John Adolph Sargrove
John Adolph Sargrove (1906–1975), electrical engineer and pioneer of automation.
1906 born in St Pancras, London, on 23 May, the son of Arpad Szabadi, an electrician, and his wife, Cissie Lily, née Solomons.
Attended schools in Budapest.
1920 Returned to London; studied at the polytechnic in Regent Street while undertaking an apprenticeship with several small engineering firms in the London area.
1930 employed by Tungsram Electric Lamps Ltd (later called British Tungsram Radio Works Ltd) as a patent researcher.
1933 became chief technical engineer of British Tungsram, working to improve thermionic valves.
1938 Changed his surname to Sargrove
Gained a large number of British and foreign patents
1940 Left British Tungsram to become chief engineer of the Electro-Physical Laboratories and worked with Mervyn Sound and Vision Ltd. With these companies he developed photoelectric devices and worked on electronic automation equipment for the armaments industry
Post-war worked on automatic production equipment for the radio industry, especially Electronic Circuit Making Equipment, "the first automatic factory"; Sargrove received the first Clerk-Maxwell premium of the Institution of Radio and Electronic Engineers for this development.
1955 Sargrove founded his own company, Automatic Consultants and Associates, of which he became technical director and, later, chairman.
1975 Died at Woking
See Also
Sources of Information
- Biography, ODNB