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Technology

100 Years of Radio 101

Posted by michael from the hello?-is-this-mike-on? dept.
kubla2000 writes: "As CNN dutifully reports, January 23 marks the anniversary of the first long distance radio transmission by Guglielmo Marconi thereby crediting him as the inventor of the radio. I spend a fair bit of time in Poland and was surprised to hear on a children's television quiz show that there were two correct answers to the question, "Who is the father of radio". The other correct answer, was Alexander Popov. Still others would argue that the true father of radio was Nikola Tesla. So in fact, we're witnessing something between the 100th and the 107th anniversary of the birth of radio. Whichever it is, I think that human ingenuity has shown remarkable progress in the last century. From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP. Quite something."
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100 Years of Radio More

100 Years of Radio

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  • There is some credible evidence that Mahlon Loomis invented radio about a quarter century before Marconi. For background, look here [nbci.com] and here [aol.com].

    Thanks

    Bruce

  • This post reminded me of an issue that I haven't seen discussed very much. The US FCC was created to regulate all areas of communications including radio. The original reason for licensing transmitters was to ensure that they did not interfere with each other. Lately (sometime within the past 20 years or so), they have adopted the attitude that they *OWN* the natural resources, and have been auctioning off spectrum to the highest bidder for billions of dollars a pop. This just doesn't seem right.
  • We should all take a lesson from Nikolai Tesla, because he was a prominent geek in his day. Yes another poster bemoaned people like me who would assert that Edison was a bastard, but it's true! Well I don't know about the bastard part, but he acted like one.

    Nobody talks anymore about what this man did, because he wasn't a blatant opportunist. Marconi was credited with radio because he made it an event. Marconi was a showman first, inventor second. Edison, Bill G. and Steve J. are from the same mold, exploiting the inventions of others as their own.

    In 100 years, will Bill Gates be credited with inventing what then will be referred to as a computer? How about Jobs, for "inventing" the iMac? More startling, will Al Gore be heralded as the father of the internet? Doubtful, but all of these 'events' have made more splashes in the mainstream media than Linux, xBSD, RMS, ESR, K&R or anyone else who shook the geek universe.

    So be opportunistic!

    My 2 cents.

    -- Len
  • Your story about Edison and the electric chair is generally correct. However, Edison's main enemy in the AC/DC battle was George Westinghouse. At that time, cities were trying to decide what type of electrical power system to deploy. IIRC, the IEEE Spectrum magazine had an article about this about 10 yrs ago (Edison and the Electric Chair).
  • Your story about Edison and the electric chair is generally correct. However, Edison's main enemy in the AC/DC battle was George Westinghouse. At that time, cities were still trying to decide what type of electrical power system to deploy. IIRC, the IEEE Spectrum magazine had an article about this about 10 yrs ago (Edison and the Electric Chair).
  • I for one am glad the the poor misunderstood ubergeek Tesla is not alive today. Otherwise he would be e-mailing stories about himself to Jon Katz.
  • Creation myths are powerful. For whatever reason, we need to point to some man and say, "_He_ invented radio (telegraphy, the light bulb, baseball, &c.)" The truth with all of these things is that there was no moment of invention--but there's no glamor to that. Nationalism, I think, has much to do with the invention of creation myths as well. Abner Doubleday was trumped up as the fictitious "inventor" of baseball, because the fiction perpetuated the notion that baseball was uniquely American in origin, and not a derivative of ball games from across the Atlantic. Similarly, the acclamation of Samuel Morse as the inventor of telegraphy overlooks the innovation of the British Wheatstone; and it was also a Brit, Joseph Swan, and not Thomas Edison, who conceived of the idea of putting an incandescent carbon filament in a vacuum to make the first light bulb. hyacinthus.

  • Actually it might happen. Any time you have two different cunduction meterials, a sounding board, and an attenna you can recieve AM type radio transmissions. True story: a gentleman had a cheap folding table that would recieve a local AM station that had an antenna nearby. You had to be really quite but you could hear a garbled voice. It is speculated that the rusted joints of the table legs were enough of a semi conductor to rectify the signal. It was very weird.

  • Oof. Crediting Lee DeForest and leaving out Edwin Armstrong? DeForest may have "invented" the vacuum triode, but Armstrong was the first man who figured out what could be done with it (e.g. regenerative amplification, the "superheterodyne" receiver, frequency modulation.) DeForest's chief innovation is a familiar one--he learned how to sue everyone in sight to gain credit for things he didn't invent.

    hyacinthus.
  • The day most often quoted as the begining of radio is December 12, 1901. On this day at the 12th hour Marconi received the first transatlantic transmission and is celebrated widely as the birth of radio proper. Read more here http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~jcraig/marconi.html and here http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716 ,63990+1+62410,00.html?query=radio
  • I think that human ingenuity has shown remarkable progress in the last century. From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP.
    I'd say the Intellectual Property laws we have now are a step backwards.


  • Tesla invented radio. Marconi made his fortune on Tesla's patents.

    PBS recently aired a documentary on Tesla -- you can view the Web site here: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ [pbs.org] .

    Everyone said Tesla was crazy when he said you could generate AC power from Niagara Falls. They are the first installation of hydroelectric power anywhere in the world.

    Tesla is the king (and the USA stole his "deathray" plans). They're also working on another weapon he designed.

    In short, Tesla was robbed.

  • "My friends at school and I always thought Britney Spears invented radio." -Jenny Dolenz, age 15, San Marino High School
  • About Tesla, Popoff, Hertz, maxwell, Righi and other scientits that have pioneered the field
    of radio transmission, there is the fact that
    they never build a long distance system with
    a transmitter and a receiver.
    Other experimenters made things to be used
    in a laboratory, and almost not useful in
    real life.
    Marconi, in fact invented the antenna (guess
    why the term is the same in italian and english?)
    especially the transmitting antenna.
    Popoff experimented on antennas user with receiver, but never built a transmitter.

    Mike (from Italy... Am I a bit biased, isn't it?)

  • There is nothing to argue about.
    The US Patent Office even agrees....
    Marconi's patents were overturned in favour of Tesla.
  • Yet again, we encounter the ugly spectre of the Great Radio Controversy.

    Yet again, we see confusion and uncertainty over matters historical- uncertainties which should not remain yet do because of our own willing embrace of ignorant but easily repeated lies and distortions.

    How is it that in this enlightened era, so many still are confused as to who deserves the credit for the invention of radio?

    How have we come to this?

    Tragically, it is that very few people living today were brave enough to face the ridicule of their peers and plop down $15 to buy the 1991 album "Psychotic Supper" by a group of self-educated historians with big-metal-hair. A band named after a genius. A band called Tesla.

    I think that by posting the lyrics to their song "Edison's Medicine (Man Out Of Time)" here on slashdot this very day, I will once and for all clear up any confusion as to who really invented radio. I will forever end the debate. I find great comfort in the knowledge that the truth will finally be known, and that I will no longer be ashamed to name this CD amongst my collection.

    [colombianet.net]
    Edison's Medicine (Man Out Of Time)

    You're guilty of crime in the first degree,
    Second and third as well.
    My jury finds you'll be serving your time
    When you go straight to hell.

    'Cause he was Lord of the Lightning,
    Though "socially fright'ning",
    But never out to sell.

    Their nickels and pence
    Meant more than did sense,
    And not the sensible thing.

    Nor did the man outta time, man outta time.
    Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
    Man outta time, man outta time.
    All along, world was wrong. You was right.

    All that he saw, all he conceived,
    They just could not believe.
    Steinmetz and Twain were friends that remained,
    Along with number three.
    He was electromagnetic, completely kinetic,
    "New Wizard of the West."
    But they swindled and whined that he wasn't our kind,
    And said Edison knew best.

    He was the man outta time, man outta time.
    Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
    Man outta time, man outta time.
    Said you was outta your mind!

    You took a shot and it did you in.
    Edison's medicine.
    You played your cards, but you couldn't win.
    Edison's medicine.

    I spent twelve years of hard time,
    More like the best years of my life.
    Never heard or read a single word
    About "the man" and his "wicked mind."
    They'll sell you on Marconi.
    Familiar, but a phony.
    Story goes they sold their souls
    And swore that you'd never know...

    About the man outta time, man outta time.
    Thought you was crazy. You was one of a kind.
    Man outta time, man outta time.
    Swore you was outta your mind!

    You took a shot and it did you in.
    Edison's medicine.
    You played your cards, but you couldn't win.
    Edison's medicine.
  • Karma never mattered much...and it's too muddy to plow...

    Now we have to listen to the freaks come out and talk about
    ...

    What a bastard Edison was

    Well... considering that Edison wanted power transmitted as DC, and Tesla wanted AC, i'd say that Edison is a bastard. Think of the clunkier mess we'd have for powerlines if we used DC. Damn.

  • Sometime we need the kooks to remind us to go back and look at some of the really cool stuff perople did though. Some of the most elegant solutions rely on very basic principals and technology. Radio, magnetic levitation, wireless control. Who'da thunk that these would have been done in the days of the gaslight?
    ------------------------
  • I think that human ingenuity has shown remarkable progress in the last century. From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP.
    He doesn't mean Internet Protocol, folks, he means Intellectual Property.

    Can you imagine? Because of those backwards times, we're all benefiting from the invention of radio and there aren't royalty checks going ANYWHERE!

    Thank God for HDTV. Finally, content control over airwaves. And it only took 100 (or 107) years!

  • ...no matter who invented it or how old it really is - I still love to listen to radio. Both at home and abroad, and Im abroad a lot !!! When travelling its nice to tune in to the news from home, and when at home its nice to tune in to exotic station from abroad (all of course on shortwave that is). I often work in places that dont even have electricity, let alone internet access - my portable shortwave receiver never failed me. Call me oldfashioned or romantic, but ther just is something to tuning through the static and finding a familiar voice or sign/on tune just prior to the start of a program, and IMHO, radio gives you a much better take on whats going on in the world than just watching your local cable channel...

  • The Smithsonian's exclusion of Tesla has more to do with Edison's legacy than to do with secretive applications for Tesla's work.

    Edison's estate and the philathropic foundations he started are high up on the donor list for the Smithsonian. You don't piss off your big money makers. That's why the statue mentioned in the link you gave above is currently displayed in a side hallway to a restroom at the Museum of American History.

  • Many fathers for a single child (Score:3)

    by subbiecho ( 303134 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @02:08PM (#486637) Homepage
    Heinrich Hertz: Hertz lived from 1857 to 1894 and was the first to demonstrate experimentally the production and detection of Maxwell's waves. This discovery of course lead directly to radio. [more..] [webstationone.com]

    Guglielmo Marconi: The Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi, repeated Hertz's experiments and eventually succeeded in getting secondary sparks over a distance of 30 feet (nine meters). [more..] [alpcom.it]

    Nikola Tesla: Inventions related to radio ( the Supreme Court overturned Marconi's patent in 1943 in favor of Tesla) X-rays, the vacuum tube amplifier. [more..] [rr.com]

    Lee De Forest: American inventor of the Audion vacuum tube, which made possible live radio broadcasting and became the key component of all radio, telephone, radar, television, and computer systems before the invention of the transistor in 1947. [more..] [britannica.com]

    Ernst F. W. Alexanderson: The engineer whose high-frequency alternator gave America its start in the field of radio communication. [more..] [invent.org]

    It seems we can't truly give credit to any ONE inventor. For without all of the above, and countless others, I'm sure, radio and many other innovations would not be where they currently are. Hope these links help.

  • Westinghouse was using mostly Tesla's inventions. In fighting Westinghouse, Edison was in a proxy battle with Tesla. In the end, Tesla essentially gave his patents away to Westinghouse to keep them from going under.
    --

  • I think that the nature of invention has long been misunderstood. There's a tendency to look at a technological breakthrough and see the incremental improvement that put a concept over the top, rather than long buildup to that point. The credit goes to the person who brought an idea into prominance, rather than the people who laid the groundwork. In that sense it's rather odd that the Soviets were as eager to promote their national hero as the true inventor of whatever as anyone, given the Marxist view of history as the result of broad trends rather than individual initiative.

    It's interesting to consider whether the concept of patents, in which an inventor is allowed to profit greatly from his inventions, has contributed to the heroic view of invention or was a product of it. It certainly motivates inventors to try to claim as much of an invention as their as they can possibly get away with!

  • Tesla kicks ass that is all there is to it. All others are damned wussy boys.

  • Nathan Stubblefield (Score:3)

    by fishbowl ( 7759 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @04:46PM (#486641)
    Nathan B. Stubblefield, the Philo T. Farnsworth of Radio, of Murray Kansas, demonstrated his
    wireless *voice* communications in 1885. That's a full three years before Hertz proof that radio waves existed, and nine years before Marconi's wireless telegraph. There are good records of
    Stubblefield's work from 1892, when he showed it
    to Dr. Rainey T. Wells; who also happened to be an attorney.

    He demonstrated the device for hundreds of people, even a wireless ship-to-shore
    demonstration from a riverboat on the Potomac in 1902.

    He even got a patent, #887357, May 12, 1908, for the "radiotelephone device."

    Tell me again why Marconi is widely credited with
    "inventing radio" whereas Stubblefield died broke?

  • K6BP de G7UCV,

    Interesting, Bruce, but why has nobody mentioned Heinrich Hertz?

    73

  • I think the main reason Tesla isn't in the books is because he was kind of quiet, and did science for the sake of science, not for the sake of getting famouse.
    Edison was an egomaniac, so was marconi.. so they make it into history. Tesla never built a huge empire on his inventions, he just licensed his technology out and quietly worked on more stuff.

    And of course there is reluctance now for any institution to 'change the story of history' they've been telling for so long....
  • Re. the claim that Marconi only got into radio in the 1930s.

    Marconi started a transmission station in Galway, Ireland in 1904 or so. He had previously made the first trans-Atlantic transmission in 1901, from New Foundland to Cornwall.

    I had the good fortune to interview his daughter, Elettra, in Galway, in 1995. At that point, we were actually close to the 100th anniversary of the transmission by Marconi over a distance of 1 mile, which first occurred in either 1895 or 1896 (can't remember exactly).

    Regarding the claims of others, such as Tesla, I think that radio is a mix of several items:

    wireless transmission

    communication

    and so I would think Marconi's claim to the title is reasonable.

    Andrew

  • Radio has an intimacy, based on all of the associations humans have with the voice and the spoken word, that television and the Net can't surpass.

    Actually, Television broadcasts use radio waves in the VHF and UHF Radio bands. And now Sprints wireless broadband service spread spectrum microwave bands. And what could be more intimate than the internet? Not a one way medium.
  • Go ask members (and/or the historian of) the Murgas Amateur Radio Club... they used to say that their name-sake (a Catholic priest) was a -very- early radio experimenter, whose work was seen by Marconi while the latter visited the "radio priest" (not quite like his latter-day counterparts, eh...? :-)

    All this happened -before- Marconi's own work was reported in the literature.

    Worth a look to any historian wanting to set tht record straight on this tidbit of techonology history.

    Do we have a radio historian in the audience...?

  • Amen, brother.

    It's great to see someone who also enjoys the music of Tesla and respects the great man who gives the band its name.

    Flavio
  • Thanks fishbowl! Except he was from Murray, Kentucky. Otherwise thank you for clarifying this. Sadly, school kids a hundred years from now will think that Steve Jobs invented the GUI.
  • Ask some people off the street who invented the automobile, and most of them will tell you it was Henry Ford. It's easier to remember this (false) factoid than to remember more obscure names and histories, which is why the Ford-invented-the-automobile meme is a fitter replicator than alternative memes representing accounts closer to reality.

    By this principle, it's not unreasonable that in 50-100 years' time, most people will believe that Bill Gates invented the Internet (or whatever it's called then).
  • Fessenden wanted to work for Thomas Edison, who basically told him to screw off

    Tesla had the same experience. He arrived in America, went to Edison, who told him, basically, to screw off. They met again (as competitors) when people were trying to decide whether to adopt AC or DC current for electrical distribution networks. Tesla was trumpeting his AC model, with simple generators, motors, and transformers, as well as better distribution characteristics, while Edison was pushing DC for city-wide distribution. Edison even went so far as to hire local kids to steal neighborhood pets so he could electrocute them in an AC-based rig, to show the dangers of AC power.

    To put it in a more modern perspective (though I may be reaching a bit here), Edison was Bill Gates, and Tesla was Steve Jobs. One was a much better promotor, marketer, and perhaps engineer, while the other was a more powerful visionary, thinker, and inventor.

  • gotta be more than 100... not sure why this is such a big deal
  • I don't think that Tesla gets the credit he deserves for anything...including Alternating Current (AC), so...he should get credit for the radio to make up for the things he doesn't get credit for.....that makes sense...doesn't it? Maybe? even a smidgen? darn.

  • I've lost the link, but the USSC recognises Tesla as the inventor of Radio. There's a lot more to the mess than you'd think.

    Of course, If you have Tesla's album Great Radio Controversy, read the liner notes. :D


    -----------------------------
    1,2,3,4 Moderation has to Go!

  • I love radio (Score:4)

    by perdida ( 251676 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .tcejorptaerhteht.> on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @01:34PM (#486654) Homepage Journal
    No matter who invented it, I am definitely thankful for it.

    Radio has an intimacy, based on all of the associations humans have with the voice and the spoken word, that television and the Net can't surpass. It is also a low-cost technology that anyone can learn to use for communication.

    I can listen to National Public Radio and hear all the news I want without having to train my eyes on one location, or hear (many) ads. I especially like the BBC world service when I am pulling an allnighter.

    I participated in a live webradio broadcast at the Independent Media Center [indymedia.org] in Cincinnatti, and people from Prague, Los Angeles and London tuned in.

    This is a cheap, ubiquitous technology that is easy to learn to use. I also had a low power (40 watt) FM transmitter with a few co-conspirators, we attached a 20 foot antenna to a 6 story building and reached 3 counties.

    The FCC [fcc.gov] which has long kept the airwaves private, "legalized" low power FM but made the paperwork and technological threshholds insurmountable for community and home users. We want real free radio.

    Tahing it further, the FCC screwed shit up royally when it allowed the same person to own radio stations and TV stations in the same market [fcc.gov]. Monopoly ownership breeds..well, what you probably have on most of your dial-

    Top forty, Christian, country, and crap.

    Patronize independently owned, low power, nonprofit and community radio and cable access TV in your town.

  • As far as I can tell it died years ago. Even the CBC doesn't have the regulars (Gzowski and Gabarough (SP?) that used to make it shine. As for music, well, maybe in the UK where they seem to play something more than Creed 23 hours a day.

    If you count downloading BBC Essential Mix broadcasts and listening to digitallyimported.com as "radio," then yes, it's alive and well. But as for the old "radio-frequency transmission" public broadcasting idea, it's rather dead.

  • Change of Eras (Score:3)

    by disappear ( 21915 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @01:27PM (#486656) Homepage
    Also, yesterday was the 100th of Queen Victoria's death. How's that for the end of the Victorian era: her death one day, the first successful long distance radio transmission the next?

  • Conspiracy theories (Score:3)

    by Apotsy ( 84148 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @01:27PM (#486657)
    Take this with a huge grain of salt, but "Nessie", the mysterious online coulmnist for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, recently wrote an interesting column [sfbg.com] in which he speculates that Tesla developed some technologies that found their way into military applications. Such devices are meant to be kept secret, which might explain why public school textbooks and the Smithsonian [concentric.net] have little or no mention of Tesla.

    If nothing else, it's fun to speculate about such things. As I said, take it with a huge grain of salt.

  • I'd just like to clarify before the flamers start in that I am fully aware that something like this probably wouldn't actually happen and that music was probably not the first thing transmitted. But, such considerations make the joke less funny. So, just enjoy the joke for what it is, and leave the logistics to real life.
  • Now we have to listen to the freaks come out and talk about

    Broadcasting power over long distances

    What a bastard Edison was

    How Tesla could have split the world in half or produced earthquakes or some such rot

    How the government dicked him over

    Great... yawn...

  • It is clear to me that Human Ingenuity has increased this century because we have abandoned all faiths, preconceptions and pointless ideals to a greater extent than ever before. There is a clear relationship between beliefs - be they beliefs in higher powers, moral codes, or physical laws, inhibit creativity. Indeed, a recent study at IBM showed that the majority of patents filed from the research departments were based on discoveries by people without degrees, and thus intellectual preconceptions.

    Ever since medieval times we have been throwing these conceptions out of the window, and creating in a no nonsense, take-no-prisoners style.

    If we are to continue in this vein, we must make sure that nothing is sacred.

    You know exactly what to do-
    Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

  • 3 people claimed inventing radio at different time.

    How many people will claim inventing radio button
    in the next 100 years ?

  • ...for the first time, a man with a metal plate in his head said: "Where is that music coming from!?!".

  • Marconi VS Tesla (Score:5)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @01:34PM (#486663) Journal
    PBS had an excellent broadcast in December 2000 on the life of Tesla. (Website here [pbs.org]) There is alot of good material there, and some of the stuff is downright spooky.

    the page on patents [pbs.org] is especially interesting. For example, he invented a radio remote control mechanism for a boat [pbs.org] in 1898!

    I tend to side with Tesla on this as far as the radio question goes. These paragraphs from the soon to be slashed website on Tesla perhaps summarize it best:

    Despite the fact that almost every book mentions Guglielmo Marconi as the inventor of radio, the only thing Marconi did seems to be nothing more than reproducing apparati Nikola Tesla had registered years ago. Marconi copied Tesla, made some modifications, built a large industry producing radio devices in Europe and spent huge amounts to advertise his supposed invention.

    Nine months after Tesla's death, the Supreme Patent Court of the USA decides that Nikola Tesla must be considered the father of wireless transmission and radio. Justifying its decision the court notes that in Marconi's related Patent (Íï. 764772 of 1904) there is nothing new not having been earlier published and registered by Tesla. The Court considered Marconi's claim that he did not knew of Tesla's patents false

  • It seems to me, after reading the posts so far, that most nerds give Tesla the credit. At least some people remember this great man whose life and death are both equally mysterious. Check out some great files, courtesy of parascope.com, here [parascope.com] or specifically, here. [parascope.com] Any geeks want to comment on the system in the second article? It would seem good in theory, but are there any complications that might be unforseen? We need more research into some of Tesla's work.

  • Wireless (Score:3)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @01:41PM (#486665)
    For a true Geek Experience, go HERE:

    http://users.ids.net/~newsm/

    The New England Wireless and Steam Museum is Rhode Island's Best Kept Secret when it comes to old technology. The 1907 Massie Station is the _oldest existing wireless station in the world_.

    If you're a machinist or engineer or radio junkie, The tune-ups and steam-ups are not to be missed.
  • Dr.Jagdish Chandra Bose, an Indian scientist had, in 1895, done profound research using electromagnetic waves using them to ignite gun-powder and ring a remote bell.

    In the words of IEEE: "the origin and first major use of the solid state diode detector devices led to the discovery that the first transatlantic wireless signal in Marconi's world famous experiment was received by Marconi using the iron-mercury-iron coherer with a telephone detector invented by Sir J.C.Bose in 1898".

    You can find more stuff at here [vigyanprasar.com]

    Well, a search on Jagdish Chandra Bose on Google shows a lots of links which confirm this statement.

  • Well as you say, radio is still live and kicking in the UK. BBC Radio 1 - love it or hate it - puts out a fantastic mix of music. Slashdotters would probably love John Peel's eclectic selections.

    In fact, in the UK, a good dozen radio stations started up in the last decade, including Kiss FM which is (I think) the second most popular in London.

  • Whoever first put them in old car radio sets... probably. That is where the word came from.
  • The phrase, "from the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP" brings up an interesting point. I don't think our theoretical/algorithmic insight has moved forward very much over the past hundred years. It's progress in materials science that has spurred the revolution in electronic technology. The progress has all been in shrinking the parts down to micro nano pico size. The transition isn't crystal set to IP, it's (quartz) crystal set to (silicon crystal) semiconductor substrate.

    I bet that if the scientists of 100 years ago had the tiny components we use, they would have been able to put them together into the kinds of toys we have today.

    You see software and hardware hackers swaggering around like they are responsbile for the new wave of technology. Don't kid yourself - all hail the materials scientist, who shrinks the bits that build the future.

  • Whoa, three people claiming to have invented the radio. Good thing that we can tell our children that all the credit for invention of the Internet goes to Al Gore alone.
  • Tesla, Is there anything he could not do?
  • Very interesting column - I think that is the first I have heard about using UV to ionize the air - can this info on Tesla using it with klieg lights be verified in any way (I have the major Tesla books, so if somebody can give me a reference)...

    I have heard about building a funky "smoke-ring" gun, that shoots ammonia gas rings, thereby setting up a path to "shoot" a branch of lightning down with a Tesla coil.

    As far as the voice-to-skull (VTS) tech is concerned - I ran across this, and started investigating what I could dig up on the net - NASA has done research on it, and I read about the modulated microwave experiments, and there are patents out for ultrasonic versions (in which ultrasound acts as the carrier wave, and the ultrasounds is attenuated and stripped from the sound source via the skull).

    Some strange stuff out there they don't want you to know about!

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • My understanding is that Tesla worked for Edison for a while. Apparently they had a falling out -- A big falling out. After that, Edison went out of his way to discredit Tesla -- especially his theories on AC current.

    One story goes that Edison put a good deal of money into developing the electric chair as a AC-based device (as opposed to DC) to give people the impression that AC was dangerous. Apparently it took a good deal of work (hint: defibrilation paddles are AC based). From what I can tell, it would have been much easier with DC, but Edison would have nothing to do with a DC electric chair.

    Once it became clear that AC was a far better solution to most electricity problems, Edison pretended that it was his idea all along, and has tried (mostly effectively) to wipe Tesla out of the history books as a serious inventor.

    Given that Tesla was pretty much the god of AC, and radio depends on AC, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Tesla had a hand in early radio work.

    I think that http://www.concentric.net/~jwwagner/ [concentric.net]is the site that tells a lot about this story.
    --


  • gotta be more than 100... not sure why this is such a big deal

    It's not! That's what's so incredible.

    But if that's incredible, consider that from Kittyhawk to Apollo 11 was only, what, 66 years?

    Yeah, from first flight to the moon. 66 years.

    IP is impressive, and spread spectrum RF is cool. Cellphones are amazing.

    But radio pales in comparison.

  • About a year ago (sorry, I have only a paper clipping, if that), the Wall Street Journal ran an article on "facts" in Microsoft Encarta - usually the names of inventors - which varied by translation. The French translation preferred French, the Italian edition Italians, and so on. There weren't a lot of examples, just such judgement calls: radio, the light bulb, the airplane etc.

    In another well-known case (was it Windows 95?), the time zone control panel included a map which showed the border between India and Pakistan. This is a disputed border, so Microsoft was caught in a no-win situation. I think they got rid of the map.
  • Yep. and the gov't didn't like Tesla too much, so they got rid of him and his facilities.

    You know, Tesla came to the USA to harness the hydroelectric power (as we know it now) at Niagra Falls. He was the first, afaik, to output AC power from a hydro source as great as the Falls.

    But hey, I'm just rambling.
  • All the documentaries I've seen said that even though Marconi was granted the patents before Tesla, they were revoked a few years after Tesla died because Tesla's work was prior art. He might not have actually built a radio in the sense that we know it, but he did show the theory and build actual equipment that could do just what it was supposed to: transmit electricity via the air.

    --

  • Accually we do transmit power as DC. In fact all the really big power lines are DC. The main advantage of AC is the ability to use transformers to change the voltage quickly and easially.

    AC does not allow two way feeds. There are phase problems if you attempt to connect any sort of a loop, or connect generators at both ends, with cities at both ends. That is if city A is drawing more power then city B, then the generator at B will attempt to make up the need, but the power arriving at A will be out of phase. (In this simple example it is possibal to make the phases come out right, but if B needs extra power latter the phases will be wrong again)

    In addition there is a maximun voltage any wire can take, before you get leakage. We measure AC voltage as RMS (root mean square), which means you 120v line will accually reach 170 volts for a moment, but RMS (Think of like average if you don't understand what it means) is 120 volts. Europe will reach about 300 volts despite 220 RMS. The maximun voltage before this leakage it the same, but AC will give less power as at the max voltage your RMS is much less.

    Of course electrical engineers have proper terms for the above which they will emeadiatly remember as soon as I point this out.

    PS, I hate to defend Eddison against Telsa, but the fact remains that netiher was smart enough to realise that a compromise of both DC and AC was best.

  • The telegraph was the first lightspeed global
    information media. Everything since has been
    an elaboration. The culmination will be personal
    interactive video everywhere with seamless communication
    between humans and vast computer media databases.
    This expected to be fully implemented about two
    centuries after the telegraph.
  • The crystal wasnt a Quartz crystal, but galena.

    And in addition it took another 30 years until someone was able to describe how the crystal actually worked! (Walter Schottky, 1938)

  • And here are some of the interesting links on Bose:
    Remembering Sir. J.C. Bose [ernet.in] says:

    ...Marconi. Finally he was told to deliver a lecture on his invention in The Royal Institution, London on the 13th June, 1902. Now the time came for Marconi to answer to that most important question, "Who is the inventor of the coherer that uses mercury?" He was shrewd enough to find out some mean tactics to create even more confusion and to keep the works of Sir Bose unveiled. He told the august audience in Royal Institution that he designed a number of coherers and one of them used mercury, which was in no way coherent with his speech made in New York in front of AIEEE personnel where he had mentioned that he only invented one coherer. Gradually, he began to shift towards "mercury coherer" from "iron coherer", i.e., Bose's coherer, but never made any reference to Sir Bose. After 25 years of this incident Mr. Vivian, who was an assistant to Marconi, wrote the biography of Marconi where he clearly mentioned that it was nothing but the " mercury coherer" that Marconi used. ...



    [indolink.com]
    Bose or Marconi? questions:


    Nearly 100 years after Guglielmo Marconi's first transatlantic wireless communication, it has come to light that the detector he had used to pick up the signal was invented by Professor Jagadish Chandra Bose. The discovery made by a group of scientists of the US-based IEEE proves what has been a century-old suspicion in the world scientific community: that the honour of being the pioneer in wireless communication should have gone to Bose and not Marconi. ...



    And here is an interesting analysis why Bose wouldn't have patented...
    [vigyanprasar.com]
    J.C. BOSE: The Inventor Who Wouldn't Patent

    [vigyanprasar.com]
    and some more
    analyses:


    Bose's anti-patent position is explained in his authorised 1920 biography written by his close friend Patrick Geddes, "Simply stated, it is the position of the old rishis of India, of whom he is increasingly recognised by his countrymen as a renewed type, and whose best teaching was ever open to all willing to accept it." Bose carried on his shoulders the full weight of his country's defensiveness. He was the proof, because proof was needed, that Indians could do modern science. As Tagore wrote to him, Bose was God's instrument in the removal of India's shame. Bose did not want want to make hay for himself in the European sunshine.



    and many more at google!

    -Sas

  • Tesla held the patents for the product that chump Guglielmo Marconi was using... Tesla just didn't have the business mind to rush radio to market. He was working on his grander visions of wireless power transmission. As Tesla said, "good luck to Marconi, he's using seventeen of my patents." In fact in 1943, when the US Supreme court reverses an older decision, strikes down the Marconi patents, and awards priority to Tesla, #645,576.

    It's actually kinda disturbing that they would even put that "other guy" as the inventor. It's been widely held as fact that Tesla invented radio for the past 60 years. Yet still the old saying that "history is written by the winners". Still remains to be true, even on slashdot.
  • Does anyone still listen to shortwave radio? I got one as a christmas gift and haven't had much time to play with it yet. With the advent of online sound streams, I imagine SW is starting to fall by the wayside?
  • I think your analogy is messed up. Edison was probably Gates, and Tesla was probably Wozniak or that Flowers guy in WWII that invented the first computer (well, British one at least...shortly before the Neumann bombes/collossus, etc.).

    Tesla gets way too little credit. Really, how many times is he mentioned in your average high school American history text book? Yet we fawn over Edison, who may have been smart, but was greedy, corrupt, and basically a mean person. Alas, that is usually the way it goes with American history.
  • November 21,1783 was the first recorded manned flight in a hot air balloon. 1793 was first balloon flight in USA.

    Shoot, the idea of flight goes back to the myth of Icarus flying too close to the sun. When was the first concept of radio transmission?

    Somebody in the 1830's must have thought, "this telegraph is great, but could we do this without wires?"

  • He was the one to discover the principle that allows you to transcieve on a single antenna, did the first broadcasts of Morse Code accross the Atlantic, and did the first voice broadcasts. If you don't beleive me check out this bio (about half way down near the image of the alternator) http://www.kwarc.on.ca/hammond/fessenden-bio.html or search Google for Reginald A. Thessenden and you will get some very good sites right off the bat.
  • right arm, brutha!

  • Information about Tesla (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A good book about Tesla is Tesla: Man out of Time, by Margeret Cheney.
  • Your statement is very general, I'd be interested in seeing the proof of the "clear relationship" between beliefs and the inhibition of creativity. I'm not sure where this idea came from, but I can name a couple of very strong exceptions to your rule

    Albert Einstein
    Leonardo Da Vinci

    In addition, taking this IBM study to support your position requires a fair amount of extrapolation and assumption on your part. I'd be interested in the actual findings of the study. Is there a link?

    Remember, "In order for a man to do great things, there must be things which he will not do."
  • with a Slashdot poll to determine who *really* invented radio:

    * Marconi
    * Tesla
    * Edison
    * Popov
    * CowboyNeal
    * The little green men who have been transmitting their signals straight into my brain.
    * God
    * Pulsars (the stars, not the watch company)
    * Pulsra (the watch company, not the stars)

  • From the crystal set and the cat's whisker to IP.

    Since when is Intellectual Property one of the greatest achievements of mankind?

    Note for humor impaired: above is a joke.

  • 100 years or not... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...it just shows, that you can always improve upon science. Had he believed that radio waves cannot be transmitted over the horizon, we probably would have waited a lot longer for radio. Similarly, had not radio hams been pushed off the so-called usable frequency bands to shortwaves, it would have taken many more years to find out that shortwaves are very well suited for intercontinental communication. The suits at the time, just as at Marconis, considered shortwaves as useless...were they ever wrong !!!

  • Tesla (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Testla was obviously the inventor of radio. Of course, he does not recieve credit for it. :( He also does not recieve credit for many other very useful inventions he created. Alternating Current and multiplex telegraphy to name a few. There are many other inventions that did not even take off. It was all because of politics, though. Which was terrible because his Tesla Coil had many useful applications. He claimed that it could be used to transfer voice, power, and pictures. If it can transfer pictures, then it would be capable of acting as a sort of Internet. So, had his inventions not been ignored because people were afraid of them, we would have like a 100 year advance on the progress of the Internet. But I don't know. I read his biography and many other resources about him, but I seem to be the only one who made that analysis of using the Tesla Coil for Internet access. You have to admit this much, though: Tesla was screwed over on many, many things. Pretty much every person who had any power was against him. Especially Edison; otherwise known as the patent pirate of Menlo Park...
  • one day we may stop worshipping inventors, leaders... and come to realize that we are all in this together. we build upon other's ideas, without which there would be very little progress. yes, inventors and even leaders can be special, but it is strange how certain ideas often manifest themselves in different places at the same general time.

  • Why Marconi? (Score:4)

    by jfunk ( 33224 ) <jfunk@roadrunner.nf.net> on Tuesday January 23, 2001 @01:47PM (#486695) Homepage
    I'm from Newfoundland, so there was a focus on Marconi in my school.

    Marconi is so often credited because he went farther with it. He crossed the Atlantic ocean. He started a successful company.

    It didn't matter that Tesla experimented and Popov deployed remote lightning detectors before any of this because Marconi started a company. It's not who does the initial work, it's who profits from it, at least to the general populace.

    Hey, we should call Bill Gates the father of computing. He has lots of money. :-)*

    Actually, in a similar vein, the real father of modern radio is often forgotten as well. Until Reginald Fessenden [ryerson.ca], radio was only dits and dahs. This Canadian guy was the first to transmit normal sound.

    Fessenden wanted to work for Thomas Edison, who basically told him to screw off [kwarc.on.ca]. A full bio can be read here [kwarc.on.ca].
  • Telsa's patents were upheld (and Marconi lost) by the US Supreme Court in 1945. It's not really in question.
  • Marconi only had patents for a receiver or transmitter (I forget which) anyhow they decided that since tesla had both a way of receiving and transmitting he should get the patent.
  • biggest user voted music countdown in the world

    I doubt it.. In Hamburg/Germany one radio station has a 810+x title user voted music countdown each year. Takes three days.

  • A few points:
    * Voice communication was invented by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden [kwarc.org].
    * Yes, Nickola Tesla invented radio transmission, but not originally for communications, he found that electricity could be transfered through air.
    * I am fairly sure that Marconii only really came onto the scene in the 1930's, and when he put in a patent for wireless radio transmissions, he found out that a patent already existed, and by that time, had passed. (correct me if I am wrong - with proof)
    * Eddison and Tesla knew each other, Tesla solved one of his Eddison's problems with wide-spread power distribution, Tesla had invented the use of radio signals over wires (50 or 60 cycles (or Hertz) a second), but Tesla wanted too take it further, Eddison didn't want a bar of this, and that is why we use the radio waves for communications, and not for power.
    * Tesla also found it hard to sell his ideas, the only way to compare this to what business if like these days is Eddison can be compared too Microsoft, and Tesla could be compared too Amiga, in the context of money, ideas, popularity & know-how (although, if Amiga gets anywhere in the next few years, thia analogy will be wrong, I have crossed fingers :) ).

  • How can you subscribe to any belief at all and call yourself existentialist? It seems clear that you don't know what the word means.
  • <SARCASM>
    Yeah, I mean, if it isn't directly related to computers, what good is it? I mean, who cares if they can split the atom, or splice genes. I just want my Napster.
    </SARCASM>
  • A Brazilian priest by the name of Landell de Moura [deadmedia.org] seems to have sent a radio signal over a distance of 8km in 1893, two years earlier than Marconi.

    Seems the idea was in the air, so to speak ...

  • Often forgotten because he is not from the west, Sir J.C.Bose needs mention. His work was older than Marconi's. A selfless man, he said that he is not interested in commercial telegraphy and that others can use his research work. Compare with the money hungry, hyped up scientists of today. You can read more on him here [vigyanprasar.com]. Science didn't start in the west and didn't flourish only there either.
  • While I believe that Tesla invented radio, it seems the U.S. government had a more practical reason for recognizing Tesla as radio's inventor. After the war, the Marconi company sought patent royalties for all government's radios. The Court's ruling, uh, squelched that in one stroke.
  • I owe the band a debt of gratitude for planting the seeds of curiousity about the person of Nikola Tesla which ultimately prompted me to research his tragic life. How sad that my own high school education robbed me of the truth (as lamented in that very song!)

    I'm glad I know.

    Plus, they rocked!

  • November 21,1783 was the first recorded manned flight in a hot air balloon. 1793 was first balloon flight in USA.

    Bah! Balloons! No engine, no point.

    Even so, remember Around the World in 80 Days? That was set in 1888. Well less than a century later, we could do the circumference of the planet in under 88 minutes.

    That's an order of magnitude.

    Shoot, the idea of flight goes back to the myth of Icarus flying too close to the sun. When was the first concept of radio transmission? Somebody in the 1830's must have thought, "this telegraph is great, but could we do this without wires?"

    True. I think it was really Faraday and Oerstead who pioneered in radio, though they didn't understand it. Tesla made the first practical broadband transmitters (!) later in the century and then it was Marconi who actually saw the broader picture and was able to harness all the concepts discovered by the others.

    Of course, that's subject to very volatile debates among radio afficionados.

    But, really, since then, what has happened? We haven't got radio waves to travel faster than the speed of light. All we've managed to do is refine the transmitters and receivers to the point where they're small, efficient, and can often change freqency on the fly. You still really have only two ways of modulating a carrier, and one of those (AM) hearkens right back to the dawn of the era with the first spark gap transmitters.

  • > hint: defibrilation paddles are AC based

    Actually, modern defibs are DC-based. The original ones were AC, but they needed to be plugged in and were generally awkward to use. Modern defib units use pulses of DC, which means they can be easily powered from a portable battery pack. Some info here [brown.edu].

  • If sure you are too cool to use defibulators anyway.

    Asshole.
  • DefibRILator.
    A defiBULator if it existed, would rip out the fibula... a bone in the lower leg.

    Dumbass.
  • Radio is still alive and well down here in OZ Land, TripleJ is doing a great job promoting Australian bands, and the youth culture stuff as well.
    Plus we have the JJJ Hottest 100, which they say is the biggest user voted music countdown in the world. They have really nifty talkback radio on during the day too...

    Check it out --> TripleJ [abc.net.au]

  • Patents == creativity? This is a quite one-dimensional imitation of reasoning (IMHO). Take-no-prisoners-style of innovation: you mean the great "Hiroshima" style of innovation? Please get a bit more precise. I am especially interested in how the physical laws inhibit your creativity :-)
  • Whoa.. Radio is 100 years old, eh? Well, Radio Waves are awesome. They opened communication completely while the telephone still had time to play catchup. Radio waves are all around you.. From the Baby Transmitters you got to keep out burgulars to the 2.4Ghz wireless phone your girlfriend got you for christmas, Radio rocks! I mean, with radio you can do all sorts of things...

    Commit Crimes.. Go Shopping.. Confirm an EBay bandit... There are even continuous chess games played over shortwave. To radio, I take my hat off.


    Seeka
  • This was a more relevant comment from the site, as far as I'm concerned this seals the issue on Tesla being the inventor of radio.

    The Patent Office made the following comment in 1903:

    Many of the claims are not patentable over Tesla patent numbers 645,576 and 649,621, of record, the amendment to overcome said references as well as Marconi's pretended ignorance of the nature of a "Tesla oscillator" being little short of absurd... the term "Tesla oscillator" has become a household word on both continents [Europe and North America].

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