Edwin H. Colpitts

Point de Bute is a located within the town of Tantramar in Westmorland County, near Sackville. Edwin H. Colpitts was born there. He began his education at Mount Allison University, later working as a teacher and school principal in Newfoundland. In 1895, he entered Harvard University, studying physics and mathematics. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1896 and a master’s degree in 1897, remaining at Harvard for two additional years to take advanced courses and serve as a laboratory assistant to John Trowbridge, director of the Jefferson Physical Laboratory.

In 1899, Colpitts joined the American Bell Telephone Company, and in 1907 moved to Western Electric. While there, his colleague Ralph Hartley developed an inductive coupling oscillator in 1915. Colpitts followed with its electrical dual — the capacitor-based Colpitts oscillator — in 1918. The invention was first described in a 1919 paper co-authored with Edward B. Craft and patented in 1920 as the “Oscillation Generator.” Colpitts and Craft famously wrote that enabling speech communication between any two people in the civilized world was among engineering’s highest goals. In 1915, Colpitts’ team also successfully demonstrated the first transatlantic radio telephone.

During World War I, Edwin H. Colpitts served in the United States Army Signal Corps, spending time in France as a staff officer focused on military communications.

In 1921, Edwin H. Colpitts and Otto B. Blackwell published a landmark paper on carrier multiplex telephony and telegraphy in the Transactions of the AIEE. Their work on bandpass filters and vacuum-tube electronics helped enable a four-channel commercial system that went into operation between Baltimore and Pittsburgh in 1918.

When Western Electric’s research arm became Bell Laboratories in 1925, Colpitts continued his career there, eventually rising to the position of vice president before retiring. In 1940, he was called out of retirement to chair a U.S. Navy committee reviewing the state of sonar development, a report that exposed critical shortcomings and helped stimulate major advances in American sonar research.

Edwin H. Colpitts died at home in 1949 in Orange, New Jersey, and was laid to rest in his hometown of Point de Bute. 

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