Scanning the Past: A History of Electrical Engineering from the Past

Submitted by Dick Reiman, Historian

Copyright 1992 IEEE. Reprinted with permission from the IEEE publication, "Scanning the Past" which covers a reprint of an article appearing in the Proceedings of the IEEE Vol. 80, No. 9 September 1992.

Arthur F. Van Dyck and Dynamic Symmetry

Sixty years ago this month the PROCEEDINGS OF THE INS1lTUTE OF RADIO ENGINEERS (IRE) included a paper by Arthur Van Dyck concerning the use of dynamic symmetry in radio design. At the time he was manager of the license laboratory of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and he was quite experienced in the design and testing of radio receivers.

In his paper, Van Dyck characterized dynamic symmetry as being "the science of vital relations to areas" and he asserted that it had a "strong fascination" for engineers due to its serving as a connecting link between art and engineering. He credited a Yale University professor, Jay Hambidge, for the rediscovery that the beauty of ancient art, especially that of Greece, had reflected the use of the "exact geometrical formulas" of dynamic symmetry. Van Dyck argued that knowledge of the principles of dynamic symmetry would help radio design engineers enrich their designs so that they would seem "vital, pleasing, and right" and demonstrate "coherence, vitality, and feeling." He suggested that an understanding of dynamic symmetry would be particularly beneficial to those designers who were "not endowed with that artistic sense which instinctively selects those forms which are pleasing." He used examples which required only a ruler and compass to construct and would have been relatively easy to follow by engineers with some background in plane geometry or engineering graphics.

Van Dyck distinguished between two methods employing dynamic symmetry principles which he called convergent and divergent. To use the convergent method, the designer began with a whole object such as a radio cabinet profile and worked inward to determine the optimum size and location of internal parts. With the divergent method, one began with an internal part and worked outward. He used the design of a commercial radio loudspeaker and a vacuum lube to illustrate the use of the two methods in radio design. He stated that radio design had been mainly utilitarian until broadcast receivers had entered the home but that appearance had now become an important aspect of design.

Van Dyck was born in Stuyvesant Falls, New York, in 1891 and became an amateur radio enthusiast as a teenager. He received an undergraduate degree from Yale in 1911 and then took a job as what he later termed a "radio laboratorian" for the National Electric Signaling Company in Massachusetts. He joined the Society of Wireless Telegraph Engineers and later became a charter member of the IRE when it was formed in 1912. He worked for several other companies including the Westinghouse Company, American Marconi, and General Electric before joining the research department of RCA in 1922. He also served in the U.S. Navy as a radio expert during 1917-19. He became an IRE fellow in 1925 and was coauthor of two papers published in the PROCEEDINGS in November 1928. One of the papers covered methods used for quantitative testing of radio receivers and the other was concerned with production tests of vacuum tubes. Among the tests of vacuum tubes were the "drop test" and the "bump test." In the bump test a vacuum tube served as a pendulum bob which would strike a plane surface after traveling through a prescribed arc. Van Dyck published another IRE paper in the February 1936 PROCEEDINGS on the topic of "preferred numbers," which he regarded as closely related to dynamic symmetry. As examples where preferred numbers were recommended he mentioned the values of fixed resistors and capacitors.

Van Dyck served as president of the IRE during 1942, and a principal theme of his tenure was the need for engineers to become more socially responsible. He addressed this theme in a paper entitled "The Engineer in Modern Society ," published in the July 1942 issue of the PROCEEDINGS. At a 30th anniversary meeting of the IRE in May 1942, Van Dyck showed lantern slides of his 1908 amateur radio station. A published account of the event commented that his slides had shown "a very trim, dynamically symmetrical arrangement of apparatus." He was recalled to active duty in the Navy in April 1943 and served until January 1946, when he returned to RCA. He authored a book entitled The Mysteries of Television.

James E. Brittain

School of History , Technology, and Society

Georgia Institute of Technology