> From: Chuck Guzis > the magnetron was made out to be a super-secret device, yet there's a > clear explanation of it in my 1942 "Radio Handbook".
Ordinary magnetrons had indeed been around for a while; they were invented in 1920. The British invention was the _cavity magnetron_, a quite different beast; it was kind of a cross between a magnetron and a klystron, with the best features of each. Buderi (which is indeed an excellent history, perhaps the best in the radar section of my library) has a good explanation of how it works. Noel