IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q4 2021 - 46

In addition to never losing interest in circuit theory,
Sid retained an interest in military systems-and related
systems-throughout his tenure at Bell Laboratories.
One of his most important contributions is the
invention of what is called " Chirp Radar. " The chirp
idea is a way to form a pulsed radar's transmitted signal
so that relatively high peak power is not needed to
achieve long range and high resolution. This involves
transmitting long frequency-modulated pulses. The corresponding
reflected and received ( " chirped " ) pulses
are " collapsed " into relatively short pulses using a network
that introduces a time delay that is frequency dependent.
The idea has been widely used, and there has
been much interest in the design of the needed delay
networks-not only at Bell Laboratories, but at many
other companies and also at universities. Darlington's
IEEE Medal of Honor citation reads: " for fundamental
contributions to filtering and signal processing leading
to chirp radar. "
Sid also did very influential work concerning rocket
guidance. In 1954 he ingeniously combined radar-tracking
techniques with principles of inertial guidance to develop
the highly-effective Bell Laboratories Command
Guidance System which has launched many of the earlier
United States' space vehicles including NASA's Thor
Delta booster and the Air Force's Titan I missile. The
system has proved to be remarkably reliable and has
played a central role in placing into orbit many satellites
including the Echo I communications satellite, Syncom,
and Intelsat.
Darlington is best known for an idea that he probably
developed very quickly: The Darlington transistor-a
simple circuit comprised of two or more transistors
which behaves as a much improved single transistor. As
is well known to the circuits and systems community,
this idea is widely used and has had a great impact on
the design of integrated circuits.
After Sid retired from Bell Laboratories, he became
an adjunct professor at the University of New Hampshire
where he received an honorary doctorate in 1982.
He was a consultant to Bell Laboratories from 1971 to
1974. Darlington held more than forty patents, and was
active in professional society activities. During 1959
to 1960 he was the chairman of the IEEE Professional
Group on Circuit Theory, and in 1986 he received
the Circuits and Systems Society's
first Society Award.
Sid was a man of great personal and proTAP.
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fessional integrity. He was an intense but
gentle man who was surprisingly modest. He
was also a gregarious person who knew a lot
about many things and had much to say. A
colleague once commented that, " Asking Sid
Darlington a question was like trying to take a
drink from a fire hose. "
Sidney Darlington died in 1997. The article
above is a modification of a Memorial
Tribute to him by this writer and Professor
Ernest S. Kuh (now deceased) that appears
in Memorial Tributes, vol. 9, National Academy
Press, 2001. Permission to use material
from the Tribute has been granted by the National
Academy of Sciences, courtesy of the
National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.
Irwin W. Sandberg left Bell Laboratories
in 1986 to accept the Cockrell Family Regents
Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas
at Austin. He is a member of the National
Academy of Engineering. His citation reads:
for fundamental contributions to the understanding
and analysis of nonlinear systems
and for applying new methods to nonlinear
engineering problems. He is the first recipient
of the Technical Achievement award of
the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.
46 IEEE CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
FOURTH QUARTER 2021
IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine - Q4 2021

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