John Bray

William John Bray CBE (10 September 1911 in Fratton, Portsmouth – 6 September 2004) was a communications engineer and director of research at the Post Office Research Station, between 1966 and 1975. In 1972 he presented the Bernard Price Memorial Lecture in South Africa. He was an early researcher of Earth–Moon–Earth communications.

Early life He was born in Portsmouth, the son of William James Bray, a naval artificer who served on HMS Achilles and his wife Emily Eliza Clothier. Brought up in Yeovil and Portsmouth, he attended Portsmouth Southern Grammar School. Then at around 16 apprenticed in Portsmouth Dockyard, he had ham radio as a hobby.

Bray as an apprentice won one of the Leonard Andrew Boyd Donaldson awards, and pursued his ambition to become an electrical engineer with a scholarship at the City and Guilds Engineering College from 1932. He graduated in 1934 and went on to an MSc(eng) degree in 1935. He went to work at the General Post Office (GPO). After induction he became a radio engineer at the GPO's Dollis Hill research facility. Bray later visited Friis at the Holmdel Laboratory, and consulted him on the organisation of research.

In World War II Bray worked on radio direction finding and meaconing. He went on to sit on Consultative Committee on International Radio setting radio standards. In the television field, Bray developed the TV detector van. It was "an early version of the internet".

Articles

Bray, W.J. and Lowry, W.R.H. (1939). A New Short-wave Transatlantic Radio Receiver. POEEJ 32 (1): 24-31 Bray, W.J. (1948). The Possibilities of Super-High-Frequency Radio and Waveguide Systems for Telecommunications, IPOEE Printed Paper No. 197, 1948. Booth, C.F. and Bray, W.J. (1949). A report on microwave radio relay and waveguide systems studied in USA. Report by Experimental and Development Branch of Post Office Engineering Department. (Copy held in UK National Archives WO 195/10701.) Bray, W.J. (1950). A Survey of Modern Radio Valves. Part 6(a). Valves for Use at Frequencies Above 3,000 Mc/s, POEEJ 43 (3): 148-153 Bray, W.J. (1951). A Survey of Modern Radio Valves. Part 6(b). Valves for Use at Frequencies Above 3,000 Mc/s, POEEJ 43 (4): 187-191

Books

Bray, J. (1995). The Communications Miracle: Telecommunications Pioneers from Morse to the Information Superhighway, Perseus Books, Bray, J. (1999). Then, Now and Tomorrow: The Autobiography of a Communications Engineer, The Book Guild Ltd, Bray, J. (2002). Innovation and the Communications Revolution, Institution of Electrical Engineers,