Harold Stephen Black

Harold Stephen Black (1898-1983) was an electrical engineer who revolutionized the field of applied electronics by inventing the negative feedback amplifier in 1927. He graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1921. After his graduation, he went on to work in Bell Labs. To some, his invention is considered the most important breakthrough of the century in the field of electronics, since it has a wide area of application.

50 years after his 1927 invention, he published an article in IEEE Spectrum regarding the historical background of his invention [1]. He published a classical paper on negative feedback amplifier in 1934 [2], which have been re-printed in the Proceedings of IEEE two times in 1984 and 1999 [3]-[4]. An obituary regarding Harold Black was published by IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control in 1984 [5].

According to Black [1], he got his inspiration to invent the negative feedback amplifier when he was travelling from New Jersy to New York City by a ferry in August 1927. At that time, Bell Laboratories headquarters were located in New York City instead of New Jersy and he lived in New Jersy such that he took the ferry every morning to go to work.

References

[1] Harold S. Black, "Inventing the negative feedback amplifier", IEEE Spectrum, vol. 14, pp. 54-60, Dec. 1977.

[2] H.S. Black, "Stabilized feed-back amplifiers", Electrical Engineering, vol. 53, pp. 114-120, Jan. 1934.

[3] H.S. Black, "Stabilized feed-back amplifiers", Proc. IEEE, vol. 72, no. 6, pp. 716-722, June 1984.

[4] H.S. Black, "Stabilized feed-back amplifiers", Proc. IEEE, vol. 87, no. 2, pp. 379-385, Feb. 1999.

[5] C.A. Desoer, "In memoriam: Harold Stephen Black", IEEE Trans. Automatic Control, vol. AC-29, no. 8, pp. 673-674, Aug. 1984.

External link

• HS Black