The Story of Pye Wireless #Radio #History

The Story of Pye Wireless

While LushProjects Blog was helping their dad clear our some old books, they found this pamphlet from 1986 – “The Story of Pye Wireless” by Gordon Bussey. Pye was a very early British electronics company.

They couldn’t find any other references to it on the web, and it seems well researched with some nice photos. So, to make it more widely available, they scanned it and made a copy available on their blog. Some excerpts:

The first public demonstration of wireless equipment made by W. G. Pye & Co., was at the Royal Show of 1922, held in Cambridge. A ship’s operator was writing into words dots and dashes from a loud speaker, and there was great excitement when a voice was heard from one of the earliest Croydon-Le Bourget passenger flights in a Handley Page bomber biplane, the pilot finally giving his opinion of the weather conditions in ‘blue’ R.A.F. language.

The book goes into great detail about early radio and then into the world wars:

Pye set up their first Radiolocation (Radar) receiving equipment at Walton-on-the-Naze, to detect the approach of enemy aircraft, in 1939. This was followed by the development of a very wide range of air-to-air, air-to-ground and ground-to-air Radar devices, culminating in a degree of accuracy that enabled a fighter-pilot to shoot down his enemy without even seeing him, and bomber-pilots to release their bombs, so that they landed within yards of the selected targets.

Pye later made televisions, then merged in the 1960s with other companies.

See the LushProjects Blog for more info and the PDF of the book.

Pye Radio, 1922


Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards

Join Adafruit on Mastodon

Adafruit is on Mastodon, join in! adafruit.com/mastodon

Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.

Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.

Join us every Wednesday night at 8pm ET for Ask an Engineer!

Join over 36,000+ makers on Adafruit’s Discord channels and be part of the community! http://adafru.it/discord

CircuitPython – The easiest way to program microcontrollers – CircuitPython.org


Maker Business — Philips, an electronics giant, has faded from its former glory

Wearables — Capture sounds

Electronics — Audio amplifier advice

Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: MicroPython Pico W Bluetooth, CircuitPython 8.0.4 and much more! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi

Adafruit IoT Monthly — Boxing Glove Tracker, Disconnecting Smart Appliances, and more!

Microsoft MakeCode — MakeCode Thank You!

EYE on NPI — Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey

New Products – Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! — #NewProducts 3/15/23 Feat. Adafruit CAN Bus FeatherWing – MCP2515!

Get the only spam-free daily newsletter about wearables, running a "maker business", electronic tips and more! Subscribe at AdafruitDaily.com !



No Comments

No comments yet.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.