Discussion at New York meeting: Frequency measurements with the cathode-ray oscillograph

T. E. Shea: Mr. Rasmussen has discussed the need for accurate and ready measurements of frequency. It is rather difficult to overstress the importance of frequency as an engineering variable in communications work, for the whole transmission problem centers about the signals we want to transmit and the interference we don´t want to transmit. Both the signals and the interference are made up of a large number of frequency components and so the vital transmission characteristic of communication networks may be said to be frequency characteristics. We have frequency against impedance, or reflection coefficient; frequency against transmission loss, or attenuation; frequency against phase shift, and so on — always frequency against some other variable.