The Electromagnetics Laboratory began about 1948 as the Antenna Laboratory under the direction of C. C. Nash. Later, E. C. Jordan served as Director until he was named Head of the Electrical Engineering Department in 1954. In that year V. H. Rumsey came from Ohio State and served as Director until he left for the University of California at Berkeley in 1957. Work on frequency-independent antennas began while Rumsey was at Illinois. After Rumsey left, G. A. Deschamps became Director and during his tenure the name was changed to Electromagnetics Laboratory to reflect a broadening of the scope of the research. Later Directors were Y. T. Lo, Paul E. Mayes and Shung-Wu (Andy) Lee. Raj Mittra established the Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory. The Antenna Laboratory is credited with the development of many original ideas in antenna design of which the foremost are frequency-independent antennas. Since the late fifties, log-periodic and log-spiral antennas invented in the Antenna Laboratory have been used on satellites, for radio astronomy, television receiving, wide-band reflector feeds and many other applications. Shown below are some photographs of Emeritus Professors Paul Mayes and Y. T. Lo who were active in electromagnetics research since the early years of the Antenna Laboratory.

Emeritus Professor Paul Mayes is shown discussing one of his inventions, the nested, wide-angle, conical monopole antenna with ECE student Brian Helm. Brian is holding a model of the antenna which he has designed, constructed and tested for cellular phone applications.

Emeritus Professor Y. T. Lo was a pioneer in the analysis of corrugated waveguides and horns. He is shown here with a model corrugated horn that was constructed by stacking annular metallic rings with different inner radii.

Professor Lo directed several studies of problems associated with spherical reflector antennas. The discrete reflector shown here, designed to overcome problems with aberrations, was constructed using many dipole elements terminated with shorted stubs of various lengths.