus on difficult neutralization problems at VHF and UHF frequencies.

Ben and Isaac launched their very successful company with the fixed-tuned 12 channel VHF TV booster amplifier Antensifier HA1-L. Note that VHF TV antenna boosters at that time were manually tuned for the desired channel. The BT booster dispenses with that inconvenience. The broadband boosting ability made it possible for subsequent BT boosters to be developed that could drive more than one independently tuned TV set.

Ben has listed his patents with references to the BT products that they were used in at

This page also highlighths three of the most BT sucessful products that ben designed and invented:

HA1-L fixed-tuned 12 channel VHF booster

BTU-2 Ultraverter. UHF to VHF converter

B-9 Audio Baton. A spectrum equalizer over 9 octaves. This was the first audio equalizer without inductors. It uses an elegant Wien bridge R+C+R//C network.

Enjoy a long visit through Ben's elegant inventions.

-Joe

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There is a long but interesting interview of Ben Tongue by Lawrence Lockwood on October 3rd of 1992 that outlines Ben's technical life starting in College at Northeastern University in Boston Massachusetts USA, and goes thoug Ben's designs at Blonder-Tongue, including many references to his patents and innovative products.

I just finished reading this interview. There is a similar interview of Isaac (Ike) Blonder by Archer Taylor on the same web site, as part of the Hauser Oral and Video History Collection web page. This collection is part of the Cable Center web page, a web site dedicated to cable tv history and education.

Regards,

-Joe

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There was a "selected question mark" article which is deleted - but the question mark stays in the system unless there is a "last post" without.

In case of a further post I will delete this one ...

GR

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Fellow radiophiles:

I am sad to report that Mr. Ben Hapgood Tongue die on July 4th, aged 90.

The web page for Blonder-Tongue company, which Tongue cofounded with Isaac Blonder, pays tribute to their cofounder.

After retirement from his company, he remained active and made contributions to the design of crystal radios, which he published in is aforementioned hobby web page. I had the pleasure of exchanging emails with him on crystal radios and other technical topics until about a year and a half ago.

Regards,

-Joe

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