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Feature Article The History of Electronics Inventors and their Inventions Physicist Isaac Newton wrote, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”. The field of electronics is no different; we could not have the technology we have today without the contributions of thousands of brilliant people. This series of articles is about them. Part 4: by Dr David Maddison T he first three articles of this sixpart series, published over the last few months, listed significant electronics-­related inventions of individual inventors who were born before 1882. This part will cover individual inventors born from 1882 to 1969. For the following two months, we will switch to discussing significant inventions credited to companies and other organisations. That will complete this series, covering inventions up to early this century. Inventors by date of birth (1882 to 1969): Julius Edgar Lilienfeld field-effect transistor (FET) 1882-1963 Lilienfeld filed for US patent 1,745,175 in 1926, which was awarded in 1930, for the field-­effect transistor (FET). However, he never built a practical device because of the unavailability of high-purity semiconductor materials at the time. Max Dieckmann video camera tube “image dissector” 1882-1960 Dieckmann and his student Rudolf Hell (1901-2002) obtained a patent in FIND ALL YOUR ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS IN ONE PLACE 1927 (applied for 1925) for a video camera tube called the “image dissector”. However, Philo T. Farnsworth was the first to make it actually work (see his entry on page 26). Alexander Meissner 1883-1958 radio navigation systems, Meissner oscillator Invented the Telefunken Kompass Sender in 1911, one of the earliest radio navigation systems, comprising a directional beacon used to navigate Zeppelin airships (see pemag.au/link/abnm). In 1913, he discovered positive feedback as applied to vacuum tube amplifiers. BASIC MICRO E L E CT R O N I C S C O M P O N E N T S U P P L I E R w w w . basicmicro . co . u k High-quality, genuine parts 22 Practical Electronics | April | 2025 The History of Electronics, part 4 Fig.43: an Armstrong or Meissner Oscillator. Original source: www.itwissen.info/en/Meissneroscillator-127183.html#gsc.tab=0 He co-invented the oscillator in 1913 (independently with Edwin Armstrong, 1912) and received a patent in 1920. The Armstrong oscillator or Meissner oscillator (Fig.43) uses an inductor and capacitor to produce oscillation with a valve (or transistor in modern implementations) as the amplifier. Its frequency is determined by a resonant circuit, with oscillation maintained by a feedback process. Saul Dushman vacuum tube diodes 1883-1954 While at General Electric, he produced the first vacuum tube diodes in 1915, usable as rectifiers in power supplies. Edith Clarke Clarke (graphical) calculator 1883-1959 Edith filed US patent 1,552,113 for the Clarke Calculator (Fig.44) in 1921, awarded in 1925. It greatly simplified calculations for long transmission lines. It was a physically simple graphical calculator, which we assume was made out of cardboard or similar, but with some complex mathematics behind it. It also embodied a correct understanding of how inductance and capacity are uniformly distributed in long transmission lines, contrary to assumptions made at the time. Georges Rignoux transmitting still images Fig.45: Burnie Lee Benbow’s “coiled-coil” tungsten lamp filament from his 1917 US patent. 1882-1944 Georges Rignoux and Auguste Fig.44: the Edith Clarke calculator from US patent 1,552,113. Fournier (1864-unknown) of La Rochelle transmitted still images in Paris in 1909. They were updated every few seconds, using a sensor with an 8×8 matrix of photo-sensitive selenium cells. The resolution was enough to reproduce the English (or French) alphabet. Burnie Lee Benbow coiled-coil tungsten filaments 1885-1976 Benbow invented “coiled-coil” tungsten filaments for incandescent lamps in 1917 (Fig.45), extending their life due to less tungsten evaporation. Although simple in principle, there were enormous practical difficulties to overcome in fabrication. Walter Han Schottky thermionic valve, schottky diodes etc Yagi-Uda antenna 1886-1976 Yagi published articles to the West on the Yagi-Uda antenna (Fig.46), which was invented by his assistant, Shintaro Uda (1896-1976) in 1926. It is a directional antenna of simple design, commonly used for TV antennas and also widely used by radio amateurs. 1886-1976 Schottky invented the screen grid thermionic valve in 1915, co-invented the ribbon microphone and ribbon loudspeaker with Erwin Gerlach in 1924 and made many contributions to semiconductor physics. The schottky diode (with a metal/ semiconductor junction) is named after him. Practical Electronics | April | 2025 Hidetsugu Yagi Fig.46: the basic configuration of a 3-element Yagi-Uda antenna. 23 Feature Article John Logie Baird television 1888-1946 He made the first television image in 1925 (see Fig.47). It was of a rotating head, made using a Nipkow disk with 30 vertical lines of resolution. In 1926, he produced the first commercial television. In 1927, he transmitted a television picture over 705km via a telephone line. In 1928, he transmitted a television image across the Atlantic and in 1929, the BBC transmitted the first television programs. In 1940, he started work on the first single-tube electronic colour television system, Telechrome, which was demonstrated in 1944. He also worked on Phonovision between 1926 and 1928 (more on that next month). Sir C. V. Raman Raman effect 1888-1970 Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman and Sir Kariamanikkam Srinivasa Krishnan (1898-1961) discovered the Raman effect in 1928. It is a form of light scattering used for analysing substances. A Raman spectrometer was used on the Mars lander Perseverance. Vladimir Kosma Zworykin ~1888-1982 iconoscope (television camera tube) Filed for US patent 2,141,059 for the iconoscope in 1923 (awarded 1938). This was the first practical television camera tube and it was used for the 1936 Olympics. In Europe, it was replaced that year by the Super-­Emitron and Superikonoskop. However, it remained in use in the United States until 1946, when it was replaced by the image orthicon tube. Edwin Howard Armstrong 1890-1954 positive feedback (“regeneration”), superhet He was interested in how vacuum tubes work; they were not understood when the triode or “Audion” was invented by Lee de Forest in 1906. As a student, Armstrong experimented with these tubes with Professor John Harold Morecroft. Armstrong made a breakthrough discovery in 1912 that positive feedback or “regeneration” with a triode could dramatically increase the amplification possible, allowing the use of a loudspeaker rather than headphones. He also discovered that an Audion with sufficient feedback could be used to generate a high-frequency signal for radio transmitters. A complicated 25-year legal battle ensued between him and de Forest about patent rights for these discoveries, but Armstrong retains credit. 24 In 1918, he invented the supersonic heterodyne or superhet circuit, which enabled radio receivers to be more selective and sensitive. That invention was also subject to legal disputation with Lucien Lévy of France, with most claims awarded to Lévy. He developed wideband FM radio and first presented a paper on the subject in 1935, published in 1936. Imre Bródy krypton light globes 1891-1944 Filled light globes with krypton instead of argon in 1930, resulting in a much longer-lasting globe, becoming one of Hungary’s biggest exports. The gas was expensive, so in 1937, he devised a cheaper way to extract it from the air. Lucien Lévy 1892-1965 superheterodyne (superhet) circuit etc Developed a low-frequency amplifier to listen to enemy telephone communications and for other applications during WW1 (1914-1918). He invented the superheterodyne circuit, filing a patent in 1917, resulting in a patent dispute with Armstrong, resolved mostly in favour of Lévy. Robert Watson-Watt radar 1892-1973 Watson-Watt worked on detecting the direction of lightning strikes to warn pilots of storms from 1916. From 1935, he started working on and developing concepts to detect aircraft using radio reflections or radar. By the start of WW2, 19 radar stations had been established, ready for the Battle of Britain, and 50 were in place by the war’s end. Sir Edward Victor Appleton 1892-1965 proving the existence of the ionosphere Appleton proved the existence of the ionosphere in 1924, a layer of the atmosphere that reflects radio waves, and won a Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1947. Homer W. Dudley 1896-1980 Vocoder (Voice Coder) – speech analysis He invented the Vocoder (Voice Coder) in 1936 at Bell Labs. It is a speech analysis and synthesis system to encode speech by analysing it and reducing it to a series of control signals. Those signals could be transmitted over connection with limited bandwidth, such as an undersea cable or radio link, then reconstructed to the original speech. Based on that work, in 1937, he and Robert Riesz invented the world’s first electronic speech synthesiser, the Voder (Voice Operation Demonstrator), receiving US patent 2,121,142. It had a human operator pressing keys to produce the sound and was challenging to operate. It was demonstrated at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. See the video titled “The Voder – Homer Dudley (Bell Labs) 1939” at https://youtu.be/5hyI_dM5cGo and the free eBook PDF at pemag.au/link/abnn During WW2, he worked with Alan Turing (see his entry on page 27) on SIGSALY, a high-level cryptographic machine for voice transmissions that employed technology from Vocoder and Voder (Fig.49). Harold Stephen Black 1898-1983 negative feedback amplifiers, op amps Invented the negative feedback amplifier in 1927. It increased circuit stability, improved linearity (reducing distortion), increased the input impedance, decreased the output impedance, reduced noise, enhanced bandwidth and frequency response. Early practical applications were the reduction of overcrowding on long-­d istance telephone lines, improved fire control systems in WW2, Fig.47: shown at left is John Logie Baird with his Televisor, the first commercial television from 1926. The adjacent image is of Baird’s business partner, as seen on the Televisor. Source: https://rts.org.uk/article/remembering-logie-bairdninety-years Practical Electronics | April | 2025 The History of Electronics, part 4 Fig.49: the SIGSALY highlevel voice encryption machine used in WW2. Source: https://w. wiki/7DAh Fig.50: the first point-contact transistor from 1947. Source: https://w. wiki/7DAi (CCBY-SA-3.0). forming the basis of operational amplifiers (op amps) and precision audio oscillators. See our article on the History of Op Amps in the previous (March 2025) issue. Russell Shoemaker Ohl solar cell 1898-1987 Ohl filed for US patent 2,402,662 in 1941 for what is regarded as the world’s first solar cell made with a silicon P/N junction. This design continued to be developed, reaching an efficiency of around 5% in the 1950s and 1960s. Russell Harrison Varian klystron (linear-beam vacuum tube) 1898-1959 He and his brother Sigurd Fergus Varian (1901-1961) invented the klystron in 1937 and published the results in 1939. It is a vacuum tube that generates microwave frequency signals. It was the first device to generate these frequencies at a reasonable power level. The Axis powers used it for jamming H2S radar during WW2 (many of the principles had already been published before the war). German radar used more conventional techniques to generate lower-frequency microwaves, while the Allies used the more pow- erful cavity magnetron (see the entry for Randall and Boot on page 26). Prize for this work in 1971. Kenjiro Takayanagi Fermi-Dirac statistics all-electronic television receiver 1899-1990 He developed the world’s first all-­ electronic television receiver in 1926, with 40 lines of resolution. A Nipkow disc was used to scan the image at the source, but unlike other systems at the time, the receiver used a cathode ray tube to display the image. This was months before Philo Farnsworth demonstrated the first fully electronic TV system that did not require a Nipkow disc. In 1927, Takayanagi increased the resolution to 100 lines. Howard Aiken Harvard Mark 1 1900-1973 Aiken created the concept for the Harvard Mark 1, one of the earliest computers (see Fig.48). He went to IBM for funding the creation of the design, which was approved in 1939 and finished in 1944. Dennis Gabor holography 1900-1979 Invented holography in 1948, a process best known for the ability to reproduce 3D images but with many other applications. He received the Nobel Enrico Fermi & Paul Dirac Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) and Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984) independently created Fermi-Dirac statistics in 1926, which describe the behaviour of semiconductors. Stuart William Seeley Foster-Seeley FM discriminator 1901-1978 Seeley and Dudley E. Foster invented the Foster-Seeley FM discriminator in 1936 and published it in 1937. It would be called a demodulator today. It reduced the cost of FM radios to a comparable level to AM radios. It was widely used until the 1970s, when ICs allowed other modulator types to be used. Alfred Kastler optical pumping 1902-1984 Invented optical pumping in the early 1950s, a technique that led to the development of masers and lasers. The coherent light from lasers is crucial to semiconductor fabrication. Walter Houser Brattain magnetometers 1902-1987 He worked with a group developing magnetometers during WW2 to detect submarines and applied for US patent 2,605,072 with others, including Norman E. Klein, in 1944. In 1947, with John Bardeen and William Bradford Shockley Jr, he demonstrated the first working transistor (a point-contact design) – see Fig.50. Bardeen and Brattain were awarded a Nobel Prize for the point-contact device and Shockley for the junction transistor. Bell Labs credits 12 people as being involved with the invention of the transistor. Alan Dower Blumlein 1903-1942 weighting networks, stereophonic sound etc Fig.48: the Harvard Mark 1, designed by Howard Aiken, is an electromechanical computer, more than 15m long. Source: Encyclopædia Britannica – www.britannica.com/technology/minicomputer#/media/1/44895/19205 Practical Electronics | April | 2025 He measured the frequency response of human ears in 1924 to design weighting networks to minimise noise 25 Feature Article and better utilise telecommunications bandwidth. In 1924, he also published work on high-frequency resistance measurements. In 1938, he submitted US patent application 2,218,902 for what was to be called an “Ultra-­ Linear” audio power amplifier. In 1931, he filed UK Patent 394,325 for what is now known as stereophonic sound, but it was only commercially exploited in the 1950s after the patent expired. “Matrix processing” was used to efficiently encode sound as a common signal between left and right and a differential signal to define the spatial distribution. After 1933, he worked on the development of television and patented several technologies, and mostly developed the 405-line Marconi-EMI TV system. During WW2, he was involved in developing the H2S radar system for the RAF to identify ground targets for night and all-weather bombing. He was killed during a flight testing the system, but it went on to be a success. Oleg Vladimirovich Losev light-emitting diode (LED) 1903-1942 Extensively studied the silicon carbide point-contact junction, discovered by H. J. Round, which emitted green light. He published the results between 1924 and 1941. He produced a device, but no one saw a use for the weak light, although Losev thought it would be useful for telecommunications. We now know this device to be a light-emitting diode (LED). John Vincent Atanasoff Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) 1903-1995 He completed the Atanasoff-Berry Computer in 1942, which was under development since 1938. It is arguably the first digital computer, although it was not programmable, had no CPU and was not Turing complete (see Alan Turing’s entry opposite). Sir John Turton Randall cavity mangetron fully-electronic television system Paul Eisler printer circuit board (PCB) 1907-1992 Eisler invented the modern printed circuit board (PCB) in 1936 while working in the UK. He had experience in the printing industry, which helped with the project. The ‘intellectual property’ of the invention was not well protected, as he did not read a contract he signed. There were contributions to ideas and technologies leading up to this, such as from Thomas Edison, who made electrical tracks of glue and charcoal on a substrate in 1904; Arthur Berry, who in 1913 etched metal away to make items such as heating elements; and Charles Ducas, who described plating of copper patterns onto an insulating substrate in 1925. Victor Ivanovich Shestakov switching circuit theory 1907-1987 Developed a way to implement Boolean algebra logic in electromechanical relay circuits in 1935 (switching circuit theory). This was essential for the operation of computers and other digital devices. Claude Shannon independently invented the same theory (see his entry opposite), as well as Akira Nakashima (1908-1970). Manfred von Ardenne 3NF vacuum tube 1907-1997 He obtained a patent for the 3NF vacuum tube in 1923, at age 15. It had three integrated triodes (akin to an integrated circuit) and was used in the low-cost Loewe-Ortsempfänger OE333 AM radio (Fig.52). He also produced the flying-spot scanner as a television camera in 1930 (although not a camera tube, as such) and demonstrated it at the Berlin Radio Show in 1931. John Bardeen point-contact transistor Oskar Heil microwave vacuum tube 1908-1994 Published a paper in 1935, along with his wife Agnessa Arsenjeva, for a microwave vacuum tube, which subsequently led to the production of the first practical device. It predated the invention of the klystron, another type of microwave vacuum tube. He also invented the air motion transformer, used in certain high-end loudspeakers (there is a video on it at https://youtu.be/-wYxHYVO6sU). Konrad Zuse first Turing-complete computer 1910-1995 He invented the first programmable “Turing-complete” computer in Germany in 1941. William Shockley transistor 1910-1989 He led a research group at Bell Laboratories that included the co-­inventors of the transistor, John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain, who produced the first transistor in 1947. In 1956, he founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California, but unfortunately, he was regarded as a very poor manager. Fig.51 (left): the first digital voltmeter from 1952. Fig.52: the Loewe-Ortsemfänger OE333 AM radio used the 3NF vacuum tube made by Manfred von Ardenne. 1906-1971 Demonstrated a fully electronic TV system in 1927 (camera and receiver). 26 1908-1991 Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain demonstrated the first working pointcontact transistor in 1947. 1905-1984 Randall and Henry Albert Howard Boot (1917-1983) invented the cavity magnetron in 1940. It was an extremely important vacuum tube device used to produce high-power microwaves for radar and other applications. The klystron, as used by the Germans then, could not produce high-power microwaves. The cavity magnetron went on to be used in microwave ovens. Philo Taylor Farnsworth He used a video camera tube he developed, which he called the image dissector, to capture the image. He demonstrated it to the press in 1928. Practical Electronics | April | 2025 The History of Electronics, part 4 This led to the “traitorous eight” leaving and founding Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. For more on this, seethearticle in the June 2022 issue of Silicon Chip magazine on on IC Fabrication (part 1; siliconchip.au/Series/382). invented signal flow graphs in 1942. In 1961, he designed the Minivac 601 electromechanical computer for educational purposes. There are plans to build a replica at pemag.au/link/abno John Robinson Pierce communications satellites communications satellites 1910-2002 Published an article titled “Orbital Radio Relays” in the journal Jet Propulsion in April 1955. He was a pioneer of communications satellites and participated in the development of Telstar 1. Arthur C. Clarke acknowledged Pierce as one of two pioneers of such satellites, along with Harold Allen Rosen. Hedy Lamarr radio guidance system 1914-2000 In the early 1940s, along with George Antheil, she developed spread spectrum and frequency-hopping technology to create an unjammable (at the time) torpedo guidance system. Both techniques were used in later communications systems. Alan Turing cryptography, Turing machine etc 1912-1954 Turing is one of the founders of computer science and a significant figure in the development of cryptography. He created the concept of the Turing machine that can be used to compare the capabilities of different kinds of computers and the Turing test to determine if a machine can fool a human into thinking it’s another human. Claude Shannon 1916-2001 signal flow graphs, Minivac 601 computer Demonstrated circuits in 1936 to simplify the arrangement of relays in telephone network switches. He also Sir Arthur Charles Clarke 1917-2008 He wrote a Wireless World article in 1945 proposing what we would now call communications satellites (in particular, geostationary satellites). Harry Wesley Coover Jr super glue 1917-2011 Invented cyanoacrylate adhesives (‘super glue’) in 1942. A commercial product was not released until 1958, marketed by Kodak as Eastman 910. These adhesives bond almost instantly and have wide application in commercial electronic assembly. Andrew F. Kay digital voltmeter 1919-2014 He invented the digital voltmeter (Fig.51) in 1952. Otis Frank Boykin 1920-1982 precision wire-wound resistors, pacemakers Produced many inventions, including an improved form of precision wirewound resistor with low inductance and reactance. He also invented a precision control unit for cardiac pacemakers in 1964. Norman Joseph Woodland barcode 1921-2012 He applied for a patent for a barcode in 1949, to encode price and product description and other data (see US patent 2,612,994). It was a sound idea, but there was not yet a suitable computer to implement it. Narinder Singh Kapany fibre optics 1926-2020 He measured infrared emission from devices he made from the semiconductors gallium arsenide (GaAs), gallium antimonide (GaSb) and indium phosphide (InP) in 1955. This is the basis for LED lights and semiconductor lasers. David Paul Gregg Junichi Nishizawa Rubin Braunstein 1922-2018 gallium and indium-based semiconductors 1923-2001 Invented the optical disc in 1962 (although it was discussed as early as 1958). He filed for US patent 3,381,086 in 1962, granted in 1968. Jack St. Clair Kilby first integrated circuit (IC) etc Practical Electronics | April | 2025 sistor supercomputer in 1964, the CDC660, considered the first successful supercomputer. Germanium transistors, in use until that time, were not fast enough. It was the fastest computer in the world at the time, about ten times faster than others. In 1972, Cray started his own company, Cray Research, and designed the famous Cray 1 (See Fig.53). It was released in 1976 and became one of the most successful supercomputers. Kapany invented fibre optics (he coined the term). In 1953, along with Harold Horace Hopkins (1918-1994), he transmitted an image through a bundle of 10,000 optical fibres with better image quality than had previously been achieved. This led to the first practical gastroscope for medical investigations, developed by other researchers in 1956. optical disc The German’s Enigma machine from WWII was cracked by Alan Turing and others. Source: https://w. wiki/7Dwg (CC-BY-SA-4.0). Fig.53: a Cray-1 on display at the Science Museum in London. Source: https://w.wiki/7DBY (CC-BY-SA-2.0). 1923-2005 He is credited for the first integrated circuit (IC) in 1958, along with Robert N. Noyce. He also invented the handheld calculator and thermal printer. Seymour Cray CDC660 supercomputer 1925-1996 Cray designed the first silicon tran- 1926-2018 avalanche photodiode, solid-state maser etc Nishizawa invented the avalanche photodiode in 1952, a solid-state maser in 1955 and, in 1963, proposed the idea of fibre-optic communications. He also patented graded-index optical fibres in 1964. Among his other inventions was the static induction thyristor in 1971. Robert Norton Noyce monolithic silicon IC 1927-1990 Noyce invented the monolithic silicon integrated circuit in 1959 and co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor 27 in 1957 and Intel Corporation in 1968. Credit is also given to Jack Kilby for the invention of the integrated circuit. Theodore Harold Maiman laser 1927-2007 Invented the first laser in 1960, a device to produce light with all emissions of the same wavelength and all in phase. Nick Holonyak Jr visible light laser diode 1928-2022 He invented the visible light laser diode in 1962. It lased at low temperatures and functioned as an LED at room temperature. Manfred Börner optical fibre communication system 1929-1996 Demonstrated the first working optical fibre communication system at Telefunken Research Labs in 1965. James Robert Biard infrared LED 1931-2022 Biard held numerous patents and also invented, along with Gary Pittman, an infrared LED in 1961 (receiving US patent 3,293,513). In 1962, Texas Instruments released the first commercial LED (SNX-100) for US$130 each, almost $2000 today! Chris Wallace hardware binary multipler 1933-2004 Wallace invented the hardware binary multiplier in 1964 for arithmetic operations in computers. Sir Charles Kuen Kao 1933-2018 reducing signal attenuation in optical fibres He and George Alfred Hockham (1938-2013) at British STC proposed that making optical fibres out of more pure materials could dramatically reduce signal attenuation in 1965. Today, losses in optical fibres are extremely low, making repeaters only necessary every 70-150km. George Harry Heilmeier liquid crystal displays (LCDs) 1936-2014 Discovered effects in liquid crystals in 1964, which led to the first liquid crystal displays (LCDs) using what he called dynamic scattering mode (DSM). Gary Keith Starkweather laser printer 1938-2019 He invented the laser printer in 1969. The first commercial laser printer on the market was the IBM 3800, released in 1976 to replace line printers, with the Xerox 9700 following in 1977 for high-quality printing. Another reason the 9700 is significant is what happened when Xerox refused to supply code for that printer (as they had done for a previous model) in 1980. That led to Richard Stallman (see below) and others at the MIT AI Lab starting the free software movement. Richard Stanley Williams memristor 1951~ Developed a practical version of the memristor (memory resistor ) at HP in 2008. The memristor was first postulated in 1971 by Leon Ong Chua (1936~). Richard Matthew Stallman GNU project, GCC, Emacs 1953~ He started the free software movement in 1980 and, in 1983, founded the GNU Project. He also founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. The tools developed by the GNU Project were instrumental for Linus Torvalds and others to make Linux a practical operating system. Linus Torvalds Linux operating system 1969~ The driving force behind the opensource Linux operating system. However, thousands of others have significantly contributed to its development, including Andrew Morton, Alan Cox, Greg Koah-Hartman and Ingo Molnar. Linux is licensed under the GNU GPL. Linux currently powers the majority PE of the world’s top web servers. The Wireless for the Warrior books are references for the history and development of radio communication equipment used by the British Army from the very early days of wireless up to the 1960s. Volumes 1 & 3 are still available. Order a printed copy now from: https:/ https: //pemag.au/link/ac20 28 Practical Electronics | April | 2025