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
--
CL -- I doubt, therefore I might be !



"Wayne Watson" wrote in message
news
I hardly know where to start with this topic. If one picks up some of the
fairly popular (available?) books on the matter, the authors invariably
start throwing different types of antennas at the reader, yagi, helical,
dipole, folded dipole, parabolic, loop, dish, microwave, quads, etc. For
example, I'm looking at an older book on the topic I bought some 20 years
ago, The Radio Amateur Handbook by Orr and Cowan. The book is basically
for
builders. Many such books are. What about the underlying methodology
behind
this? More generally, here's my question.

I would guess that in the beginning (late 1800s) the simple dipole was it.
As years passed, the complexity of antennas has increased. What was the
driving force for these changes? For example, how did the inventor of the
Yagi (Yagi-Uda) ever dream up the idea for the antenna? Was it the
application of theory or did he just get lucky? In fact, is there some
underlying theory that drives the design of antennas? For example, the
computation of radiation patterns. I'm sure these days the computer would
be
an aid, but what theory and application drove the development of varied
designs before 1960? When did Maxwell's equations seriously get used for
this? What suggested a tin can could become an antenna? How did anyone
think
up the idea of a microwave antenna?

I would think that in the case of antennas that are used for different
parts
of the EM spectrum a driving force would be the consideration of the wave
itself. For example, it would seem unlikely an x-ray antenna (I believe
there is such a thing on one of the space satellites used in astronomy)
would be anything like one used to receive TV. Certainly the 'antenna' to
collect visible light is different than that for AM radio.

--
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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