Caveat Lector wrote:

I think many antenna designs arose as a matter of "necessity is the mother
of invention"

For example here is a Yagi antenna quote from URL:

http://ieee.cincinnati.fuse.net/newsletters/200405.pdf

At Tohoku, Yagi initiated a research program in radio-electronics drawing on
what he had learned from Barkhausen, Fleming, and Pierce. Other members of
the faculty and advanced students, including Okabe and Shintaro Uda, became
participants in a collective research effort. A perceived need for better
communication between islands and with ships led them to focus on short wave
communication with directive antennas. The Yagi group received financial
support for the research from a private foundation in Sendai. In February
1926, Yagi and Uda published their first report on the wave projector
antenna in a Japanese publication.

For the Cubical Quad see URL:

http://www.antennex.com/preview/Jan501/quad1.htm

Clarence Moore, the station engineer at HCJB in Quito, and some colleagues
took along with them a stack of antenna and engineering texts and a Bible on
a Sabbatical in 1942. Their urgent goal was to come up with an antenna that
wouldn't consume itself by corona discharge when fed with high power, as was
happening to their Yagi, at the high Andean altitude of their station. A
full wave loop solved the problem.

Some remarkable antenna designs today because of the need to fit an antenna
on a cell phone.

For direction finding, loops, interferometers, etc were needed

ETC
Yes, those are interesting insights. Kraus in "Antennas" offers several.

--
Wayne T. Watson (Watson Adventures, Prop., Nevada City, CA)
(121.015 Deg. W, 39.262 Deg. N) GMT-8 hr std. time)
Obz Site: 39° 15' 7" N, 121° 2' 32" W, 2700 feet

Traveling in remote places in the winter. What's the best
tool to carry with you? An axe.
-- Survivorman, Discovery (SCI) Channel

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