Electronics and Their Application in Industry and Research. Edited by B. Lovell, 1947, London, the Pilot Press Ltd.

Electronics and Its Application in Science and Technology. Edited by B. Lovell. 1947, 660 pp., 404 figs.

The purpose of the present book is to acquaint the qualified reader, who has a fairly adequate preparation, with certain questions of physical and technical electronics that have received development in the very recent past. In accordance with this, the book, not being a textbook, is compiled as a collection of separate article-chapters on various

questions of electronics, written by various authors. The need to publish monographs of this type has undoubtedly long been ripe, for the continuously and rapidly growing importance of electronics for the most diverse fields of science and technology requires that broad circles of scientific and engineering workers become acquainted with it.

The contents of the book under review are as follows: Introduction (pp. 1–11)—B. Lovell. Ch. I—Electronic Physics (pp. 13–51)—F. Vick. Ch. II—Photoelements for Visible and Ultraviolet Radiation (pp. 53–95)—G. Lubszynski. Ch. III—Recent Advances in Infrared Photocell Technology (pp. 97–133)—A. Elliott. Ch. IV—Electronic Generation of Television Signals (pp. 135–211)—J. McGee. Ch. V—Electron Tubes for Superhigh Frequencies (pp. 213–237)—F. Thompson. Ch. VI—Radar (pp. 239–319)—R. Smith. Ch. VII—The Use of Cold-Cathode Tubes in Control Engineering (pp. 321–348)—L. Atkinson. Ch. VIII—High-Frequency Heating (pp. 349–381)—G. Vood. Ch. IX—Moisture-Content Control (pp. 383–389)—G. Vood. Ch. X—The Use of Electronics in the Control of Mechanisms (pp. 391–442)—F. Belsey. Ch. XI—Electronics in Medicine (pp. 443–482)—L. Grimmett. Ch. XII—Electronics in Physiology (pp. 483–502)—R. Pumphrey. Ch. XIII—Betatron (pp. 503–533)—J. Craggs. Ch. XIV—Electron Microscopy and Diffraction (pp. 535–641)—V. Cosslett.

Appendices. Subject and name indexes. At the end of each chapter a brief bibliography is given.

Dwelling on the contents of the sections of this book devoted to physical electronics, one may say that they are written somewhat unevenly. If, for example, Chapters XIII and XIV are, on the whole, written very substantially and interestingly, and Chapter III gives very interesting material on photoconductivity for infrared radiation, then, for example, Chapter II is written rather primitively, while Chapter I itself is very uneven and, it must be said, probably rather difficult even for the author himself, who was compelled to fit a large amount of material into 39 pages, a task he accomplished very indifferently.

Furthermore, as a novelty worthy of constant encouragement, one may note the appearance, for the first time in books of this kind, of chapters (XI and XII) devoted to the applications of electronics in biology, medicine, and so forth. On questions devoted to technical electronics, I, not being competent, naturally cannot dwell.

When looking through this book, one is struck by a certain unjustified arbitrariness in the selection of material. Indeed, it is permissible to ask: is the material set forth, for example, in Chapters VII, VIII, and IX very important, while, for example, questions concerning modern multigrid ion devices, as well as elements of the physics of the gas discharge, not touched upon here at all, are obsolete or secondary? If a detailed treatment of the betatron was considered necessary, then should questions of nuclear electronics not also have been touched upon here; is this device really, for a monograph published in 1947, the only and latest novelty in this field; and, in general, should not something more have been said about the importance of electronics for the development of this field? and so on. Of course, consideration of all this could significantly increase the already rather large volume of the book. But if the obstacle is precisely the size of the book, then an even stricter approach to the selection of material is all the more necessary.

From what has been said it is evident that, in general, this first interesting example of the publication of such a monographic collection of articles devoted to problems of electronics proved, as it seems to me, to be not entirely successful, although the advisability of this undertaking and the desirability of continuing it in the future, when compiling other monographs of a similar kind, certainly cannot be doubted.

N. D. Morgulis