Wireless Telephony

From out of the 1908 Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution comes this paper which was originally presented to the convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in the summer of that year. And this is a gem.

There are two schools of behavior.

First, old world. You have a bunch of assistants who develop a new invention, you take credit for their work. All of the credit. You never even mention that someone has helped you. Today that sounds really underhanded.

But there is the modern behavior where you give credit to everyone and everybody. If you read a recent technical paper, you'll find the first few paragraphs explain what others have already done and then it describes the little bit of knowledge being added to the puzzle. Fessenden was someone who always pointed out the accomplishments of others. He had so many trophies of his own he didn't need to steal anyone else's thunder.

You get, in the first part, an overview of radio, its development, who the major players were and what they contributed. The second half then describes in detail how Fessenden and his crew came to perfect a method for transmitting voice (and music) for miles and miles without wires. And without transistors or tubes! The system he developed was so quiet and distortion free that a listener could hear people breathing and walking around in the transmitting room! All this occurred before 1908.

Col Edwin Armstrong invented the regenerative receiver, and then souped it up to make the super-regenerative receiver. Then he created the superheterodyne. But it was nothing more than an all-electronic version of Fessenden's heterodyne receiver. In fact, Fessenden coined the word heterodyne.

Fessenden used alternators to generate low frequency radio energy. Kilowatts of the stuff. He created a method of modulating the signal, and then decoding it at the listening end. His methods were much different from those of Lodge and Marconi.

The beauty of this paper is that it reveals who the players in the new field of radio were at the time when major advances were being made. A hundred footnotes will give you more articles and papers to explore. You get scores of patent numbers that can you can download.

You get great photographs of the equipment he built and used. Like carbon microphones that could control enormous amounts of current without malfunctioning. You'll see the unusual spark gaps, alternators, interference preventing receivers and more.

This is simple stuff. It had to be. Very little was really known about radio frequency currents. If you're a crystal set builder, there are some tantalizing machines here worth studying. For instance, without vacuum tubes Fessenden needed an electromechnical amplifier that Pete Friedrichs, in his book Instruments of Amplification, will show you how to build. But there is so much here that perhaps you could write a follow-up to Pete's book.

And you'll find that so much of what you "know" about the history of radio is pure B.S. For instance, the "Tesla Coil" was not invented by Tesla, but by Elihu Thompson. Tesla scaled it up to attempt wireless transmission of electrical power without wires through the atmosphere which was an idea put forth by Loomis. You'll learn about the major players: Henry, Thomson, Houston, Fitzgerald, Crookes, Dolbear, Branle, Minchen, Lodge, Marconi, Popoff, Ferranti and many others.

You know about crystal detectors, but back then they were using coherers of many different shapes and forms, barretters, and even a device that could detect radio waves by changing the amount of friction that existed between two moving objects! Most all of this technology is no longer used. But because it works, it sounds like it's worth bringing back to life. And you can do that.

You get the story of radiotelephony as told by the MAN himself, Fessenden. On a bad day, Fessenden was ten times better an inventor than Tesla ever hoped to be, yet few people know of him. Get a copy and find out what really happened. 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 booklet 48 pages

No. 23560 ... $6.95

Who Was Fessenden?

* Chief chemist for Edison, 1887-1889.

* Professor of Electrical Engineering at Purdue, 1892-1893 and at Western University of Pennsylvania (Univ. of Pittsburgh), 1893-1900.

* Developed an entirely new system of wireless transmission distinct from and based on a different principle from that of Lodge, Marconi and all other workers -which principle was eventually proven to be the correct one.

* Had over 500 patents issued in varied fields, especially in the transmission of light, sound and electrical waves.

* Effected the first two-way, trans-Atlantic wireless telegraphic service in 1906 between Brant Rock, Mass. and Machrihanish, Scotland.

* Was the first to transmit wireless telegraphic messages over land a distance of 1600 miles, Massachusetts to New Orleans in 1910.

* Invented the wireless telephone and first tested it in crude form at Cobb Island, Md., at the close of 1900.

* Made the first Radio Broadcast from the Brant Rock Station on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve of 1906, which was heard by ships all along the coast as far south as Guantanamo Bay.

* The Fessenden Radio Patents which were seized by the National Electric Signaling Company were acquired by the Radio Corporation of America for $3,000,000.00.

* He invented the oscillator, the fathometer (sometimes called the sonic depth finder), the wireless compass and other submarine signaling devices.

* He originated the turbo-electric drive for battleships.

* He was given the Medal of Honor by the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1921, the John Scott Medal by the Advisory Committee of the City of Philadelphia in 1922 for his invention in "Continuous Wave Telegraphy and Telephony" and the Scientific American Medal in 1929 for his numerous inventions relating to safety at sea.