On November 16, 2024, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ukrainian Radio. It was on this day in 1924 that its first program was broadcast. It was a radio concert by the Viem Violin Quartet. It was broadcast by the first Ukrainian broadcasting station, which was equipped in Kharkiv, the capital of Ukraine at the time, by a group of Ukrainian engineers and technicians under the leadership of Volodymyr Ohiievskyi, a lecturer at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Later, Ogievsky led the construction and launch of similar stations in Odesa, Dnipro, Tiraspol, and other cities.
And, of course, in Kyiv. By the way, in 1925, the first amateur collective radio station in the USSR, R1KPI (Russia-First Kyiv Polytechnic Institute), was also launched at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, which was also created by the institute's radio enthusiasts under his leadership. Mykhailo Ilchenko, a student of the famous engineer and scientist, chairman of the Academic Council of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” and academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, tells about the life and work of this outstanding engineer and scientist, as well as about working under his leadership.
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The Ohiievsky family lived in Krolevets, Poltava Oblast. The future radio engineer's father, Vasyl Dmytrovych, devoted his entire life to forestry and became a famous scientist, and his mother, Mariia Fedotivna, worked as a village teacher. Their son Volodymyr was born on May 10, 1890. He received his professional education at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where he studied from 1907 to 1914 with a break for two years (1911-1912) due to his military service in the Iskra (radio-telegraph) company, where he received the rank of reserve warrant officer.
Participation in the First World War strengthened his knowledge and skills in the field of radiotelegraphy, which was based on the use of Morse code at that time. Volodymyr Ohiievskyi was successfully promoted in the military service, he was a delegate to the regimental and divisional committees of the First All-Russian Congress of Radiotelegraphers. He was elected a member of the Military Radiotelegraph Council, and in February 1918 he became its head.
In the same year, it was decided to build a new receiving and transmitting radio station of unquenchable oscillations in Sokolniki near Moscow for operational communication with the fronts of the civil war. Professor M.V. Shuleikin was appointed project manager, and V.V. Ogievsky was appointed his assistant and deputy responsible manager, the head of the radio station. At the end of 1920, the station was put into operation, and in 1921, Ohiievskyi was allowed to return to Kyiv, where his family lived. In March 1921, Volodymyr Ohiievskyi became a lecturer at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the KPI.
In the same year, 1921, he organized a radio laboratory, which became the technical basis for the development of the radio engineering specialty, and later, in 1930, the basis of the KPI Radio Engineering Faculty.
A workshop was created at the radio laboratory, where students assembled equipment for the laboratory and for fulfilling radio engineering orders from various institutions. In particular, a short-wave radio station was built for the main radio communication of the Southwestern Railway.
In 1924, the first Ukrainian radio broadcasting station was established in Kharkiv under the leadership of V.V. Ohievskyi. In the following years, the scientist and talented engineer took part in the construction of similar stations in Odesa, Dnipro, Tiraspol, and other cities. During the construction, it was necessary to create interconnected special technical devices - radio transmitters, electromagnetic wave generators with an antenna that converts the energy of high-frequency current into the energy of electromagnetic waves that are emitted into the environment. Various types of radio transmitters were equipped with filtering devices using high-voltage capacitors.
During the construction of these radio stations, the KPI radio laboratory was responsible for supplying high-voltage capacitors of its own production for the filters. Such capacitors used to be imported from Germany: only the radio laboratory in Nizhny Novgorod could produce them in the USSR. However, they could withstand a voltage of no more than 7 kilovolts, and they were made of imported material. Therefore, in the KPI radio laboratory, Ogievsky developed an original and at the same time simple method of manufacturing high-voltage filter capacitors, which made it possible to use domestic raw materials.
The first sample, made by Volodymyr Ogievsky personally, withstood 35 kilovolts. The production of capacitors was established, and later the radio workshop at the KPI radio laboratory launched mass production of high-voltage filter capacitors, which allowed the state to abandon their imports.
In 1930, V.V. Ogievsky was elected a professor. On his initiative, the Faculty of Radio Engineering was established at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, where he was the dean for more than 20 years! And for more than 40 years he headed the Department of Theoretical Foundations of Radio Engineering.
Volodymyr Vasylovych was always a socially active person. He actively advocated the widespread use of radio in technology and in everyday life, and helped numerous radio amateurs, including shortwave radio operators, in every way possible. At his suggestion, the Kyiv Society of Friends of Radio was created, which built a 1 kW radio broadcasting station with an 80-meter antenna in the capital at its own expense and published the only issue of the Radio for All magazine.
In 1949, under the general editorship of Professor V.V. Ogievsky, the Radio Amateur's Handbook was published, which became especially popular, with several sections devoted to amateur shortwave equipment.
Among Professor Ogievsky's students are dozens of doctors and candidates of sciences, many winners of state awards in science and technology, heads of enterprises and companies, famous scientists and designers of new equipment.
In 1924-1926, the future designer of rocketry, our compatriot Sergiy Korolev, studied at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
Recalling his student years, he said that of all the laboratory classes, he liked the electrical engineering workshop taught by Ogievsky the most. Korolev said that he was a calm, authoritative man who never cowered or tried to win favor with funny jokes, but stubbornly demanded what he had to demand.
For Korolev, he embodied a man of action, and this is exactly what he believed a true engineer should be.
I fully support the words of the famous spacecraft designer. I became a student of the Radio Engineering Faculty, where Vladimir Vasilyevich was the dean, at the turn of the 50s and 60s.
Professor Ogievsky's authority was very high. He willingly worked with students and supported those who were interested in learning, science, and experimentation. He was always interested and gave valuable advice. I was really lucky: I worked side by side with Volodymyr Vasylovych for about twenty years and had the great pleasure of communicating with him and listening to his advice.
I wrote about the life and work of my Teacher in the book “The Founder of the Radio Engineering School”, which was published in 2011 by the publishing house “Ekmo”.
Today, at Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Professor Ogievsky's work is continued by his students, who teach students at the Faculty of Radio Engineering and the Educational and Research Institute of Telecommunication Systems. The section “History of Radio” of the State Polytechnic Museum named after Borys Paton tells about the activities of V.V. Ogievsky. As a symbol of the continuity and development of the good deeds that Volodymyr Ogievsky laid down in his time, Professor Ogievsky's sycamore tree, planted in 1965 by the Teacher together with his students, is now growing on the territory of Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.
The Polytechnic Radio Club is also working successfully today, and its head, Mykola Sergienko, notes that “many members of the radio club are students of Professor Ogievsky, and we are all proud of our discoverer, paying tribute to him, trying to continue and develop the traditions and good deeds started by this legendary, wonderful person.”