Rudolf Kompfner (May 16, 1909 – December 3, 1977) was an Austrian-born inventor, physicist and architect, best known as the inventor of the traveling-wave tube (TWT).

Life

Kompfner was born in Vienna to Jewish parents.^[1] He was originally trained as an architect and after receiving his university degree in 1933 he moved to England (due to the rise of anti-Semitism), where he worked as an architect until 1941. He had a strong interest in physics and electronics, and after being briefly detained by the British at the start of World War II he was recruited to work in a secret microwave vacuum tube research program at the University of Birmingham. While there, Kompfner invented the TWT in 1943. After the war he became a British citizen, continued working for the Admiralty as a scientist, and also studied physics at the University of Oxford, receiving his D.Phil. in 1951.^[2]

In 1965, he received an honorary doctorate from the Vienna University of Technology.^[3]

Patents

1957

• Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier. (Issued 8/27/57.)
• Traveling Wave Tube. (Issued 10/29/57.)
• Electron Beam System. (Issued 11/5/57.)

1958

• Traveling Wave Tube. (Issued 5/13/58.)
• Electron Beam System. (Issued 10/21/58.)
• Non-reciprocal Wave Transmission. (Issued 11/11/58.)

1959

• Traveling Wave Tube. (Issued 1/6/59.)
• Direct View Storage Tube. (Issued 3/24/59.)
• Backward Wave Tube. (Issued 6/16/59.)
• Traveling Wave Tube. (Issued 7/14/59.)
• Apparatus Utilizing Slalom Focusing. (Issued 8/11/59.)
• Non-reciprocal Wave Transmission Device. (Issued 11/3/59.)
• Backward Wave Amplifier. (Issued 12/8/59.)

1960

• Non-reciprocal Elements in Microwave Tubes. (Issued 1/26/60.)
• Coaxial Couplers. (Issued 2/16/60.)
• Pulse Coincidence Detecting Tube. (Issued 4/19/60.)
• Electron Gun for Slalom Focusing Systems. (Issued 5/31/60.)
• High Efficiency Velocity Modulation Devices. (Issued 8/16/60.)
• Traveling Wave Tube. (Issued 10/4/60.)

1961

• Low Noise Amplifier. (Issued 2/14/61.)
• High Frequency Amplifier. (Issued 2/21/61.)
• Backward Wave Tube. (Issued 5/23/61.)
• Elastic Wave Parametric Amplifier. (Issued 12/5/61.)

1962

• Parallel High Frequency Amplifier Circuits. (Issued 2/15/62.)
• Scanning Horn-Reflector Antenna. (Issued 2/13/62.)
• Microwave Filter. (Issued 6/26/62.)
• Broadband Cyclotron Wave Parametric Amplifier. (Issued 8/28/62.)
• High Frequency Generator. (Issued 12/4/62.)

1964

• Traveling Wave Light Modulator. (Issued 5/12/64.)
• Artificial Scattering Elements for Use as Reflectors in Space Communication Systems. (Issued 9/29/64.)
• Detector for Optical Communication System. (Issued 10/27/64.)

1965

• Beam Collector with Auxiliary Collector for Repelled or Secondarily-Emitted Electrons. (Issued 6 /8/65.)
• Antenna System. (Issued 7/20/65.)
• Sinusoidal-Shaped Lens for Light Wave Communication. (Issued 12/21/65.)
• Transmission of Light Waves. (Issued 12/21/65.)

1966

• Optical Maser Amplifier. (Issued 5/24/66.)
• Antenna System. (Issued 9/13/66.)
• Triple Element S-Lens Focusing System. (Issued 11/15/66.)

1967

• Spherical Reflector Elastic Wave Delay Device with Planar Transducers. (Issued 5/2/67.)

1969

• Intracavity Image Converter. (Issued 7/8/69.)

1970

• Receiving Antenna Apparatus Compensated for Antenna Surface Irregularities. (Issued 1/13/70.)
• Anti-Doppler Shift Antenna for Mobile Radio. (Issued 3/24/70.)
• Multiple-Pass Light-Deflecting Modulator. (Issued 3/31/70.)
• Multiple-Pass Light-Deflecting Modulator. (Issued 3/31/70.)
• Optical Waveguide. (Issued 4/14/70.)
• Time Division Multiplex Optical Transmission System. (Issued 4/l4/70.)
• Digital Light Deflecting Systems. (Issued 6/2/70.)
• Method and Apparatus for Obtaining 3-Dimensional Images from Recorded Standing Patterns. (Issued 7/14/70.)
• Optical Heterodyne Receiver with Pulse Widening or Stretching. (Issued 9/22/70.)
• Light Communication System with Improved Signal- to-Noise Ratio. (Issued 10/6/70.)

1977

• Method of and Apparatus for Acoustic Imaging. (Issued 3/15/77.)