Chapter I The Development of Electricity The phenomenon which Thales had observed and recorded five centuries before the birth of Christ aroused the interest of many scientists through the ages. They made various practical experiments in their efforts to identify the elusive force which Thales had likened to a 'soul' and which we now know to have been static electricity. Of all forms of energy, electricity is the most baffling and difficult to describe. An electric current cannot be seen. In fact it does not exist outside the wires and other conductors which carry it. A live wire carrying a current looks exactly the same and weighs exactly the same as it does when it is not carrying a current. An electric current is simply a movement or flow of electrons. Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and scientist born in Boston in 1706, investigated the nature of thunder and lightning by flying a child's kite during a thunderstorm. He had attached a metal spike to the kite, and at the other end of the string to which the kite was tied he secured a key. As the rain soaked into the string, electricity flowed freely down the string and Franklin was able to draw large sparks from the key. Of course this could have been very dangerous, but he had foreseen it and had supported the string through an insulator. He observed that this electricity had the same properties as the static electricity produced by friction. But long before Franklin many other scientists had carried out research into the nature of electricity. In England William Gilbert (1544-1603) had noticed that the powers of attraction and repulsion of two non-metallic rods which he had rubbed briskly were similar to those of lodestone and amber--they had acquired the curious quality we call magnetism. Remembering Thales of old he coined the word 'electricity'. Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) a Mayor of Magdeburg in Germany, was an amateur scientist who had constructed all manner of gadgets. One of them was a machine consisting of two glass discs revolving in opposite directions which produced high voltage charges through friction. Ramsden and Wimshurst built improved versions of the machine. A significant breakthrough occurred when Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) in Italy constructed a simple electric cell (in 1799) which produced a flow of electrons by chemical means. Two plates, one of copper and the other of zinc, were placed in an acid solution and a current flowed through an external wire connecting the two plates. Later he connected cells in series (voltaic pile) which consisted of alternate layers of zinc and copper discs separated by flannel discs soaked in brine or acid which produced a higher electric pressure (voltage). But Volta never found the right explanation of why his cell was working. He thought the flow of electric current was due to the contact between the two metals, whereas in fact it results from the chemical action of the electrolyte on the zinc plate. However, his discovery proved to be of incalculable value in research, as it enabled scientists to carry out experiments which led to the discoveries of the heating, lighting, chemical and magnetic effects of electricity. One of the many scientists and physicists who took advantage of the 'current electricity' made possible by Volta's cells was Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) of Denmark. Like many others he was looking for a connection between the age-old study of magnetism and electricity, but now he was able to pass electric currents through wires and place magnets in various positions near the wires. His epoch-making discovery which established for the first time the relationship between magnetism and electricity was in fact an accident. While lecturing to students he showed them that the current flowing in a wire held over a magnetic compass needle and at right angles to it (that is east-west) had no effect on the needle. Oersted suggested to his assistant that he might try holding the wire parallel to the length of the needle (north-south) and hey presto, the needle was deflected! He had stumbled upon the electromagnetic effect in the first recorded instance of a wire behaving like a magnet when a current is passed through it. A development of Oersted's demonstration with the compass needle was used to construct the world's first system of signaling by the use of electricity. In 1837 Charles Wheatstone and William Cooke took out a patent for the world's first Five-needle Telegraph, which was installed between Paddington railway station in west London and West Drayton station a few miles away. The five copper wires required for this system were embedded in blocks of wood. Electrolysis, the chemical decomposition of a substance into its constituent elements by the action of an electric current, was discovered by the English chemists Carlisle and William Nicholson (1753-1815). If an electric current is passed through water it is broken down into the two elements of which it is composed--hydrogen and oxygen. The process is used extensively in modern industry for electroplating. Michael Faraday (1791-1867) who was employed as a chemist at the Royal Institution, was responsible for introducing many of the technical terms connected with electrolysis, like electrolyte for the liquid through which the electric current is passed, and anode and cathode for the positive and negative electrodes respectively. He also established the laws of the process itself. But most people remember his name in connection with his practical demonstration of electromagnetic induction. In France Andre-Marie Ampere (1775-1836) carried out a complete mathematical study of the laws which govern the interaction between wires carrying electric currents. In Germany in 1826 a Bavarian schoolmaster Georg Ohm (1789-1854) had defined the relationship between electric pressure (voltage), current (flow rate) and resistance in a circuit (Ohm's law) but 16 years had to elapse before he received recognition for his work. Scientists were now convinced that since the flow of an electric current in a wire or a coil of wire caused it to acquire magnetic properties, the opposite might also prove to be true: a magnet could possibly be used to generate a flow of electricity. Michael Faraday had worked on this problem for ten years when finally, in 1830, he gave his famous lecture in which he demonstrated, for the first time in history, the principle of electromagnetic induction. He had constructed powerful electromagnets consisting of coils of wire. When he caused the magnetic lines of force surrounding one coil to rise and fall by interrupting or varying the flow of current, a similar current was induced in a neighbouring coil closely coupled to the first. The colossal importance of Faraday's discovery was that it paved the way for the generation of electricity by mechanical means. However, as can be seen from the drawing, the basic generator produces an alternating flow of current.(A.C.) Rotating a coil of wire steadily through a complete revolution in the steady magnetic field between the north and south poles of a magnet results in an electromotive force (E.M.F.) at its terminals which rises in value, falls back to zero, reverses in a negative direction, reaches a peak and again returns to zero. This completes one cycle or sine wave. (1Hz in S.I.units). In recent years other methods have been developed for generating electrical power in relatively small quantities for special applications. Semiconductors, which combine heat insulation with good electrical conduction, are used for thermoelectric generators to power isolated weather stations, artificial satellites, undersea cables and marker buoys. Specially developed diode valves are used as thermionic generators with an efficiency, at present, of only 20% but the heat taken away from the anode is used to raise steam for conventional power generation. Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) one of Britain's leading chemists of the 18th century, is best remembered for his safety lamp for miners which cut down the risk of methane gas explosions in mines. It was Davy who first demonstrated that electricity could be used to produce light. He connected two carbon rods to a heavy duty storage battery. When he touched the tips of the rods together a very bright white light was produced. As he drew the rods apart, the arc light persisted until the tips had burnt away to the critical gap which extinguished the light. As a researcher and lecturer at the Royal Institution Davy worked closely with Michael Faraday who first joined the institution as his manservant and later became his secretary. Davy's crowning honour in the scientific world came in 1820, when he was elected President of the Royal Society. In the U.S.A. the prolific inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1831) who had invented the incandescent carbon filament bulb, built a number of electricity generators in the vicinity of the Niagara Falls. These used the power of the falling water to drive hydraulic turbines which were coupled to the dynamos. These generators were fitted with a spinning switch or commutator (one of the neatest gadgets Edison ever invented) to make the current flow in unidirectional pulses (D.C.) In 1876 all electrical equipment was powered by direct current. Today mains electricity plays a vital part in our everyday lives and its applications are widespread and staggering in their immensity. But we must not forget that popular demand for this convenient form of power arose only about 100 years ago, mainly for illumination. Recent experiments in superconductivity, using ceramic instead metal conductors have given us an exciting glimpse into what might be achieved for improving efficiency in the distribution of electric power. Historians of the future may well characterise the 20th century as 'the century of electricity & electronics'. But Edison's D.C. generators could not in themselves, have achieved the spectacular progress that has been made. All over the world we depend totally on a system of transmitting mains electricity over long distances which was originally created by an amazing inventor whose scientific discoveries changed, and are still changing, the whole world. His name was scarcely known to the general public, especially in Europe, where he was born. Who was this unknown pioneer? Some people reckon that it was this astonishing visionary who invented wireless, remote control, robotics and a form of X-ray photography using high frequency radio waves. A patent which he took out in the U.S.A. in 1890 ultimately led to the design of the humble ignition coil which energises billions and billions of spark plugs in all the motor cars of the world. His American patents fill a book two inches thick. His name was Nicola Tesla (1856-1943). Nicola Tesla was born in a small village in Croatia which at that time formed part of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today it is a northern province of Yugoslavia, a state created after the 1914-1918 war. Tesla studied at the Graz Technical University and later in Budapest. Early in his studies he had the idea that a way had to be found to run electric motors directly from A.C. generators. His professor in Graz had assured him categorically that this was not possible. But young Tesla was not convinced. When he went to Budapest he got a job in the Central Telegraph Office, and one evening in 1882, as he was sitting on a bench in the City Park he had an inspiration which ultimately led to the solution of the problem. Tesla remembered a poem by the German poet Goethe about the sun which supports life on the earth and when the day is over moves on to give life to the other side of the globe. He picked up a twig and began to scratch a drawing on the soil in front of him. He drew four coils arranged symmetrically round the circumference of a circle. In the centre he drew a rotor or armature. As each coil in turn was energised it attracted the rotor towards it and the rotary motion was established. When he constructed the first practical models he used eight, sixteen and even more coils. The simple drawing on the ground led to the design of the first induction motor driven directly by A.C.electricity. Tesla emigrated to the U.S.A. in 1884. During the first year he filed no less than 30 patents mostly in relation to the generation and distribution of A.C. mains electricity. He designed and built his 'A.C. Polyphase System' which generated three-phase alternating current at 25 Hz. One particular unit delivered 422 amperes at 12,000 volts. The beauty of this system was that the voltage could be stepped down using transformers for local use, or stepped up to many thousands of volts for transmission over long distances through relatively thin conductors. Edison's generating stations were incapable of any such thing. Tesla signed a lucrative contract with the famous railway engineer George Westinghouse, the inventor of the Westinghouse Air Brake which is used by most railways all over the world to the present day. Their generating station was put into service in 1895 and was called the Niagara Falls Electricity Generating Company. It supplied power for the Westinghouse network of trains and also for an industrial complex in Buffalo, New York. After ten years Tesla began to experiment with high frequencies. The Tesla Coil which he had patented in 1890 was capable of raising voltages to unheard of levels such as 300,000 volts. Edison, who was still generating D.C., claimed A.C. was dangerous and to prove it contracted with the government to produce the first electric chair using A.C. for the execution of murderers condemned to death. When it was first used it was a ghastly flop. The condemned man moaned and groaned and foamed at the mouth. After four minutes of repeated application of the A.C.voltage smoke began to come out of his back. It was obvious that the victim had suffered a horribly drawn-out death. Tesla said he could prove that A.C. was not dangerous. He gave a demonstration of high voltage electricity flowing harmlessly over his body. But in reality, he cheated, because he had used a frequency of 10,000 cycles (10 kHz) at extremely low current and because of the skin effect suffered no harm. One of Tesla's patents related to a system of lighting using glass tubes filled with fluorine (not neon) excited by H.F.voltages. His workshop was lit by this method. Several years before Wilhelm Roentgen demonstrated his system of X-rays Tesla had been taking photographs of the bones in his hand and his foot from up to 40 feet away using H.F.currents. More astonishing still is the fact that in 1893, two years before Marconi demonstrated his system of wireless signaling, Tesla had built a model boat in which he combined power to drive it with radio control and robotics. He put the small boat in a lake in Madison Square Gardens in New York. Standing on the shore with a control box, he invited onlookers to suggest movements. He was able to make the boat go forwards and backwards and round in circles. We all know how model cars and aircraft are controlled by radio today, but when Tesla did it a century ago the motor car had not been invented, and the only method by which man could cover long distances was on horseback! Many people believe that a modification of Tesla's 'Magnifying Transmitter' was used by the Soviet Union when suddenly one day in October 1976 they produced an amazing noise which blotted out all radio transmissions between 6 and 20 MHz. (The Woodpecker) The B.B.C., the N.B.C. and most broadcasting and telecommunication organisations of the world complained to Moscow (the noise had persisted continuously for 10 hours on the first day), but all the Russians would say in reply was that they were carrying out an experiment. At first nobody seemed to know what they were doing because it was obviously not intended as another form of jamming of foreign broadcasts, an old Russian custom as we all know. It is believed that in the pursuit of his life's ambition to send power through the earth without the use of wires, Tesla had achieved a small measure of success at E.L.F. (extremely low frequencies) of the order of 7 to 12 Hz. These frequencies are at present used by the military for communicating with submarines submerged in the oceans of the world. Tesla's career and private life have remained something of a mystery. He lived alone and shunned public life. He never read any of his papers before academic institutions, though he was friendly with some journalists who wrote sensational stories about him. They said he was terrified of microbes and that when he ate out at a restaurant he would ask for a number of clean napkins to wipe the cutlery and the glasses he drank out of. For the last 20 years of his life until he died during World War II in 1943 he lived the life of a semi-recluse, with a pigeon as his only companion. A disastrous fire had destroyed his workshops and many of his experimental models and all his papers were lost for ever. Tesla had moved to Colorado Springs where he built his largest ever coil which was 52 feet in diameter. He studied all the different forms of lightning in his unsuccessful quest for the transmission of power without wires. In Yugoslavia, Tesla is a national hero and a well-equipped museum in Belgrade contains abundant proof of the genius of this extraordinary man By 1850 most of the basic electrical phenomena had been investigated. However, James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge then came up with something entirely new. By some elegant mathematics he had shown the probable existence of electromagnetic waves of radiation. But it was twenty four years later (eight years after Maxwell's death) that Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) in Germany gave a practical demonstration of the accuracy of this theory. He generated and detected electromagnetic waves across the length of his laboratory on a wavelength of approximately one metre. His own photograph of the equipment he had set up can be seen in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. To detect the electromagnetic waves Hertz employed a simple form of oscillator, which he termed a resonator. But it was not sensitive enough to detect waves at any great distance. Before wireless telegraphy could become practicable, a more delicate detector was necessary. Credit is due to Edouard Branly (1844-1940) of France for producing the first practical instrument for detecting Hertzian waves, the coherer. It consisted of two metal cylinders with leads attached, fitted tightly into the interior of a glass tube containing iron or steel filings. The instant an electric discharge of any sort occurred the coherer became conductive, and if it was tapped lightly its conducting property was immediately destroyed. In practice the tapping was done automatically by a tapper which came into action the moment the coherer became conductive. In Russia the physicist Aleksandr Popov (1859-1905) had used a coherer while engaged in the investigation of the effects of lightning discharges. He suggested that such discharges could possibly be used for signaling over long distances. Old timers may remember that about 50 years ago Russian amateurs used to send out a QSL card with a drawing of Popov and a caption which claimed that he was 'the inventor of radio'. In Italy, a young 22-year-old electrician became interested in electromagnetic radiation after reading papers by Professor Augusto Righi (1850-1921). It was Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), the son of a well-to-do landowner who lived in Bologna, and who was married to Annie Jameson of the well known Irish Whiskey family. Guglielmo, their second son, had his early education at a private school in Bedford, England, and later at Livorno and Florence in Italy. When he read about the experiments of Heinrich Hertz and about Popov's suggestion, he saw the possibility of using these waves as a means of signaling. His first transmitter, shown in the accompanying photograph, did not radiate very far. When he folded the metal plate into a cylinder and placed it on a pole 30 feet above the induction coil and connected to it by a vertical wire, he was able to detect the radiation nearly two kilometres away. Marconi realised that his signaling system would be most useful to shipping, and in those days England possessed the world's greatest navy and the world's biggest merchant fleet. The Italian government was not interested in young Marconi's work, so after a family conference he was brought to London by his mother, who had influential relatives there. Not only did they finance his early experiments but they also put him in touch with the right sort of people. One of these was Alan A. Campbell Swinton who became the first President of the Radio Society of London (now the R.S.G.B.) many years later, in 1913. Campbell Swinton introduced the young Italian to William Preece, then Engineer-in-Chief of the British Post Office. Preece had already been investigating various methods of 'induction' telegraphy. In a book entitled Wireless Telegraphy published in 1908, William J.White of the Engineer-in-Chief's department at the G.P.O. wrote, "The work of Sir (then Mr) William Preece, important though it was, did not attract the attention of the public to the extent that might have been expected. This was due to the fact that no sooner had he demonstrated a method of wireless telegraphy which was a commercial possibility than his system was superseded by another, and a better one, brought to England by Mr Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. The possibilities of Mr Marconi's system were at once recognised by Mr William Preece. The experience of the elder and the genius of the younger man, who must be given the credit of having devised the first practical system for wireless telegraphy, combined to turn apparently disastrous failures into success, and now (in 1908), wireless telegraphy has become, in less than a decade, part and parcel of commercial and national life." The world's first patent for wireless telegraphy was awarded to Marconi on the 2nd June 1896. In it he stated that "electrical action can be transmitted through the earth, air or water, by means of oscillations of high frequency." In the first public demonstration of his equipment Marconi spanned the 365 metres between the G.P.O. and Victoria street. Later, on Salisbury Plain, in March 1897, his signals were detected over 7 kilometres away. On the 11th & 18th May 1897 messages were first exchanged over water. On the 27th of March 1899, during naval manoeuvres, Marconi bridged the English Channel for the first time, a distance of about 140 kilometres. His transatlantic triumph came on the 12th December 1901 when the morse letter 'S' was transmitted from Poldhu, in Cornwall and received by Marconi himself at St. John's, Newfoundland, who recorded the historic event in his pocket book simply "Sigs at 12.20, 1.10 & 2.20". The operation of Marconi's transmitter was itself quite spectacular. To produce the oscillations he employed the oscillator designed by Augusto Righi. Depressing the key closed the circuit and brought the inductor coil into action. Vivid sparks occurred between the balls of the oscillator, to the accompaniment of a succession of sharp cracks, like the reports of a pistol, and some energy was sent off the square metal plate in the form of trains of electromagnetic waves, which radiated out in all directions. But the energy occupied a very large bandwidth and the receivers of that period could not separate two transmissions. William J.White of the Post Office wrote in 1908, "The chief objection which has been raised against modern wireless telegraphy is its want of secrecy. With a transmitter sending out waves in all directions, it is possible for unscrupulous persons to receive the messages and make an improper use of them. This form of 'scientific hooliganism' has, in fact, become somewhat notorious. When two or three transmitters are each sending out their electromagnetic waves, the result, naturally, is utter confusion." White added that the British Postal Administration was refusing to grant licences for more than one system in the same area, in spite of the fact that there had been some 'alleged' solutions of the problem. The phenomenon of resonance was known and Dr (later Sir Oliver) Lodge had taken out various patents between 1889 and 1898 in connection with receivers. Marconi and his assistants ultimately solved the problem by modifying Lodge's syntonic Leyden jar tuned circuit. They added a tapped inductance in the aerial circuit of the transmitter and used variable capacitors instead of fixed ones. This was probably the most significant modification made in the development of wireless telegraphy. (In Greek the word syntonismos 'to bring to equal tone' is used for 'tuning'.) Apart from the patents taken out by Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr Alexander Muirhead, in 1897, patents were taken out in Germany by Professor Braun of Strasbourg, who was joined by Professor Slaby and Count D'Arco in 1903 to form the Telefunken company, and in the U.S.A. by Dr Lee De Forest of the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company who was the first to use a high A.C. voltage of 20,000 volts to obtain the necessary high-potential discharges, thus dispensing with the induction coil. Again in the U.S.A., Professor R.O.Fessenden was responsible for the design of new types of transmitting and receiving apparatus. During this period Marconi had resisted all offers by financiers to acquire his patents. In July 1897 he entrusted his cousin Jameson Davis to form The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Ltd which soon became Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co., and ultimately the Marconi Company. William Preece of the Post Office detached one of his assistants, George S. Kemp, to help Marconi. Kemp was destined to become his right-hand man and served Marconi faithfully throughout his life. By today's standards, Marconi can be said to have been a highly successful entrepreneur. He had the great knack of selecting the right man for the job, and inspired deep loyalty in his staff. He regarded himself as an 'amateur' and often paid tribute to the work of radio experimenters. The exigencies and experiences of the Civil War demonstrated, among other theorems, the vast utility and indispensable importance of the electric telegraph both as an administrative agent and as a tactical factor in military operations. In addition to the utilization of existing commercial systems, there were built and operated more than fifteen thousand miles of lines for military purposes only. Serving under the anomalous status of quartermaster's employees, often under conditions of personal danger, and with no definite official standing, the operators of the military telegraph service performed work of most vital import to the army in particular and to the country in general. They fully merited the gratitude of the Nation for their efficiency, fidelity, and patriotism, yet their services have never been practically recognized by the Government or appreciated by the people. For instance, during the war there occurred in the line of duty more than three hundred casualties among the operators -from disease, death in battle, wounds, or capture. Scores of these unfortunate victims left families dependent upon charity, as the United States neither extended aid to their destitute families nor admitted needy survivors to a pensionable status. The telegraph service had neither definite personnel nor corps organization. It was simply a civilian bureau attached to the Quartermaster's Department, in which a few of its favored members received commissions. The men who performed the dangerous work in the field were mere employees-mostly underpaid, and often treated with scant consideration. The inherent defects of such a nondescript organization made it impossible for it to adjust and adapt itself to the varying demands and imperative needs of great and independent armies such as were employed in the Civil War. Moreover, the chief, Colonel Anson Stager, was stationed in Cleveland, Ohio, while an active subordinate, Major Thomas T. Eckert was associated with the great war secretary, who held the service in his iron grasp. Not only were its commissioned officers free from other authority than that of the Secretary of War, but operators, engaged in active campaigning thousands of miles from Washington, were independent of the generals under whom they were serving. As will appear later, operators suffered from the natural impatience of military commanders, who resented the abnormal relations which inevitably led to distrust and contention. While such irritations and distrusts were rarely justified, none the less they proved detrimental to the best interests of the United States. On the one hand, the operators were ordered to report to, and obey only, the corporation representatives who dominated the War Department, while on the other their lot was cast with military associates, who frequently regarded them with a certain contempt or hostility. Thus, the life of the field-operator was hard, indeed, and it is to the lasting credit of the men, as a class, that their intelligence and patriotism were equal to the situation and won final confidence. Emergent conditions in 1861 caused the seizure of the commercial systems around Washington, and Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott was made general manager of all such lines. He secured the cooperation of E. S. Sanford, of the American Telegraph Company, who imposed much needed restrictions as to cipher messages, information, and so forth on all operators. The scope of the work was much increased by an act of Congress, in 1862, authorizing the seizure of any or all lines, in connection with which Sanford was appointed censor. Through Andrew Carnegie was obtained the force which opened the War Department Telegraph Office; which speedily attained national importance by its remarkable work, and with which the memory of Abraham Lincoln must be inseparably associated. It was fortunate for the success of the telegraphic policy of the Government that it was entrusted to men of such administrative ability as Colonel Anson Stager, E. S. Sanford, and Major Thomas T. Eckert. The selection of operators for the War Office was surprisingly fortunate, including, as it did, three cipher-operators-D. H. Bates, A. B. Chandler, and C. A. Tinker-of high character, rare skill, and unusual discretion. The military exigencies brought Sanford as censor and Eckert as assistant general manager, who otherwise performed their difficult duties with great efficiency; it must be added that at times they were inclined to display a striking disregard of proprieties and most unwarrantedly to enlarge the scope of their already extended authority. An interesting instance of the conflict of telegraphic and military authority was shown when Sanford mutilated McClellan's passionate dispatch to Stanton, dated Savage's Station, June 29, 1862, in the midst of the Seven Days Battles.* Eckert also withheld from President Lincoln the dispatch announcing the Federal defeat at Ball's Bluff. The suppression by Eckert of Grant's order for the removal of Thomas *By cutting out of the message the last two sentences, reading: "If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other person in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." finds support only in the splendid victory of that great soldier at Nashville, and that only under the maxim that the end justifies the means. Eckert's narrow escape from summary dismissal by Stanton shows that, equally with the President and the commanding general, the war secretary was sometimes treated disrespectfully by his own subordinates. One phase of life in the telegraph-room of the War Department--it is surprising that the White House bad no telegraph office during the war -- was Lincoln's daily visit thereto, and the long hours spent by him in the cipher-room, whose quiet seclusion made it a favorite retreat both for rest and also for important work requiring undisturbed thought and undivided attention. There Lincoln turned over with methodical exactness and anxious expectation the office-file of recent messages. There be awaited patiently the translation of ciphers which forecasted promising plans for coming campaigns, told tales of unexpected defeat, recited the story of victorious battles, conveyed impossible demands, or suggested inexpedient policies. Masking anxiety by quaint phrases, impassively accepting criticism, harmonizing conflicting conditions, he patiently pondered over situations-both political and military-swayed in his solutions only by considerations of public good. For in this room were held conferences of vital national interest, with cabinet officers, generals, congressmen, and others. But his greatest task done here was that which required many days, during which was written the original draft of the memorable proclamation of emancipation. Especially important was the technical work of Bates, Chandler, and Tinker enciphering and deciphering important messages to and from the great contending armies, which was done by code. Stager devised the first cipher, which was so improved by the cipher-operators that it remained untranslatable by the Confederates to the end of the war. An example of the method in general use, given by Plum in his " History of the Military Telegraph," is Lincoln's dispatch to ex-Secretary Cameron when with Meade south of Gettysburg. Brilliant and conspicuous service was rendered by the cipher-operators of the War Department in translating Confederate cipher messages which fell into Union hands. A notable incident in the field was the translation of General Joseph E. Johnston's cipher message to Pemberton, captured by Grant before Vicksburg and forwarded to Washington. More important were the two cipher dispatches from the Secretary of War at Richmond, in December, 1863, which led to a cabinet meeting and culminated in the arrest of Confederate conspirators in New York city, and to the capture of contraband shipments of arms and ammunition. Other intercepted and translated ciphers revealed plans of Confederate agents for raiding Northern towns near the border. Most important of all were the cipher messages disclosing the plot for the wholesale incendiarism of leading hotels in New York, which barely failed of success on November 25, 1864. Beneficial and desirable as were the civil cooperation and management of the telegraph service in Washington, its forced extension to armies in the field was a mistaken policy. Patterson, in the Valley of Virginia, was five days without word from the War Department, and when he sent a dispatch, July 20th, that Johnston bad started to reinforce Beauregard with 35,200 men, this vital message was not sent to McDowell with whom touch was kept by a service half-telegraphic and half-courier. The necessity of efficient field-telegraphs at once impressed military commanders. In. the West, Fremont immediately acted, and in August, 1861, ordered the formation of a telegraph battalion of three companies along lines in accord with modern military practice. Major Myer had already made similar suggestions in Washington, without success. While the commercial companies placed their personnel and material freely at the Government's disposal, they viewed with marked disfavor any military organization, and their recommendations were potent with Secretary of War Cameron. Fremont was ordered to disband his battalion, and a purely civil bureau was substituted, though legal authority and funds were equally lacking. Efforts to transfer quartermaster's funds and property to this bureau were successfully resisted, owing to the manifest illegality of such action. Indirect methods were then adopted, and Stager was commissioned as a captain in the Quartermaster's Department, and his operators given the status of employees. He was appointed general manager of United States telegraph lines, November 25, 1861, and six days later, through some unknown influence, the Secretary of War reported (incorrectly, be it known), " that under an appropriation for that purpose at the last session of Congress, a telegraph bureau was established." Stager was later made a colonel, Eckert a major, and a few others captains, and so eligible for pensions, but the men in lesser positions remained employees, non-pensionable and subject to draft. Repeated efforts by petitions and recommendations for giving a military status were made by the men in the field later in the war. The Secretary of War disapproved, saying that such a course would place them under the orders of superior officers, which he was most anxious to avoid. With corporation influence and corps rivalries so rampant in Washington, there existed a spirit of patriotic solidarity in the face of the. foe in the field that ensured hearty cooperation and efficient service. While the operators began with a sense of individual independence that caused them often to resent any control by commanding officers, from which they were free under the secretary's orders, yet their common sense speedily led them to comply with every request from commanders that was not absolutely incompatible with loyalty to their chief. Especially in the public eye was the work connected with the operations in the armies which covered Washington and attacked Richmond, where McClellan first used the telegraph for tactical purposes. Illustrative of the courage and resourcefulness of operators was the action of Jesse Bunnell, attached to General Porter's headquarters. Finding himself on the fighting line, with the Federal troops hard pressed, Bunnell, without orders, cut the wire and opened communication with McClellan's headquarters. Superior Confederate forces were then threatening defeat to the invaders, but this battle-office enabled McClellan to keep in touch with the situation and ensure Porter's position by sending the commands of French, Meagher, and Slocum to his relief. Operator Nichols opened an emergency office at Savage's Station on Stimner's request, maintaining it under fire as long as it was needed. One of the great feats of the war was the transfer,, under the supervision of Thomas A. Scott, of two Federal army corps from Virginia to Tennessee, consequent on the Chickamauga disaster to the Union arms. By this phenomenal transfer, which would have been impossible without the military telegraph, twenty-three thousand soldiers, with provisions and baggage, were transported a distance of 1,233 miles in eleven and a half days, from Bristoe Station, Virginia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. The troops had completed half their journey before the news of the proposed movement reached Richmond. While most valuable elsewhere, the military telegraph was absolutely essential to successful operations in the valleys of the Cumberland and of the Tennessee, where very long lines of communication obtained, with consequent great distances between its separate armies. Apart from train-dispatching, which was absolutely essential to transporting army supplies for hundreds of thousands of men over a single-track railway of several hundred of miles in length, an enormous number of messages for the control and cooperation of separate armies and detached commands were sent over the wires. Skill and patience were necessary for efficient telegraph work, especially when lines were frequently destroyed by Confederate incursions or through hostile inhabitants of the country. Of great importance and of intense interest are many of the cipher dispatches sent over these lines. Few, however, exceed the ringing messages of October 19, 1863, when Grant, from Louisville, Kentucky, bid Thomas " to hold Chattanooga at all hazards," and received the laconic reply in a few hours, " I will bold the town till we starve." Here, as elsewhere, appeared the anomalous conditions of the service. While telegraph duties were performed with efficiency, troubles were often precipitated by divided authority. When Superintendent Stager ordered a civilian, who was engaged ill building lines, out of Halleck's department, the general ordered him back, saying, " There must be one good head of telegraph lines in my department, not two, and that head must be under me." Though Stager protested to Secretary of War Stanton, the latter thought it best to yield in that case. When General Grant found it expedient to appoint an aide as general manager of lines in his army, the civilian chief, J. C. Van Duzer, reported it to Stager, who had Grant called to account by the War Department. Grant promptly put Van Duzer under close confinement in the guardhouse, and later sent him out of the department, under guard. As an outcome, the operators planned a strike, which Grant quelled by telegraphic orders to confine closely every man resigning or guilty, of contumacious conduct. Stager's efforts to dominate Grant failed t rough Stanton's fear that pressure would cause Grant to ask for relief from his command. Stager's administration culminated in an order by his assistant, dated Cleveland, November 4, 1862;,strictly requiring the operators to retain " the original copy of every telegram sent by any military or other Government officer . . . and mailed to the War Department." Grant answered, " Colonel Stager has no authority to demand the original of military dispatches, and cannot have them." The order was never enforced, at least with Grant. If similar experiences did not change the policy in Washington, it produced better conditions in the field and ensured harmonious cooperation. Of Van Duzer, it is to be said that he later returned to the army and performed conspicuous service. At the battle of Chattanooga, be installed and operated lines on or near the firing-line during the two fateful days, November 24-25, 1863, often under heavy fire. Always sharing the dangers of his men, Van Duzer, through his coolness and activity under fire, has been mentioned as the only fighting of officer of the Federal telegraph service. Other than telegraphic espionage, the most dangerous service was the repair of lines, which often was done under fire and more frequently in a guerilla-infested country. Many men were captured or shot from ambush while thus engaged. Two of Clowry's men in Arkansas were not only murdered, but were frightfully mutilated. In Tennessee, conditions were sometimes so bad that no lineman would venture out save under heavy escort. Three repair men were killed on the Fort Donelson line alone. W. R. Plum, in his " Military Telegraph," says that " about one in twelve of the operators engaged in the service were killed, wounded, captured, or died in the service from exposure." Telegraphic duties at military headquarters yielded little in brilliancy and interest compared to those of desperate daring associated with tapping the opponent's wires. At times, offices were seized so quickly as to prevent telegraphic warnings. General Mitchel captured two large Confederate railway trains by sending false messages from the Huntsville, Alabama, office, and General Seymour similarly seized a train near Jacksonville, Florida. While scouting, Operator William Forster obtained valuable dispatches by tapping the line along the Charleston-Savannah railway for two days. Discovered, he was pursued by bloodhounds into a swamp, where he was captured up to his armpits in mire. Later, the telegrapher died in prison. In 1863, General Rosecrans deemed it most important to learn whether Bragg was detaching troops to reinforce the garrison at Vicksburg or for other purposes. The only certain method seemed to be by tapping the wires along the Chattanooga railroad, near Knoxville, Tennessee. For this most dangerous duty, two daring members of the telegraph service volunteered--F. S. Van Valkenbergh and Patrick Mullarkev. The latter afterward was captured by Morgan, in Ohio. With four Tennesseans, they entered the hostile country and, selecting a wooded eminence, tapped the line fifteen miles from Knoxville, and for a week listened to all passing dispatches. Twice escaping detection, they heard a message going over the wire which ordered the scouring of the district to capture Union spies. They at once decamped, barely in time to escape the patrol. Hunted by cavalry, attacked by guerillas, approached by Confederate spies, they found aid from Union mountaineers, to whom they owed their safety. Struggling on, with capture and death in daily prospect, they finally fell in with Union pickets-being then half starved, clothed in rags, and with naked, bleeding feet. They bad been thirty-three days within the Confederate lines, and their stirring adventures make a story rarely equaled in thrilling interest. Confederate wires were often tapped during Sherman's march to the sea, a warning of General Wheeler's coming raid being thus obtained. Operator Lonergan copied important dispatches from Hardee, in Savannah, giving Bragg's movements in the rear of Sherman, with reports on cavalry and rations. Wiretapping was also practiced by the Confederates, who usually worked in, a sympathetic community. Despite their daring skill the net results were often small, owing to the Union system of enciphering all important messages. Their most audacious and persistent telegraphic scout was Ellsworth, Morgan's operator, whose skill, courage, and resourcefulness contributed largely to the success of his daring commander. Ellsworth was an expert in obtaining dispatches, and especially in disseminating misleading information by bogus messages. In the East, an interloper from Lee's army tapped the wire between the War Department and Burnside's headquarters at Aquia Creek, and remained undetected for probably several days. With fraternal frankness, the Union operators advised him to leave. The most prolonged and successful wiretapping was that by C. A. Gaston, Lee's confidential operator. Gaston entered t@e Union lines near City Point, while Richmond and Petersburg were besieged, with several men to keep watch for him, and for six weeks he remained undisturbed in the woods, reading all messages which passed over Grant's wire. Though unable to read the ciphers, he gained much from the dispatches in plain text. One message reported that 2,586 beeves were to be landed at Coggins' Point on a certain day. This information enabled Wade Hampton to make a timely raid and capture the entire herd. It seems astounding that Grant, Sherman, Thomas, and Meade, commanding armies of hundreds of thousands and working out the destiny of the Republic, should have been debarred from the control of their own ciphers and the keys thereto. Yet, in 1864, the Secretary of War issued an order forbidding commanding generals to interfere with even their own cipher-operators and absolutely restricting the use of cipher-books to civilian " telegraph experts, approved and appointed by the Secretary of War." One mortifying experience with a dispatch untranslatable for lack of facilities constrained Grant to order his cipher-operator, Beckwith, to reveal the key to Colonel Comstock, his aide, which was done under protest. Stager at once dismissed Beckwith, but on Grant's request and insistence of his own responsibility, Beckwith was restored. The cipher-operators with the various armies were men of rare skill, unswerving integrity, and unfailing loyalty. Caldwell, as chief operator, accompanied the Army of the Potomac on every march and in every siege, contributing also to the efficiency of the field-telegraphs. Beckwith was Grant's cipher-operator to the end of the war, and was the man who tapped a wire and reported the hiding-place of Wilkes Booth. Another operator, Richard O'Brien, in 1863 refused a princely bribe to forge a telegraphic reprieve, and later won distinction with Butler on the James and with Schofield in North Carolina. W. R. Plum, who wrote " History of the Military Telegraph in the Civil War," also rendered efficient service as chief operator to Thomas, and at Atlanta. It is regrettable that such men were denied the glory and benefits of a military service, which they actually, though not officially, gave. The bitter contest, which lasted several years, over field-telegraphs ended in March, 1864, when the Signal Corps transferred its field-trains to the civilian bureau. In Sherman's advance on Atlanta, Van Duzer distinguished himself by bringing up the field-line from the rear nearly every night. At Big Shanty, Georgia, the whole battle-front was covered by working field-lines which enabled Sherman to communicate at all times with his fighting and reserve commands. Hamlev considers the constant use of field-telegraphs in the flanking operations by Sherman in Georgia as showing the overwhelming value of the service. This duty was often done under fire and other dangerous conditions. In Virginia, in 1864-65, Major Eckert made great and successful efforts to provide Meade's army with ample facilities. A well-equipped train of thirty or more battery-wagons, wire-reels, and construction carts were brought together under Doren, a skilled builder and energetic man. While offices were occasionally located in battery-wagons, they were usually under tent-flies next to the headquarters of Meade or Grant. Through the efforts of Doren and Caldwell, all important commands were kept within control of either Meade or Grant--even during engagements. Operators were often under fire, and at Spotsylvania Court House telegraphers, telegraph cable, and battery-wagons were temporarily within the Confederate lines. From these trains was sent the ringing dispatch from the Wilderness, by which Grant inspired the North, I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer." During siege operations at Petersburg, a system of lines connected the various headquarters, depots, entrenchments, and even some picket lines. Cannonading and sharpshooting were so insistent that operators were often driven to bombproof offices --especially during artillery duels and impending assaults. Nerve-racking were the sounds and uncomfortably dangerous the situations, yet the operators held their posts. Under the terrible conditions of a night assault, the last despairing attempt to break through the encircling Federal forces at Petersburg, hurried orders and urgent appeals were sent. At dawn of March 25, 1865, General Gordon carried Fort Stedman with desperate gallantry, and cut the wire to City Point. The Federals speedily sent the message of disaster, " The enemy has broken our right, taken Stedman, and are moving on City Point." Assuming command, General Parke ordered a counter-attack and recaptured the fort. Promptly the City Point wire was restored, and Meade, controlling the whole army by telegraph, made a combined attack by several corps, capturing the entrenched picket line of the Confederates. First of all of the great commanders, Grant used the military telegraph both for grand tactics and for strategy in its broadest sense. From his headquarters with Meade's army in Virginia, May, 1864, he daily gave orders and received reports regarding the operations of Meade in Virginia, Sherman in Georgia, Sigel in West Virginia, and Butler on the James River. Later he kept under direct control military forces exceeding half a million of soldiers, operating over a territory of eight hundred thousand square miles in area. Through concerted action and timely movements, Grant prevented the reinforcement of Lee's army and so shortened the war. Sherman said, " The value of the telegraph cannot be exaggerated, as illustrated by the perfect accord of action of the armies of Virginia and Georgia." THE BIRTH OF WIRELESS The term wireless was a natural extension of less wired or the telegraph. Not until 1906 did the term Radio begin to appear. 1850 - By 1850 most of the basic electrical phenomena had been investigated. However, James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), Professor of Experimental Physics at Cambridge then came up with something entirely new. By some elegant mathematics he had shown the probable existence of electromagnetic waves of radiation. But it was twenty four years later (eight years after Maxwell's death) that Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) in Germany gave a practical demonstration of the accuracy of this theory. He generated and detected electromagnetic waves across the length of his laboratory on a wavelength of approximately one metre.16 1864 Mahlon Loomis 1 proposes a vertical top-capacity loaded aerial with a keying device and an indicator, all in series to ground. DX Might Be! 1865 Using 2 kites, Mahlon Loomis 2 transmits wireless messages between two mountains 18 miles apart in Virginia. Son Of A Gun - DX IS. The first Dxpedition??? 1865 - On 17 May 1865 the first International Telegraph Convention was signed by the 20 participating countries and the International Telegraph Union (later ITU) was set up to enable subsequent amendments to this initial agreement to be agreed upon13 1870 Mahlon Loomis successfully transmitted wireless 1883 Edison demonstrated that an electric current could pass between a heated filament and a cold plate in a vacuum. 1886 Heinrich Hertz proved that electromagnetic waves could be sent through space. 1887 Heinrich Hertz experments with parbolic dishes - produces waves at about 30cm - 1 GHz!!! 1896 - First practical wireless by Marconi, 'Hertzian Waves' over two miles! DX Will Be! When he read about the experiments of Heinrich Hertz and about Popov's suggestion, he saw the possibility of using these waves as a means of signaling. Marconi realized that his signaling system would be most useful to shipping. 1898 -- In January, British Leslie Miller 3 publishes an article in the British hobby magazine "The Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician". Here he contributed a superbly written article titled "The New Wireless Telegraphy" encouraging experimenters in the new field of "Wireless". 1898 - US Navy establishes coastal stations and begins to outfit the fleet with wireless communications. 1898 - 1912, experimenters begin transmitting and DX is anything over 10 miles. Early Amateur Radio in the UK can be seen at Dawn Of Radio in the UK and Europe16 1899 Marconi sends a signal over the English Channel - 32 miles. QSL's are in order. 1901 Marconi bridges the Atlantic, a feat which caught the world's attention and fueled the imagination of thousands of potential amateurs, who took their first steps into wireless. His transatlantic triumph came on the 12th December 1901 when the morse letter 'S' was transmitted from Poldhu, in Cornwall and received by Marconi himself at St. John's, Newfoundland, who recorded the historic event in his pocket book simply "Sigs at 12.20, 1.10 & 2.20". Marconi's original transmitters used high voltage spark gaps to generate 'Hertzian Waves'. The first experimental sets used induction coils with vibrating contact current interrupters to generate the high voltages. In the way of development after Marconi's high voltage spark gap came the use of high voltage transformers to generate the spark gap voltage. The ultimate came in the powerful transmitters such as those at the U.S. Navy's station at Arlington, Virginia. Here a 500 Hz generator, a step up transformer, and a rotary spark gap was used used to create the high voltage. Some of these produced a deafening noise created by the spark. Spark transmitters were often placed in acoustically insulated rooms to deaden the sound. Around 1900 William Duddell discovered the principle of negative resistance in connection with a carbon arc. By adding a resonant circuit to the arc it would oscillate at a frequency determined by the LC constants. Duddell's arc would only oscillate at audio frequencies, audible to human hearing, and it was dubbed the "singing arc." In 1902 Valdemar Poulsen, succeeded in making the arc oscillate at the higher frequencies by using electrodes operating in a sealed chamber, with hydrocarbon vapor, and a strong magnetic field. The arc became the first transmitter capable of generating pure, undamped waves. Arc transmitters were widely used at both shore stations and on ships. They were complicated to operate and were infamous for exploding when an operator introduced too much alcohol into the chamber. Arc transmitters were brought to the United States in 1909. One of the more powerful arc transmitters constructed were the 1,000 watt units built for the U.S. Navy at Bordeaux, France, during World War I. In Java, a unit was rated at 3,000 W, the antenna was suspended over a mountain gorge. By gradually scaling up the equipment Federal Telegraph finally produced a 30 kW unit that outperformed a powerful rotary spark transmitter at the Navy's Arlington station. The navy wanted still more power and Elwell thought he could build a 60 kW unit by merely scaling up the parts again. But it didn't work. Arc transmitters were gradually eliminated when the new vacuum tube transmitters came into use. However, many were used up to World War II. Perhaps the last to be in operation on land were the stations operated by the Mackay Radio and Telegraph Company between cities on the Pacific coast. A synchronous rotary had the spark electrodes mounted on the shaft of the motor generator which feeds a HV step up transformer. In this way, the spark would discharge the capacitor synchronously with the peak in the AC waveform. In a non-synchronous gap, the discharge could occur anywhere within the cycle. Buzzer were sometimes used to supply the voltage to an induction coil in early spark coil sets, since they had a higher "tone" than what some other interrupters could produce. Buzzers were used early on as a way to get ICW ( interrupted CW ) signals in early vacuum tube transmitters. The buzzer would interrupt the CW at an audio rate, thus modulating the CW carrier. You could detect the signal with a non-oscillating detector.10 Also see Fessenden and the Early History of Radio Science where the concept of an HF Alternator is discussed.20 1902 - Nathan Stubblefield Kentucky farmer invents wireless telephone! But was it radio? Facts and folklore about Nathan Stubblefield by Bob Lochte24. 1902 Oliver Heaviside predicted that there was an conducting layer in the atmosphere which allowed radio waves to follow the Earth's curvature. This layer in the atmosphere, the Heaviside layer, is named after him. Its existence was proved in 1923 when radio pulses were transmitted vertically upward and the returning pulses from the reflecting layer were received. Propagation has always been the life blood of long distant radio communications and from the early days, Amateurs carefully watched propagation conditions as they do today. Early wireless codes was The American Morse code, International code and U. S. Navy code11 1904 Sir John Ambrose Fleming worked to develop the first rectifier and in 1904, while working for the Marconi Company, he was faced with the problem of detecting weak wireless signals. He was inspired by his work with Edison’s lamps back in 1889 and decided to try inserting one of the lamps in an oscillatory circuit containing a galvanometer. He had found the solution to the problem of rectifying high frequency wireless circuits. 1904 One of the first companies to sell radio equipment to experimenters and amateurs was the Electro Importing Company of New York City, set up in 1904 by Hugo Gernsback. 1905 Guglielmo Marconi patented his directive horizontal antenna.23 (A Beam Antenna!!) 1905 Horace G. Martin introduces the The Vibroplex semi-automatic telegraph key, commonly called a "bug". The Use of 500 kHz as the International Distress Frequency is common. 1906 First wireless communication of human speech (and music) on December 24, 1906. Fessenden spoke and broadcasted music by radio from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, to ships in the Atlantic Ocean using a two kilowatt (100 kHz) alternator developed by Alexanderson. Fessenden modulates continuous wave. 23 1906 November 3. The "Berlin International Wireless Telegraph Convention" 4 defined call letters, operating procedures and signals for Coastal Stations and ships at sea. The committee decided that henceforth the term "Radio" would better describe wireless. Radio is derived from the Latin radius (ray or beam of light). The term wireless lingered for many years, but by 1912 the term Radio was used in legislation. Some countries even today are fond of the word wireless. Radio Shack probably gets its name from maritime lore dating back to the invention of the radio at the turn of the century. At the time, wireless equipment aboard ships was generally housed above the bridge in a wooden structure that was called the "radio shack". 1906, Lee De Forest added a third electrode to the diode, the "triode" or "audion" tube could both rectify and amplify; and its greater control it meant that various electronic circuits would finally be commercially feasible. 1908 Hugo Gernsback published his first magazine, Modern Electrics (later to become Electrical Experimenter) which does much to foster and popularize Amateur Radio. 1909, On January 2, the first amateur radio club; The Junior Wireless Club, Limited, of New York City, was organized. Later the club name changed to Radio Club Of America, and their history is a must read, don't miss it. 1910 Oct 5. The first Cat's Whisker Detector invented by B. F. Miessner who received "The De Forest Audion Award in 1963." This patent was sold to John Firth for "a magnificent sum of $200". From the "On the Early History of Radio Guidance". Library of Congress Card # is 64-2115. 1910 Senator Depew introduces a bill virtually prohibiting amateur experimenting. The Junior Wireless Club organizes a committee to plead the cause of the amateur before Congress. The bill is squashed and again DX IS!17 1911 Young radio amateurs are building receivers with whatever parts are available. Although headphones can be purchased...many public telephone booths become inoperative.23 Pre 1912 - Before the advent of Vacuum Tubes14 - various forms of detectors were used including: The Coherer, Lodge Muirhead Coherer, Electrolytic Detector, Carborundum Detector, Fleming Valve, Thermo Electric Detector, and Magnetic Detectors. See World Of Wireless 14 Also see Crystal Sets14 1912 - Edwin H. Armstrong6 uses feedback in an Audion - amplifiers and oscillators now practical. 1912 - April 12, RMS Titanic sinks after encountering an iceberg, the tragic loss of life prompts new international radio laws which also affect Amateur Radio, including frequency restrictions and operating procedures. See the Bill Continelli's History of Amateur Radio.5 Also see excellent article on Radio Aspects of the Titanic Disaster and the Transcript Of The Actual Radio Distress Traffic of the Titanic. Before 1912, call signs were just made up by the aspiring Amateur and it wasn't until the Radio Act of 1912 that the first licenses were issued. An HTML version of Early Radio Laws 4 is on-line. Very interesting reading as it defines DE, CQ, Operating Procedures, Morse Code of the day, and many Q Signals we still use. In 1911, Hiram Percy Maxim's assumed call was SNY. In 1912, Irving Vermilya, 1ZE, 6 received Skill Certificate No. 1, thus considered as the first licensed Amateur Radio Operator. Some sources indicate the code requirement was 5 wpm (how things go around and come around - 5 wpm now in the year 2000!!!). Written exams included essay type questions -- making a diagram of transmitting and receiving apparatus and how they worked! Also of course International and US Law questions. For opinions on the origins of Q-signals, Z-codes, X-codes, R-codes, and S-codes, DE, CQ, 33, 73, ham, lid, SOS, mayday, pan-pan, RST system, S-meter, prosigns, roger, wilco, boatanchor -- See Origins. Also each human endeavor seems to develop its own jargon, ham jargon is almost incomprehensible to others and has a rich history -- see Jargon and abbreviations. 1913 Amateurs using Audions in their receivers discovered that distances of up to 350 miles were now possible on 200 meters. 1913 - Radio Call Letter Policies 4 issued by the Department Of Commerce listed the USA with call letters of KDA to KZZ - United States, N - All to the United States, W - All to the United States. This document shows other countries as well. However, for Amateurs, "The call letters for amateur stations in the United States will be awarded by radio inspectors, each for his own district, respectively according to the following system: (a) The call will consist of three items; number of radio district; followed by two letters of the alphabet. Thus, the call of all amateur stations in New England (which comprises the first district) will be the figure "one" in Continental Morse, followed by two letters; in California (in the sixth district) the figure "six" followed by two letters; in South Carolina the figure "four" followed by two letters; in Missouri the figure "nine" followed by two letters, etc. The letters X, Y, Z, must not be used as the first of the two letters". Examples, 1AW, 6OI, 2MN. Here is a possible explanation as to how the USA got W and K, no documentation on this but sounds plausible. The USA had unofficially used N for North America (e.g., NBZ, Boston), also A for America. The letter "N" in morse is dah dit, adding a dah to N gives dah dit dah which is "K'. Letter "A" in morse is dit dah, adding a dah to A gives dit dah dah which is "W". Somewhere in this era, an informal system of prefixes evolved and Amateurs used A for Australia, B for Belgium, C for Canada, etc. This single-letter system worked until Amateur Radio spread around the world and there were too many countries for the system to accommodate. Thus, in 1927, a new system took effect using two-letters with the first letter indicating the continent (E for Europe, A for Asia, N for North America, F for Africa, etc.) and the second letter indicating the country. Stations in the 48 United States used an NU call. These were called "Intermediate Prefixes". With the advent of the Radio Act of 1912, the first Amateur Radio License is issued. The call letters assigned to the United States were NAA -NZZ, WAA - WZZ, and KDA to KZZ (KAA-KCZ was assigned to Germany and was not given to the United States until 1929). The somewhat puzzling Amateur calls like 1AW, 6OI, 2MN, etc. is explained by the fact that Amateur stations did not qualify for international call signs. At that time, the USA was divided into nine Radio Districts so Amateurs were granted calls consisting of their district number followed by letters, the first letter was from A through W, for example, 1AW, 1TS. Recognition was given to certain land stations, X as the first letter for Experimental licenses (e.g. 1XE), Y for School licenses (e.g. 9YY), and Z for Special Amateur licenses (e.g. 8ZZ). 1x3 calls (like 1AAA) was issued to Amateurs beginning in 1914. For a list of early X, Y, Z callsign issues -- see U.S. Special Land Stations: 1913-1921.4 It was not until October 1, 1928, that the W and K prefixes were assigned to Amateurs. Amateurs were relegated to 200 meters and down and shocked the world with making excellent use of these higher frequencies -- see "200 Meters and Down" by Clinton B. DeSoto. 1914 - The ARRL is organized by Hiram Percy Maxim to help relay messages, typical ranges were 25 miles. QST magazine appears in 1915. Hiram Percy Maxim was the son of Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim who invented the machine gun (the Devil's Paint Brush), father and son are often confused, although Hiram Percy Maxim did invent a weapons silencer. 1914 Frederick E. Terman 6AE is operating out of Palo Alto, CA. Later he publishes "Radio Engineering" in 1932 and the Radio Engineers's Handbook in 1943, 1955, which becomes the bible for engineers and technicians alike during the vacuum tube era. . He is also famous for persuading young Bill Hewlett and David Packard to stay in California instead of going East to start their electronics business. 1915 Ray Kellog invents the The electric ( moving coil ) loudspeaker. 23 1915 John R. Carson applied for a patent on his idea to suppress the carrier and one sideband. 25 Also See Ham Speak and Origins 1916 Amateur Station 2IB works 8AEZ Lima Ohio - 750 miles across the USA 1916 Amateur station 2PM succeeded in breaking all records by sending the first transcontinental relay message from New York to California. Several weeks later the same station and the same operators succeeded in getting signals to California, a distance of some 2,500 miles over-land17 Note that the NAA -NZZ, WAA - WZZ, and KAA to KZZ allotments are used for all broadcasting stations, aircraft, marine, police, fire, MARS and just about anything else that uses a radio. Although the N numbers on aircraft are registration numbers with the FAA, private planes use them legitimately for their "Radio Call". CB at one time had calls like KEV9506 (mine) until this was done away with. Now CB, FRS, and special low power services do not require a license. GMRS does require a license -- see CB and Family Radio Service. Amateur N call usage has been very limited until the 1970's, but some notable exceptions at N - CALLS 1917 - There were about 6,000 Amateurs. By 1917, code speed requirements were increased to 10 wpm. Amateur radio was shut down during WWI and the Navy even issued orders against receiving as well. Amateurs get back on the air in October - November, 1919. 1918 - The superheterodyne-principle is discovered by Armstrong. Equipment homebrew and manufacturers switch from direct conversion to superheterodynes around 193414 1918 - The first crystal (Rochelle salt) controlled oscillator is invented by A.M. Nicolson. 1919 Marconi and Fleming both assume strong positions on fostering "Amateur Radio". Perhaps without them the Amateur Radio Service might not exist today.16 1919 E. Kaleveld PA0XE claims that the first QSL was issued 1919 by C. D. Hoffmann, 8UX, but there is no example in existence. Nor is there a record in "Wireless World" or in any other known contemporary publication supporting the claim of 2UV to have issued the first authentic QSL card in Europe or the date it was used. "Wireless World" reproduced a post card bearing the call 8ML in the issue dated May 5, 1923, and this, according to the caption, was "one of the specially printed cards circulated in America by members of the ARRL for reporting the reception of experimental mtransmissions", and advocated the adoption in the United Kingdom of a similar type of card for acknowledging reports. 1919--President Woodrow Wilson broadcasts to American Troops in Europe, the first Presidential radio broadcast. 1919 The Alexander Bill proposed to give the government - specifically the Navy Dept - control of all transmitting, and leave amateurs out in the cold. There are articles about this in about this in the Jan, Feb, and Mar, 1919, "Electrical Experimentor". Gernsback claims to have killed the Bill and so does the ARRL, per the 1936 "Radio Amateur's Handbook", claims that Hiram Percy Maxim killed it with a single handed job of personal lobbying in Washington. Perhaps both did. 1920 to 1980’s Don Wallace12 W6AM. DX Hall of Fame and early pioneer of Amateur radio. Don has probably done more to promote DX operation and encourage new operators than any other individual. Famous for his antenna farms in Rolling Hills on the Palos Verdes peninsula. 1920 The Radio Amateurs Callbook (RAC, Flying Horse) is published. International QSL bureaus are establihed. 1920 October 27th -- first licensed Broadcast Station KDKA, Pittsburg, PA. For the History of Broadcast Radio -- also has a list of the first 100 BC Stations. Another is Broadcasting History Links. 1920 The Ladies Of Early Radio6 Perhaps the first woman to be both an announcer and an engineer was Eunice Randall. At the age of 19, she was broadcasting on 1XE, a Boston-area radio station owned by AMRAD. Soon after, she was deeply involved with both professional and amateur radio, building her own ham station, and ultimately became one of the first women in New England to hold the first class license (her ham calls were 1CDP, and later W1MPP). 1921 - ARRL membership numbers 6,000 transmitting members. 1921 - Practical horn loudspeakers were developed. 1921 - The Transatlantic Tests Paul Godley 2ZE (a prominent U.S. amateur) traveled to England with US equipment and operating from Ardrossan, a coast town near Glasgow, Scotland. At 00.50 GMT on December 9th 1921, he identified signals from 1BCG located at Greenwich, Connecticut. Two days later the historic first complete message transmitted by U.S. amateurs and received in Europe on the "short waves" (actually 230 metres) heralded a new era. The message read: No.1 de 1BCG. Words 12. New York December 11 1921. To Paul Godley Ardrossan Scotland. Hearty Congratulations. Signed Burghard Inman Grinan Armstrong Amy Cronkhite. In the summer of 1922 amateurs in France began to get licences and Leon Deloy 8AB President of the Radio Club of Nice in southern France started hearing British stations. After a visit to the U.S.A. Deloy was able to improve his equipment and on November 27th 1923 he contacted Fred Schnell 1MO of West Hartford, Connecticut for the first ever 2-way QSO across the Atlantic. They used the "useless" wavelengths around 100 metres16 1922 Amateur Radio License Requirements for the two grades of licenses, Amateur first grade and Amateur second grade, were the same except the second grade license was issued only where an applicant could not be personally examined by a US Radio Inspector for the district. Applicants were required to demonstrate technical expertise in adjusting and operating equipment, and a knowledge of International Conventions and US laws . The code requirement was ability to transmit and receive in the Continental Morse at least 10 words per minute and recognize important signal usage of the day (distress and "keep out" signals). General amateur stations were restricted to 200 meters and down with input power not to exceed 1 kW. Amateurs within five nautical miles of a military station were restricted to 500 Watts.11 1922 Carson describes FM and concludes it is inferior to AM, a decade later Armstrong places a new perspective on the matter. 1923 - Patent granted for SSB. Also See Ham Speak and Origins 1923 Us Bureau Of Standards suggests the use of frequency instead of wavelength. 1923 - WWV began broadcasting time and frequency information from its radio station. 1923, November 27, the impossible happened. Leon Deloy (8AB), of Nice, France worked (on 110 m CW) USA stations: Fred H. Schnell (1MO, Connecticut) and John L. Reinartz (1QP/1XAL, after - W3RB).Four thousand miles - DX For Sure. 1923, from "200 Meters and Down," by Clinton DeSoto, page 85. "It was expected, then, that every effort would be bent toward putting over the fourth transatlantic tests, to be held from December 21st (1923) to January 10th (1924). The widest possible publicity was accorded these tests on both sides of the Atlantic. To facilitate the international identification, an initial letter was assigned to each country to be used by the amateurs of that country ahead of their calls. The United States was given "U"; an American station would sign itself u1AA, for example. For each of the countries participating in the transatlantics: Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, United States and New Zealand (z). Cuba was assigned the phonetic Q, Argentina the phonetic R. South Africa was arbitrarily given O." These were not official prefixes assigned by any authority, but an informal convention adopted to avoid confusion when transoceanic communications were first becoming "routinely" possible. Later an additional prefix letter was adopted indicating the continent, "N" being North America, so "1AW" would be "Nu1AW". 1924 - Quartz Crystals. H.S. Shaw introduces the amateur radio community to quartz crystal control of radio transmitters and Hams were the first sizable commercial market for crystals. See in-depth article on The Influence of Amateur Radio on the Development of the Commercial Market for Quartz Piezoelectric Resonators. The use of crystals yielded a very clean '9x' note. Amateurs begin building Superheterodyne receivers. 1924, Oct 18 A station in England G2SZ Cecil Goyder worked a New Zealand station Z4AA Frank Bell, a distance of almost 12,000 miles. In 1924, Amateurs received new bands at 80, 40, 20, and 5 meters. Spark transmission was prohibited on the new bands. By 1926, Spark transmission was prohibited for use by Amateurs. The existence of the ionosphere (first proposed by Oliver Heaviside) is confirmed by the English physicist, Edward V.Appelton in 1924. Prior to that the term "ether" was thought to explain the magic. 1925 - Heater type vacuum tubes made possible the first all electric receivers. Dynamic loudspeakers appeared 1925 - International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) is founded. Dedicated to organizing and providing representation of the interests of Amateur Radio, nationally and internationally, for the better mutual use of the radio spectrum among radio amateurs throughout the world, to develop Amateur Radio worldwide, and to successfully interact with the agencies responsible for regulating and allocating radio frequencies. An example of the IARU work is the NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Network. In 1926, Brandon Wentworth, 6OI, achieved confirmation for working all of the continents. 1926 Hidetsugu Yagi and Shintaro Uda invent the "beam" antenna array. 1927--The Radio Act of 1927 creates the Federal Radio Commission. (The Federal Communications Commission came later in 1934). The 10 meter band is opened to Amateurs. 1927-1982 KV4AA Dick Spenceley12 in the U.S. Virgin Islands provides thousands of contacts over the years. He was inducted into the CQ DX Hall of Fame in March, 1969. 1927 - the Union (forerunner of (ITU) allocated frequency bands to the various radio services existing at the time (fixed, maritime and aeronautical mobile, broadcasting, amateur and experimental) to ensure greater efficiency of operation in view of the increase in the number of services using frequencies and the technical peculiarities of each service13 Amateur bands are established near 160, 80, 40, 20, 10, and 5 Meters, power limits to be set by each nation, and the international intermediates prefixes are abandoned. 1928 May -- ARRL sponsors what is probably the first organized contest dubbed "The 1928 International Relay party". There about 17,000 licensed Amateurs. 1928 - Paul M. Segal, W9EEA, writes a "Suggested Amateur's Code". In the USA today, the government's official position on the purpose of Amateur Radio is defined in Part 97 of the FCC Rules and Regulations -- See Basis and Purpose of The Amateur Radio Service. 1928 - The Federal Radio Commission announces that all old licenses issued by the Department Of Commerce will be terminated on August 31, 1928. Applications under the new licensing system must be submitted no later than July 31, otherwise the applicant must submit to re-examination. Beginning October 1, 1928, the new W and K prefixes were assigned to Amateurs. 1928 - As the transmitting range of amateur stations increased, Hams naturally worked DX and it became necessary to have international call signs, international prefix structure is set by the International Radiotelegraph Conference of 1927-1928. This call sign structure lasted for the rest of the 1920's and the 1930's. Stations in the 48 States had a 1x2 or 1x3 call sign beginning with W and containing a numeral from 1 to 9. Stations in Alaska, Hawaii, or other US Possessions had a K prefix. See Pre WWII K calls. The zero numeral was not available. Boundaries were considerably different than today - for example the western sections of New York and Pennsylvania were in the 8th call district. See Old District boundaries 4 Note that the suffixes beginning with X was reserved for experimental stations. Eventually, the FCC relaxed their position on the 1x2 and 1x3 X suffix calls, but the 2x3 call signs (such as KB6XYZ) are still reserved for experimental use. W#X** calls were also portable calls - a separate authorization was needed for portable operation and their suffixes began with X. Apparently there was a very limited "vanity call" program - if a ham wanted a 1X2 call and met several criteria, such a call would be issued. If a ham moved to a different call area, he/she had to get a new callsign that matched the district of the new location. Unlike today, you could always tell where a ham station was located by the callsign. At one time in the 1920's and 30's, college club stations were issued W#Yx calls. So W6YX (1922) is Stanford, W9YB (1920) is Purdue, etc. Many of these are still extant -- try QRZ.com for your college. 1929 - Screen grid introduced into the vacuum tube. Pentodes came a year later Early to mid 1930's -- From W3HF - During a short period of time in the early- to mid-30s, 1x4 callsigns were issued for "permanent" portable stations. They were of the form W#ZZxx (e.g., W2ZZAF). They were only issued for a short time, first appearing in late 1931. (They were not in the June 1931 government callbook, but are listed in the Fall 1931 Flying Horse.) It looks to me like the government was issuing W#ZZx calls (1x3s) to portable stations, and went to 1x4s after they used up the 26 available 1x3s. The last ones seem to have expired by 1936-7. (There are only a few in my Spring 36 callbook.) From W3HF January 1930, QST magazine announces Twenty-Meter Phone Authorization. 1932 - At the 1932 Madrid Conference, the Union decided to combine the International Telegraph Convention of 1865 and the lnternational Radiotelegraph Convention of 1906 to form the International Telecommunication convention. It also decided to change its name and was known as from 1 January 1934 as the International Telecommunication Union in order to reaffirm the full scope of its responsibilities, i.e. all forms of communication, by wire, radio, optical systems or other electromagnetic systems.11 1933 First Field Day Contest. 1933 Astatic Crystal Microphones introduced. 1933 and before. Up to 1933, there were at least 1,200 companies producing radios of some kind. 1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt starts presidential radio broadcasts. The Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communications Commission. Amateur Licenses are reorganized into Class A, Class B, and Class C. In 1936 there about 46,000 licensed Amateurs. Class A- 13 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Basic and advanced written tests on theory and regulations. At least one year of experience as a Class B or C licensee. Exam given at FCC examination points only. All amateur privileges.8 Class B- 13 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Basic written test on theory and regulations. Exam given at FCC examination points only. All amateur privileges except 75 and 20 meter phone were granted with a Class B license.8 Class C - Same as Class B, except tests given by mail.8 Licenses terms were 5 years, and renewable. Renewal required that the operator certify that he/she could meet all of the current requirements for licensing. Also, renewal required that the license holder make least three contacts on the amateur bands in the six months prior to the renewal application - and the contacts had to be on CW, not voice. All licensees had to be US citizens. If you lived within 125 miles of a quarterly examining point, you had to appear in person for the exam. If you lived more than 125 miles from an examining point, or had a permanent physical disability that prevented you from going to an exam session, or were on active military duty, the Class C exam could be taken by mail. This was monitored by a volunteer examiner (another ham or a commercial licensee).8 An accurate log of all transmissions had to be kept. Mobile and portable operation were allowed, but if a ham wanted to operate away from his fixed station, and would be gone for a period of more than 48 hours, written notice of the mobile/portable operation had to be sent to the FCC. Before 1949, mobile operation was limited to the ham bands above 25 MHz. Mobile and portable stations had to identify themselves on the air as "mobile" or "portable".8 An accurate log of all transmissions had to be kept. Mobile and portable operation were allowed, but if a ham wanted to operate away from his fixed station, and would be gone for a period of more than 48 hours, written notice of the mobile/portable operation had to be sent to the FCC. Before 1949, mobile operation was limited to the ham bands above 25 MHz. Mobile and portable stations had to identify themselves on the air as "mobile" or "portable".8 In this era, crystal controlled operation was used (mandatory ??) and a station calling CQ would say calling CQ and tuning -- indicating he/she would tune up and down the band for a response and it was common if not usual to work another station on a different frequency. Crystals were expensive, so long CQs and replies to CQs were common, because most hams tuned the entire band looking for replies. Today you can still hear the OT's --- CQ CQ CQ from WZ9OOO calling CQ for any station , bye for a call and tuning. (and the new guys wonder why they would be tuning - VFO's and transceivers being the norm). 1935 Russ Hall describes tropospheric refraction for the 5M band explaining why signals might exceed line-of-sight range. 1936 Edwin H. Armstrong creates a classic paper on Frequency Modulation. His analysis of a noise free high fidelity system is the basis of our FM broadcast today. 1936 - 56 Mcs - G5BY was the first European to span the Atlantic on 56MHz when his signals were heard by W2HXD17 1937 The ARRL introduces the DXCC Program. Discontinued during WWII and started all over again after the war. In 1938, Amateurs lose the exclusive use of 40 meters, to be shared with SWL Broadcasters. The FCC grants two new bands, 2 1/2 meters (112 Mc) and 1 1/4 meters (224 Mc). 1938 - The distance record for 56MHz (the old 5 Metre band) was held by W1EYM and W6DNS for a 2500 mile contact on July 22,1938. For receiving he used a rhombic. 240 feet on a leg 17 1939 The Cubical Quad. Clarence C. Moore, W9LZX, tackles the problem of Ecuador S.A.station HCJB. The missionary staion had used a gigantic four element parasitic beam at their 10KW, 25 meter station. Totally unexpected, was the effect of operating the high-Q beam antenna in the thin evening air of Quito. The 10,000 foot thin altitude caused gigantic corona discharges from the tips of the driven element and directors. The ends of the antenna dripped molten metal. Moore designs an antenna with no ends that could discharge. This concept evolved into designing a folded dipole with the loop pulled open. This loop later became the basis of the Quad design. THE WAR YEARS From Jeffrey Herman, KH6O This will give you some background on amateur radio's CD communication effort during WWII:

What follows is a summary of the War Emergency Radio Service (WERS). Information was gathered primarily from "Fifty Years of ARRL," an historical record of the League and amateur radio.

First a bit of background: In 1939 there were 51,000 US hams. In September of that year war came to Europe. Of the 250 DXCC countries, 121 of them immediately went off the air (including Canada and the UK). The US maintained the strictest sense of neutrality. This was re-enforced by the ARRL, which came up with a neutrality code for amateurs. Hams were asked by the ARRL to voluntarily abide by the code, which they did en masse; this earned additional support for the amateur radio service in governmental circles.

In an effort to streamline its operation in preparation for possible US involvement in the war, the FCC at this time introduced multiple-choice tests.

By June 1940, the US invoked the Telecommunications Convention prohibiting US amateurs from contacting hams elsewhere; at the same time all portable and mobile operation below 56 MHz was banned (except the ARRL Field Day). At the request of the ARRL, the ban was modified to allow the League's Emergency Corps to continue work on the lower frequencies for training and drills. All licensees were required to send a set of fingerprints, a photo, and proof of citizenship to the FCC.

The FCC needed 500 radio operators to man listening and direction-finding stations -- they asked the League's assistance -- the League put out the word in QST and within days of that issue, the FCC had the 500 operators it needed. (It's important to note for the duration of the war, the military and government always turned to the ARRL when radio operators and equipment were needed; the League would put out the call in QST and over W1AW, and the quotas were always filled in short order. Of the 51,000 hams mentioned above, 25,000 enlisted, and 25,000 remained at home to teach radio and electronics, serve in the communications industry, and serve in WERS.)

By June of 1941, tubes and other components were in short supply; each time the military asked hams to donate parts, they were flooded with whatever was needed. Many US hams were recruited for a Civilian Technical Corps to operate and repair British radar equipment. Also at this time, the Office of Civil Defense, at the offering of the ARRL, created a CD communication system with ham radio as its backbone (this relationship between between CD and ARS exists even today). Because the Army needed the 80 meter amateur band, the FCC gave hams 40 meter phone privileges for the first time, to make up for the loss of 80 (prior to that, 40m was a CW- only band.)

December 7, 1941, the US entered the war; hams were immediately ordered to go QRT. By special FCC order, the ARRL's W1AW was to continue its transmissions.

At the request of the ARRL, the War Emergency Radio Service (WERS) was created in June 1942. The Government Printing Office was inundated so the rules for WERS appeared only in QST. At the League's insistence, the FCC continued to offer amateur licensing throughout the war; this to provide standards for WERS applicants, and more importantly, to enable amateurs to prove their ability before enlisting in the armed services.

The purpose of WERS was to provide communications in connection with air raid protection, and to allow operators to continue their role in providing communications during times of natural disaster as they'd been doing as hams (WERS was not part of the amateur service, but was manned by hams; non-amateurs were permitted to serve in WERS in low level positions). WERS was administered by local CD offices; WERS licenses were issued to communities, not individuals.

WERS operated on the former amateur 2 1/2 meter band (112-116 MHz) and on higher frequencies. Again, WERS was not part of the amateur service but hams were asked by OCD to join -- and they flocked to it. Until the end of the war, if a ham wanted to operate he could only do so as a WERS operator. QST fully supported WERS by publishing technical articles on building WERS gear and modifying existing 2 1/2 meter ham equipment so as to meet the rigid WERS standards. Nearly every issues of QST contained WERS articles - two examples:

Oct. 1942: WERS operating procedures; how to train auxiliary (non-amateur) operators; and Feb. 1943: OCD's plan for selecting frequencies.

A sample of WERS operations: May and July 1942 -- communications support for flooding of the Mississippi and Lake Erie; 1944 communications support after an Atlantic Coast hurricane; 1945 -- Western NY snowstorm early in the year, spring flooding, and a September Florida hurricane.

After VJ Day in 1945, hams were given authorization to begin operating again on the 2 1/2 meter band, on a shared basis with WERS. WERS was terminated in mid-November. By the 15th of that month, the FCC released bands at 10, 5, and 2 meters for amateur use. The post-war era of amateur radio had commenced. Thanks Jeffrey Herman, KH6O ----------------------------- 1940 - With the advent of the War in Europe, by June 1940, the US invoked the Telecommunications Convention prohibiting US amateurs from contacting hams outside the USA. Also all portable and mobile operation below 56 MHz was banned. All licensees were required to send a set of fingerprints, a photo, and proof of citizenship to the FCC. As the USA enters WWII in 1941, Amateur Radio Operation is suspended. Amateurs form a valuable pool of trained technicians and operators and are in high demand by the Military. By 1942, there was about 15,000 Amateurs in the US Military. But there is a WERS10 (War Emergency Radio Service) on 2 1/2 meters (around 2,000 Amateur Stations participated). 1941 - 1945. Skilled code operators on either side could distinguish the enemy operators by the CW swing or style of 'fist", thus in many cases identifying the ship or station location. Post war records indicate the Japanese were monitoring US Navy VHF from long distances -- VHF was thought to be limited to line of sight. Code breakers in England in a massive project "Ultra" could recognize German operators from their CW swing, cliques and habits. Indeed it is reported that the British developed the first programmable computer, containing 1500 vacuum tubes, to break the German codes. This preceded the American EINIAC Electronic Computer of 1945. 1939 - 1945 World War II movies are full of radio equipment of the time, look for the National, Hallicrafters, RME's etc. 1942 Navajo Code Talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. Their unique code language totally confounded the Japanese Radio Operators. 1942 British mathematician and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clark suggests using satellites to relay radio signals about 20 years before the first satellite, Sputnik I was placed in orbit! On November 15, 1945, amateurs are allowed back on the air -- but only on 10 and 2 meters. By 1946, Amateurs get most of the bands back except for 160 Meters, this was used by LORAN and other services and was not available to Amateurs. Over the next several decades 160M would be reopened, a little at a time. 1945 - onwards - Favorite Radio Catalogs of the day -- every Ham had the latest copy: Allied Radio, Lafayette, Burnstein- Applebee, Concord, Newark, World Radio Labs, Gotham Antennas, Fort Orange Radio, Radio Shack, Olson, Amateur Electronic Supply, Associated Radio, Digi-Key, Jameco, Poly-Paks, Fair Radio Sales, Dick Smith Electronics (Australian company), Heathkit, as well as Eitel-McCollough, Sylvania and RCA tube and design manuals. And the very first piece of amateur radio related mail that every new ham received...... a packet of QSL card samples and a catalog from "The Little Print Shop!" 1945 - onwards - The Candy Stores. In San Francisco - San Jose, one made pilgrimage to Quements, Sunnyvale Electronics, Red Johnson's and HRO. In New York there was Cortland street and Canal Street, where New York's famous Radio Row was located -- now beneath the World Trade Center. Also nearby Chambers St and Warren St, Harrison Radio used to be in that area also. In New Jersey, Vetsalco. In Chicago -- R&W and BC (Ben Cohen) Electronics as well as Newark Electronics and Allied Radio. For Los Angeles there was Figart's, Midway, on Venice Boulevard, and there was a row of surplus stores topped by THE electronics war surplus store of all time "Sam's Surplus, and of course Henry Radio See RadioDan. In the greater Boston area, John Meshna, Jr.'s surplus emporium and Eli Heffron & Sons. In Albany N.Y., Fort Orange Radio owned by Uncle Dave Marks, World Radio Labs in Council Bluffs Iowa, Fair Radio Sales in Lima Ohio, Lafayette and Radio Shack in Wilmington, Delaware. In Tokyo Akihabara, In San Diego, Coast Electric, Ashe & India, Shanks & Wright. In Detroit, M.N. Duffy, Reno Radio, RSE Ham Shack, Lafayette Radio, also surplus heavens, Silverstine's, and Lambrecht's. In the Washington, DC area the "Electronic Equipment Bank", better known as EEB, was the local Candy Store. In Waterbury, Ct, Bond Radio, later Hatry Electronics. Burnstein- Applebee in several locals .Also see Catalogs and Boatanchors. 1945 Parts manufacturers were Tubes: RCA, Amperex, Continental, Chatham, Eitel-McCullough, Electrons, GE, Heintz & Kaufman, Hytron, National, Raytheon, Sylvania, Taylor, Tungsol, United, Victoreen, Westinghouse, Western Electric. Rectifiers: Federal, Mallory, Sarkes Tarzian, Clarostst, Amperite. Meters: Triplett, Pyramid, Emico, Simpson. Controls and Resistors: Mallory, IRC, Clarostat, Centralab, Ohmite, Chicago Telephone, Sprague, Continental. Capacitors (condensers): Mallory, Cornell-Dubilier, Aerovox, Sprague, Erie, Centralab, Sangamo, Bud, E.F. Johnson, JFD, Hammarlund, Cardwell, Barker-Williamson, Transformers: Stancor, Thordarson, Merit, Altec-Lansing, Peerless, Chicago, UTC, Superior, Raytheon, Sola, Regency. 1945 Just plain Radios included: Admiral, Airline, American Bosch, Andrea, Arvin, Atwater Kent, Audiola, Belmont, Capehart, Case, Colonial, Columbia, Crosley, Delco, Detrola, Dewald, Echophone, Edison, Emerson, Fada, Fairbanks-Morse, Farnsworth, Firestone, Freed-Eisemann, Garod, GE, General, Gilfillen, Goldentone, Grebe, Grunow, Gulbransen, Howard, Imperial, Jesse French, Kadette, Kennedy, Lyric (Wurlitzer), Majestic, McMurdo Silver, Midwest, Motorola, Northern Electric, Oriole, Oxford, Pacific, Packard Bell, Paramount, Philco, Pilot, Radiobar, RCA, RCA/Canada, Scott, Sentinel, Silver-Marshall, Silvertone, Simplex, Sonora, Sparton, Stewart-Warner, Stromberg-Carlson, Tiffany Tone, Travler, Troy, Truetone, US Radio, Wells Gardner, Westinghouse, Wilcox-Gay, Zenith. Lots of "All-American Fives" where the heater voltages added up to 117 Volts. Car radios had vibrators to develop plate voltages -- coupla hundred volts running around in your dash board! As for TV's too many to mention but Mad Man Muntz stripped out the fat in current TV designs and were noted for being built with few parts and cheap cabinets, unlike the big RCAs or Zeniths which had 30 or more tubes and elaborate designs. Crazy but the Muntz sets worked pretty well - as long as you could see the TV Tower!! 1945 Coaxial cable in wide use. Although coaxial cable had been around since the 30's, surplus cable was ready available and WWII did much to make coax practical. Prior to coax, ladder line was common. BNC connectors are used -- "bayonet Niell-Concelman" named for the inventors. 1945 - Amateurs are allotted the 6 meter band 50-54 Mc. The 2 1/2 meter band is moved to 144-148 Mc. With the exception of some FM, all phone operation is with AM. 1945 6 Meters. Pioneers utilized CW, AM, and experimented with NBFM. Antennas included rhombics, corner reflectors, folded dipoles, and of course Yagi's. The first 2-way QSO involving "skip" was reported to have taken place on April 23, 1946 when W1LSN of Exeter, NH worked W9DWU of Minneapolis, MN. This and many other contacts were made on that night via a combination of aurora and sporadic-E. The distance of this contact was 1100 miles. 1945 CQ Magazine is published. 1945 Rhombic Antennas, although rhombics had been in use for years by broadcasters, Don Wallace, W6AM, did much of the pioneer work for Amateur radio rhombics.. 1946 The Northern California DX Club (NCDXC), one of the oldest DX Clubs, is founded. In San Diego, California, the SDDXC is also established. Many other DX and Contest clubs. 1946 - Yasme Dxpeditions By Lloyd Colvin (W6KG - King George) and Iris Colvin W6QL (Queen Lady) - many Dxpeditions over the years into the 1990’s. 1946 - Amateurs make the first Meteor Scatter contacts. On the night of October 9, 1946, the night of the Giacobind-Zinner Comet, and its associated meteors, Amateurs made their first two-way contacts via meteor scatter on the 6M band, the propagation lasted 3 hours with reports from the east and midwest part of the USA. However it was not until Oct 22, 1953 that a 2M two way contact was made between W4HHK and W2UK. Transoceanic 6M contacts are made in late 1946. After World War II, about 1946, the tenth call district was added. For the current USA Ham Districts - see USA Ham Map. Except for the redrawing of the boundaries, things remained the same until 1951. There were about 60,000 U.S. amateurs in 1946. Date not certain but after WWII, the FCC issues "military base calls" such as K9NBH and K9NCG (Treasure Island Naval Training Center, CA); KH6MC for the Marine Corps station on Oahu; K9NBH, Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois. K calls are issued throughout the pacific see OLD PREFIXES 1947 - Amateurs lose the top 300 kc of he 10M band (29.7--30), and relinquish the 14.35--14.4 Mc on 20 meters. However the 15 meters (21.0-- 21.45 Mc) is planned. Also the FCC allows Amateurs to use the 11 meter band (26.96--27.23 Mc) on a shared basis with other services. 1947 W1AW AND W2GDG conduct narrow band FM tests and the FCC authorizes a one year trial on some bands. 1947 - W1FH is awarded the first "modern" DXCC membership for mixed and phone. 1947 VK5KL makes a two way contact with W7ACS/KH6 in Hawaii - 9000 km, See 50 years on 50 Megs. 22 1947 - The DXCC country count for this year was 257. Gatti-Hallicrafters Africa Dxpedition - Nine Month Tour. QCWA is founded. The Quarter Century Wireless Association was organized to promote friendship and cooperation among Amateur Radio operators who were licensed at least a quarter century ago. The Old Old Timers Club was founded in 1947 by a group of amateurs who had played a part in laying the foundations of electronic communications. 1948 William Shockley invents the transistor. Within 10 to 20 years, the transition from tubes to solid state occurs. No longer will your cat want to sleep on the TV set! 1948 The. Military Amateur Radio System established, later renamed the Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS). Forerunners of this system existed such as the Army Amateur Radio System (AARS) organized in November, 1925. MARS is a Department of Defense sponsored program, established as a separately managed and operated program by the Army , Navy, and Air Force. The program consists of licensed amateur radio operators who are interested in military communications on a local, national, and international basis as an adjunct to normal communications. For MARS callsigns see MARS CALLS. For the History of MARS 1948 - VP7NG Bahamas - One of the first DX Expeditions. By W4NNN & Others in the 14th ARRL DX Competition. CQ sponsors its first contest -- The CQ WW Contest. June 1949, Citizens Radio Service was established with frequencies in the 460-470 Mc band.

1949, the US amateur allocations in Mc8 3.5-4 CW 3.85-4 Phone, Class A only 220-225 CW/Phone 7-7.3 CW 420-450 CW/Phone (50 watt power limit) 14-14.35 CW 14.2-14.35 Phone, Class A only 1215-1295 CW/Phone 26.96-27.23 CW/Phone (shared service) 2300-2450 CW/Phone 28-29.7 CW 28.5-29.7 Phone 5250-5650 CW/Phone 50-54 CW/Phone 10000-10500 CW/Phone 144-148 CW/Phone 21000-22200 CW/Phone 1950 -- US Amateur population is near 90,000 1950's -1960's Amateurs are active with Radio Teletype (RTTY) and take advantage of the surplus market for equipment. Also see RTTY is not dead but I still remember. 1951 CONELRAD10[CONtrol of ELectronic RADiation] system established by President Truman. See Amateur Requirement Also See Conelrad.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 1951, the FCC eliminated the old Class A, Class B, and Class C licenses, and added three new classes of licenses Novice, Technician, and Amateur Extra. Now the license classes were Novice, Technician, Conditional, General, and Amateur Extra Class licenses. Advanced licenses apparently came later. Novices could get a one year, non-renewable license, which had a special 2x3 call sign with the letter N following the W, e.g., WN2ODC, WN6ISB. With an upgrade, the N was dropped. The Technician Class is created for experimentation, not communication, and has privileges only above 220 Mc. Conditional licenses were the same as general but given by mail, provided the applicant lived far enough away from the nearest FCC office. Novice - 5 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Simplified written test on theory and regulations. No experience required or allowed - anyone who had previously held any class of amateur license was ineligible for a Novice. Extremely limited CW privileges in parts of the 80 and 11 meter bands, plus CW and phone privileges on part of 2 meters. 75 (or was it 50) watts maximum power input, crystal control only. One year license term, nonrenewable. Exams given at FCC examination points or by mail if conditions for mail exams were met. The Novice was intended to be a sort of "learner's permit" to help new hams get started.8 Technician - 5 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Basic written test on theory and regulations - same written test as General class. All amateur privileges above 220 MHz. Exams given at FCC examination points or by mail if conditions for mail exams were met. The Technician was meant for those who were more interested in VHF/UHF experimentation than HF operating. The proposed Class D license was implemented as the Technician.8 General (old Class B) - 13 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Basic written test on theory and regulations. Exam given at FCC examination points only. All amateur privileges EXCEPT 75 and 20 meter phone.8 Conditional (old Class C) - Same as General, except tests given by mail.8 Advanced (old Class A) - 13 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Basic and advanced written tests on theory and regulations. At least one year of experience as a General or Conditional licensee. Exam given at FCC examination points only. All amateur privileges. The Advanced was to be phased out and replaced by the Extra, and no new Advanced class tests were given after 1952. Holders of Advanced class licenses could renew and modify them indefinitely.8 Extra - 20 wpm code test, sending and receiving. Basic and higher level written tests on theory and regulations. At least two years of experience as a General, Conditional or Advanced licensee. Exam given at FCC examination points only. All amateur privileges.8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1951 W6SAI, W8AH and others are among the first of the post war major DXpeditions, Andorra and Monaco. W6SAI, Bill Orr inspired new and veteran hams alike with his consistent encouragement and technical expertise. Amateur radio has benefited from numerous Bill Orr publications, many on Antennas - written in a very practical style. For many years W6SAI wrote the monthly "Radio Fundamentals" column in CQ magazine. 1952--The FCC permits phone operation on 40 meters, previously CW only. The 15 meter band is opened. The Advanced Class is withdrawn, although present holders can continue to renew. The retest requirement for Conditionals was dropped in 1952. 1952 RACES founded, the Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES) is a public service provided by a reserve (volunteer) communications group within government agencies in times of extraordinary need. 1952 - 1956 SSB was making inroads on the ham bands.8 Central Electronics offered SSB gear in 1952. The Hallicrafters HT-30 was produced in 1954, The Collins KWS-1 transmitter was offered in 1955. So although perhaps not popular in the early 50's, the gear was available. Also See Ham Speak and Origins Early 1953 -- the FCC made a surprise about-face and announced that all amateur privileges would be granted to all holders of General, Conditional, Advanced and Extra class licenses. Novices got a place on 40 M. Around 1953, the FCC was running out of W 1x3 call signs. So1x3 K calls began to be issued in the 48 states, with US possessions receiving 2x2 and 2x3 K calls. Novice calls in the 48 states continued to have the N (such as KN4LOD) which was dropped after upgrading. Had some reports of reissued calls about this time. 1953 Japanese VHF History A must read for VHFers.21 March 25, 1954 -- the first USA color TV sets made for consumers started rolling off the assembly line. Because they were initially too expensive and there was little color programming available, it took more than a decade for color television to become a household fixture. The RCA CT-100, introduced in March 1954, was the first mass-produced all-electronic color TV receiver. It's $1,000 price tag would be equivalent to about $6,000 in today's dollars. 1954 - VQ4ERR receives the first phone WAZ award. 1954 The Novice and Technician licenses became so popular that the FCC made them available by mail only. 50 kHz of 20 meters was lost to other services. and the distance requirement for a Conditional license was reduced to 75 miles. In 1955, Technicians are given 6 meter privileges. By 1956 there were over 140,000 US hams, and growth was exceeding 10,000 per year 160 meters was returned to hams in a very limited fashion. There was a complex chart describing amateur privileges, depending on geographic location. There were power limits based on location and time of day, ranging from 1000 watts to 25 watts. It was confusing, but better than losing the band altogether. 1955 - 1963 Danny Weil Dxpeditions - Starts from England and in 8 years gives contacts from 30 different countries including -- Canal Zone, Tahiti, Canton Island, Nauru, Solomon Is./Guadalcanal, Buck Isl/Tortola, Br.Virg.Is., Madeira, Aves, Buck Island, St. Kitts, Antigua, Montserrat, Anguilla, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Kingstown, Grenada, Trinidad, Jamaica, Baja Nuevo, Galapagos, Marquesa, Nukuhiva, Tahiti, S. Cook, Raratonga The US amateur allocations in 19568 1.8-1.825 1.875-1.925 1.975-2 CW/Phone (Subject to geographic and power limitations) (Technicians had all privileges above 30 MHz except 144-148) 3300-3500 CW/Phone 3.5-4 CW 3.8-4 Phone Novices 3.7-3.75 CW 50-54 CW/Phone 5650-5925 CW/Phone 7-7.3 CW 7.2-7.3 Phone Novices 7.15-7.2 CW 144-148 CW/Phone Novices 145-147 CW/Phone 10000-10500 CW/Phone 14-14.35 CW 14.2-14.3 Phone 220-225 CW/Phone 21000-22000 CW/Phone 21-21.45 CW 21.25-21.45 Phone Novices 21.1-21.25 CW 420-450 CW/Phone (50 watt power limit) All above 30000 CW/Phone 26.96-27.23 CW/Phone 1215-1300 CW/Phone 28-29.7 CW 28.5-29.7 Phone 2300-2450 CW/Phone About 1956-1958, the FCC started to run out of 1x3 K and W calls in some districts and began re-issuing expired W and K calls before going to the WA's. For example, when K2ZZZ was issued, they went back and re-issued some expired W2 and K2 calls. Up until this point, a normal sequential call sign was always a 'first issue'. At some point, 1958 or so, perhaps when all available expired calls had been re-issued, the FCC began issuing 2x3 WA calls, then WB as necessary. Novices were given WV instead of WN. The V would change to an A or B upon upgrading. A few years later, the FCC reverted back to the Novice N scheme. With the uneven amateur population in the ten call districts, it took time for the K calls to run out in the some areas. In some districts, K calls were issued as late as 1964. 1957 W6NLZ contacts KH6UK via tropospheric ducting. Two years later, they achieve contact on 220Mhz. From 1957 to 1962 there existed a set of regulations commonly referred to by hams as Conelrad10 Hams were required to monitor a local broadcast station at intervals of 10 minutes or less whenever they were operating, and if the broadcast station went off the air due to an emergency, hams had to leave the air as well. In September, 1958, the Class D Citizens Band is opened and Amateurs lost the shared use of 11 meters. USA Amateur population is about 160,000. Late 1950'S -- Log Periodic Antennas -- the ARRL Antenna Book Chapter 10, written by L.B. Cebik, W4RNL, attributes the LPDA to D.E. Isbell at the University of Illinois in the late 1950s. In 1959, Technicians get the middle part of 2 meters (145-147 Mc). 1960 - first two-way EME contact on 1296 MHz is achieved. See Earth-Moon-Earth Communications. 1960 - 1970 Gus Browning12 (W4BPD) The first DXer elected to the Dx Hall of Fame. Operated from over 100 countries. Dxpeditions included --- Seychelles, Somalia, Monaco, Aldabra, Cosmolédo, Assumption, Chagos, Burundi, Ruanda, Gough, Tristan da Cunha, Bouvet, Basutoland, Swaziland, Mauritius, Reunion, Juan de Nova, Comores, Madagascar, Tromelin, Glorieuses, Europa, Somaliland, Kamaran, Yemen, Aden, Bhutan, Tibet, Sikkim, Nepal, Afghanistan, Kuria-Muria, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand, China, Lebanon, Jordan, Faroer, Luxembourg, Togo, Dahomey/Benin, Mauretania, Volta, Mali, Venezuela, Senegal, Gambia, Rodriquez, Bertaut Reef, Etoile Cay, Boudeuse Cay, Kenia, Comores, Geyser Reef, Farquhar, Agalega, Blenheim Reef, Chagos, Aldabra, Geyser Reef. Gus learned to write left handed so he could send CW with the right. 1961 - December 12. First amateur satellite, Oscar1, is shot into orbit. 1961 - Present OH2BH Martti Laine one of the most accomplished DXers of our time. Only person to be elected to both the DX Hall of Fame and Contest Hall of Fame. Among his many DX operations were: 3CØAN, OJØMR, SØRASD, 4J1FS, BV9P, BS7H, P5/OH2AM, 6T1YP, ST2FF/STØ, JY8BH, ZA1A, XZ1A, 3D2AM, ZS9Z/ZS1, and XF4L. He has visited more than 115 countries. 1962 June 2, OSCAR II was launched. For a complete history of Amateur Radio Satellites and details of operation, see the AMSAT pages. 1962 - 1982 Geoff Watts12 only non-ham elected to the to the CQ DX Hall of Fame. Eminent British short-wave listener Geoff Watts was the founder and long-term editor (1962-1982) of The DX News Sheet, and in 1964 Geoff Watts created the IOTA (Islands-On-The-Air) Award. 1962 - 1967 Don Miller W9WNV12 Dxpeditions, So. Korea, Rota, Douglas Reef, Cambodia, South Vietnam, Western Samoa, New Hebrides, China, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Spratly Island, Ebon Atoll, Tokelaus, Cormoran Reef, Fiji Islands, Niue, Wallis Island, Minerva Reef, MariaTheresa, North Cook, Suvarrow Atoll, Heard, Australia, Laos, St.Peter & St.Paul Rocks, Navassa , Serrana Bank, Bajo Nuevo, Desroches Island, Farquhar, Comoro Island, Aldabra, Glorioso, Geyser Reef, Chagos Island, Blenheim Reef, Laccadives, India, Norfolk Island, Mauritius, Quatre Bornes, St.Brandon (Cargados Carajos Shoals), Raphael Isl., Rodriguez, Cocos-Keeling, Malagasy Republic, Nelsons Island. Over the years, many of the well known DXers include: K2GL, KH6IJ, G3FXB, OH2BH, W8IMZ, W3GRF, W3GM, W4BPD, W1WY, W2PV, W3AU, K3ZO, W9WNV, W4KFC, W7RM, W1BIH, PY5EG, W6QD, N6TJ, S50A, N6AA, K1EA, OH2MM, K4VX, K3EST, W6RR, ON4UN, LU8DQ, K1AR, N4MM, VP2ML, W6AM, KV4AA, W1FH, W6RGG, W6RJ, W1CW, W6ISQ, W6OAT, W6KG, W6QL. Many of these were inducted into the CQ DX Hall Of Fame. Editor Note , Use search engine http://www.google.com/ to find more information on these famous DXers. Other notables in the field of Amateur Radio besides those mentioned throughout are: K7UGA, US Senator Barry Goldwater, staunch Amateur radio advocate;W1ICP, Lew McCoy, writer, antenna expert; W1FB, Doug Demaw, writer; W2NSD, Wayne Greene, editor; W4RNL, L B Cebik, program developer; K6STI, Brian Beezly, program developer; W7EL, Roy Lewallen, program developer; KH7M, Jim Reid, propagation expert; W3WRE, Louise Moureau , historian; W1BB, Stu Perry, low band pioneer; W3HNK, Joe Arcure, preeminent QSL manager and many Celebrity Hams. 1963 The E.B.S. - Emergency Broadcasting System is established .23

In 1963, the CBers outnumber the Ham Population. The number of US hams exceeded 250,000.

From the 1963 Novice Study Guide: "Requirements for the Novice license are the passing of a code test in sending and receiving at the rate of 5 words per minute, and a written examination in the most elementary aspects of amateur regulations and theory. The privileges which are currently available to the Novice licensee are: 3700 3750 kc. - telegraphy, 7150-7200 kc. - telegraphy, 21,100-21,250 kc. - telegraphy 145-147 MC. --telegraphy or voice. In addition, the transmitter used by a Novice licensee must be crystal-controlled, and may not have an input exceeding 75 watts. Of course, the Novice may operate portable or mobile on any of these frequencies. Thus a Novice not only is unable to renew his license at the end of his term, but he may not again apply for Novice privileges." 1964 Alaskan Earthquake Magnitude 9.2., one of the worst in US History, Hams are key elements in communications as they have always been. 1964 - Geoff Watts12 created the IOTA (Islands-On-The-Air) Award. 1960's - 1970's Equipment design is changing rapidly, solid state equipment is offered and many transceivers are SSB. For an excellent paper on equipment evolution as well as Ham Radio History -- see 50 Years of US Amateur Radio Licensing by James P. Miccolis, N2EY. Items with the superscript 8 are from N2EY and have been incorporated into this history with permission. Examples of Radio Equipment of the past can be seen in the Antique Radio Section. Also see 1945. In 1967, the FCC announced Incentive Licensing and over the next 2 years, General and Conditional operators lost portions of the 75-15 meter phone bands, the Advanced Class is reopened to new applicants, Extra and Advanced Class operators get subbands on 80-15 and 6 meters, the Novice license term is extended to two years, however Novices lose their 2 meter phone privileges. By 1968, amateur access to 160 meters was increased significantly. US hams got access to 1800 to 2000 kHz - but still subject to complex geographical and power limitations. 1968, May -- Hugh Cassidy WA6AUD publishes the West Coast DX Bulletin. His stories and use of "DX IS!" becomes legend. Stories of "The QRPer, Palos Verdes Sun Dancers, and Red Eyed Louie" can be found at K2CD's fine pages. 18-Jul-79 is Cass's last issue, however VE1DX continues the WA6AUD style -- at the K2CD site. Late 1960's Amateurs start to build 6M FM repeaters and by the mid 1970's, many repeaters are in operation. Effective Nov. 22, 1968 Incentive Licensing plan8 Phase 1 Nov 22, 1968 Phase II, Nov 22, 1969 Extra Class Only: (MHz): 3.5 - 3.525 CW 3.8-3.825 Phone 7 - 7.025 CW 14 - 14.025 CW 21 - 21.025 CW 21.250 - 21.275 Phone Extra Class Only: (MHz): 3.5 - 3.525 CW 3.8 - 3.825 Phone 7 - 7.025 CW 14 - 14.025 CW 21 - 21.025 CW 21.25 - 21.275 Phone Extra and Advanced Classes Only: 3.825 - 3.85 Phone 7.2 - 7.225 Phone 14.2 - 14.235 Phone 21.275 - 21.3 Phone 50 - 50.1 CW Extra and Advanced Classes Only: 3.825 - 3.9 Phone 7.2 - 7.25 Phone 14.2 - 14.275 Phone 21.275 - 21.35 Phone 50 - 50.1 CW As older hams became Silent Keys and the number of available 1x2 calls increased, the FCC instituted a program effective in 1968 whereby those licensed for 25 years and currently holding an Extra license would be eligible for a non-specific (sequential) 1x2 callsign. The length of time one needed to be an Extra was gradually reduced, until July 1977, when any Extra Class could apply for a 1x2. 1968 - The FCC authorizes SSTV in the Advanced/Extra Class subbands. Generals and Conditionals are authorized later. 1969 First two-way amateur television contact between the U.S. and Europe is achieved. AMSAT (The Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation) is founded. AMSAT is a worldwide group of Amateur Radio Operators who share an active interest in building, launching and then communicating with each other through non-commercial Amateur Radio satellites. By 1970 there were about 270,000 US hams. Japanese Transceivers begin to make inroads in the Amateur Radio market 1970, November -- JA1MRS contacted W6ABN and WB6UYG on 6 Meters from History of VHF in Japan By 1970 - The USA is starting to use the metric system more and more and Mc and kc is gradually replaced with Hertz -- MHz and kHz. Often asked is why kilo is not capitalized -- and its because K is for degrees in Kelvin. 1970 While many vie for DX the furthest with the mostest, QRP (low power enthusiasts) are challenged by the furthest with the leastest. The long-distance low power record is held by KL7YU and W7BVV using one MicroWatt over a 1,650 mile Ten Meter path between Alaska and Oregon in 1970. This is the equivalent of 1.6 BILLION Miles per Watt!! More QRP pages. 1972 The Northern California DX Foundation is established to assist in worthwhile amateur radio, DX and scientific projects with funding and equipment. Although the words "Northern California" still appear in its title, the activities of the Foundation are international in scope rather than regional. Also see NCDXF/IARU International Beacon Network. AND Early History Of The NCDXF Beacon Network.

Other DX Foundations and sponsors includes Chiltern DX-Club, Clipperton DX-Club, Danish DX-Group, DX Family Foundation, DX-Lovers Foundation, EUDXF, French DX-Foundation, INDEXA, LADX-Group, LYNX DX-Group, Lake Wettern DX-Group, NCDXF, RSGB DX-Fund, and the Satellite DX Foundation. In addition, many DX Clubs sponsor member IOTA and DXpeditions. Radio manufacturers over the years have also generously donated equipment and support of DX operations. 1972 -- FCC expands the Technician 2 meter allocation to 145-148 MHz. Novices operators are authorized to use a transmitter with a VFO, Date was around Nov 22, 1972. A national bandplan is announced for 2 meter FM , the national simplex frequency is established at 146.520 and the FCC released the first repeater rules. Logging requirements are relaxed. In 1972, the FCC widened the HF phone bands which reduced much of the impact of incentive licensing. 1972 US ham bands8 1.8-2 CW/Phone (Subject to geographic and power limitations) 21-21.45 CW 21.25-21.45 Phone Novices 21.1-21.25 CW Extra only: 21-21.025 21.25-21.27 Extra & Advanced only: 21.27-21.35 2300-2450 CW/Phone 3300-3500 CW/Phone 3.5-4 CW 3.775-4 Phone Novices 3.7-3.75 CW Extra only: 3.5-3.525 3.775-3.8 Extra and Advanced only: 3.8-3.9 28-29.7 CW 28.5-29.7 Phone Novices 28.1-28.2 CW 5650-5925 CW/Phone 7-7.3 CW 7.15-7.3 Phone Novices 7.1-7.15 CW Extra only: 7-7.025 Extra and Advanced only: 7.15-7.225 50-54 CW 50.1-54 CW/Phone (Technicians had all privileges above 30 MHz except 144-145) 10000-10500 CW/Phone 14-14350 CW 14.2-14.35 Phone Extra only: 14-14.025 Extra and Advanced only: 14.2-14.275 144-148 CW 144.1-148 Phone 220-225 CW/Phone 420-450 CW/Phone 1215-1300 CW/Phone 21000-22000 CW/Phone All above 40000 CW/Phone

1972 Sept 9th, - The Palomar Amateur Radio Club in San Diego, CA received the coordination for their 146.730 all vacuum tube repeater on Palomar Mountain from the newly established Southern California repeater coordination body in Los Angeles at their first conference although the club had been successfully operating a test repeater in a garage in Vista during 1971. The duplexer was made from discarded shell casings obtained from a Navy Battleship. 1973 - The waiting period for an Extra class license was reduced to a year. 1974 - WR prefixes began to appear on repeater callsigns. In 1976 for the USA Bicentennial year there was a special callsign system that all hams could use as a option. W's became AC's, WA's became AA's, etc. Some of the Pacific islands and territories had some pretty weird calls (weird for that time, anyway.) In 1976, the WN calls were eliminated. Around this time the FCC was issuing N 1x2 calls to extras

Effective July 1, 1976, any Extra class licensee who had been a licensed Amateur for 25 years or more could select one specific 1x2 call sign. This added the ability to pick a specific call, but did not change eligibility.

Effective October 1, 1976, anyone who had held an Amateur Extra class license prior to November 22, 1967, could select one specific 1x2 call sign.

Effective January 1, 1977, anyone who had held an Amateur Extra class license prior to July 2, 1974, could select one specific 1x2 call sign.

Effective April 1, 1977, anyone who held an Amateur Extra class license prior to July 1, 1976, could select one specific 1x2 call sign.

Effective July 1, 1977, any Amateur Extra class licensee could select one specific 1x2 call sign. Effective March 30, 1978 this was all replaced by the strict "sequential" system until the advent of "vanity" call sign selection in March 24, 1995. However Lee - K0WA reports that the vanity call signs were cut off on December 31, 1977 (if I remember correctly). I earned my Extra that summer and debated on whether or not to change the call. I decided to do so on December 24, 1977. I had called up the Midwest Director, who at the time, kept a list of calls that were open. He had a friend at the FCC who faxed him a list each week of what calls were still open. At the time, you could ask for a call on a first come first serve basis. I sent in the application with 12 calls typed on a plain piece of paper attached to the application. I sent it air-mail! I called in the middle of the week to the FCC if my application had gotten there and they told me it had, but would not tell me anything else. Just under the wire. I got my present call which I was surprise to see that it was open. Great CW call. 73 Lee K0WA. Extras continued to be permitted to select a call, in sequence, from any call sign group. That ability was not extended to other licensees until later. N9AKE reports -- when the FCC announced that Extras could ask for a new call in any group (around August, I think), I asked for a Group C call and received N9AKE, which I held until 1996, now K4QG. By 1977 there were 327,000 US hams. Portable and mobile identification requirements were eliminated, "instant upgrades" became available, and license fees were abolished. The code sending test was waived and repeater rules were simplified further. 1977-- A new repeater subband is established at 144.5-145.5 MHz. Technicians are given privileges on144.5-148 MHz, and have Novice privileges. All hams were limited to 250 watts in the Novice subbands. Novices can operate with power up to 250 watts. The mail order Technician license is eliminated and new applicants must appear before the FCC. The Conditional class is abolished. The waiting period for an Extra class license was eliminated. 1978 saw the Novice license term extended to 5 years and made renewable, the Conditional class license abolished (existing Conditionals became Generals), and secondary station licenses were abolished. ASCII and other standard data codes were authorized for amateur use. See history of ASCII. Technicians got all privileges above 50 MHz. WR repeater callsigns are phased out. Prior to this time, when a ham upgraded, the privileges of the new license class could not be used until the actual license arrived in the mail - usually six to eight weeks after the test was passed. "Instant upgrading" ended the wait by allowing hams to immediately use their new privileges by adding a "temporary identifier" at the end of their call, which would signify that they had recently upgraded. No more waiting weeks for the actual license to arrive in the mail. By the mid 70's some call areas ran out of WB callsigns. The FCC recycled older WA and WB calls (but not consistently). Then at the FCC's whim or maybe when the recyclables ran out, they issued WD#xxx calls. WC was reserved for RACES/ Civil Defense stations. In 1978-1979, Technicians receive all privileges above 50 MHz. Novice licenses are renewable. The World Administrative Radio Conference, (WARC-79) grants Amateurs three new bands at 10, 18, and 24 MHz, to be phased in over the next 10 years. 30 meter power to be limited to 200 Watts. In 1978 the FCC banned the manufacture and sale of amplifiers that could be used in the 24-35 MHz region, but a licensed amateur could still homebrew an amplifier, or modify a manufactured one to cover 10 meters. Hams were limited to one amplifier per year, however. Somewhere in this period (late 1970s), the requirement to change callsigns when moving to a different district was removed. No longer could a US ham's location be determined solely by the callsign. W3HF Note This actually happened in the late 70s, coincident with the new callsign system you discuss under 1978-9. (This was significant to me at the time. I had received WA2FKS while in college in 1976. When I got my license, the old rules were still in effect. But by the time I graduated in 1979, they had changed, and I could take WA2FKS with me to California.) My 1976 License Manual, for example, states that when moving from one district to another, you would get a new calls

Somewhere in the late 70's, (1977) 2x2 A calls were issued to extras, e.g., (The method of issuance is uncertain -- some requested specific callsigns were issued -- others sequential). They were added as an option to 1x2's for any Extra class licensee when the 2nd, 4th and 6th call area ran out of 1x2's. When the "any call you want" rule went away, so did 2x2's beginning with "A". This didn't last long see 2x1's below. (Note from W3HF -- 2x2s actually first showed up in 1977. I have AA4AA and AA4US in the Winter 77-8 book, under "Stop Press." I think these were some of the last callsigns issued under the old pseudo-vanity program for Extras, before that was terminated in 1978, as they came out before the 2x1s.

----------------------------------------- Before March 28, 1978, extra applicants received the 1x2 calls still available. After March 28, 1978, Section 97.51 required amateur station call signs to be issued systematically. Extra applicants received an A prefixed 2x1 callsign e.g., AA6E which was issued 5-26-1978, AA6H about June 7, 1978, AA6G in May 1978, AA6I on June 13, 1978. Depending where in California the test was taken. AA2E issued 5/26/78. AC6V was licensed 7-20-1978 at 2:30 in the afternoon!

Later this is extended to 2x1 K, N, W calls, (In that Order) e.g., KA6A issued 11/24/78, NU8I, August 1986, NX7U early 87, WA6H issued 4-9-79. Here you can see variations in dates due to some districts running out of a block well before others. 2x2 K calls were given to Advanced class and 1x3 N calls were allotted to Generals and Techs. When the 2x1 extra calls ran out, (in 6 land around 1994), the FCC started the 2x2 A calls e.g., AC6HZ. When the N#xxx calls ran out, they started the KA#xxx series. The structure was: ------------------------ From an 1978 FCC News Release: (Thanks To Jim N4AL) Group A contained all 1x2, most 2x1, and most "A" prefixed 2x2 callsigns Group B contained most K, N, and W prefixed 2x2 callsigns Group C contained all 1x3 callsigns Group D contained most K and W prefixed 2x2 callsigns Group E contained WC, WK, WM, and WT prefixed 2x3 callsigns. This applied to the contiguous US. Territories had different rules. Hams could request an upgrade from a lower group to a higher one. Generally, Extras were entitled to Group A, Advanced to Group B, and Generals and Technicians to Group C. Calls were assigned within groups in sequence of blocks. Block 1 was K#xx, block 2 was N#xx, block 3 was W#xx, block 4 was AA#x, block 5 was AB#x ... These were followed by 2x1's beginning with K, 2x1's beginning with N, 2x1's beginning with W, 2x2's beginning with AA through 2x2's beginning with AK. Then came with Group B. -----------------------------------------

In Group A (Extras), the sub groups were 1x2 (not issued systematically subsequent to 1978), 2x1, 2x2 (beginning with AA#xx through AL#xx, the limit of the U.S.'s "A" allocation, [AM belongs to Spain] -- See Prefixes). AL reserved for Alaska and AH for the US Islands.

In Group B (Advanced's), the subgroups were all 2x2 beginning with Kx#xx, Wx#xx, Nx#xx. (the Kx series may never have been completed in any area). It was the slowest moving of the groups.

In Group C (Generals and Techs), the subgroups were all 1x3 with W#xxx (not issued systematically subsequent to 1978), K#xxx (not issued systematically subsequent to 1978), and N#xxx.

In Group D (Novices), all 2x3, starting out with KA#xxx, sequencing through KB#xxx, KC#xxx, etc. ---------------------------------------- For Amateur Radio, the NAA-NZZ block was used for various reasons before they were issued sequentially. In the 1930s, N-prefix calls were issued to amateur stations supporting Naval Reserve activities. NY4 appears in the 1947 DXCC Country list as Guantanamo Bay, The Smithsonian Institute had NN3SI around 1976. The Jet Propulsion Labs had a lot of special calls in the 70's (N6V was a special event station operated by the W6VIO crew at JPL). N calls and A calls were used by MARS since ______, (MARS was formed in 1948) currently in the form of AFA#xxx for the US Airforce, NNN#xxx for the US Navy, and AAA#xxx for the US Army. There have been posts about early N0xxx MARS calls. N1 thru N9 reserved for Aircraft. 1970's - 1980's Amateurs begin too use computers like the Amiga, Commodore, Apple, and TRS-80 to calculate various formulas. Software is written for Ham use. Later when the transceiver manufacturers incorporate microprocessors, computers are used to control the transceiver and beam rotors. Programs for Satellite Tracking are invaluable for operation. Today, programs for tutoring morse code, gray line, logging, digital modes with the sound card, and contesting are widely used. 1978 - Amateur packet radio began in Montreal, Canada in 1978, the current TNC standard grew from discussions in October of 1981. As packet becomes popular with amateurs, digipeater nodes are built and the DX Packet Cluster is born. Previously DX announcements were made by voice on 2M repeaters. 1980's After nearly 80 years of antennas on roof tops and with the advent of cable TV, city, county, HOA's, CC&R's and other restrictive ordnances begin to limit or prohibit Amateur antenna installations. In 1985, PRB-1 is issued that establishes the FCC's position of "reasonable accomodation." 1980's King Hussein, JY1, who was a life member of the ARRL, avidly promoted Amateur Radio in Jordan and was an enthusiastic radio amateur whose support was invaluable in obtaining new amateurs bands at the1979 World Administrative Radinference. Also for some surprises -- Famous Hams 1980 ASCII computer code is authorized for amateur transmissions. Two new digital data modes, AMTOR and packet. Both became popular - AMTOR on HF and packet on VHF. AMTOR eventually gave way to PACTOR and other digital modes. See Digital Modes. The current popular mode is PSK31. 1981 FCC authorizes spread spectrum (SS) on amateur frequencies. Limited to 100 Watts. Actress Hedy Lamar (Hedwig Kiesler) co-patented a frequency hopping "Secret Communication System" Aug. 11, 1942 as a way to keep the Germans from jamming radio controlled torpedos during World War II. See Spread Spectrum. 1981 CQ Magazine starts the CQ DX Hall Of Fame. 1982, Oct 28, 2200 UTC - The USA gained access to 10.100-10.109 and 10.115-10.150 MHz, the original 30 meter WARC band. Some countries already had privileges on the band before the USA. 1983 Cellular phone network starts in U.S. Hams wonder what took them so long! 1983 The 1000 watts input rule was replaced by a new "1500 watt peak output" rule. This meant that hams could run more power in most modes, but a few modes, like AM, actually lost power. In 1984, the 10 year license replaces the 5 year term. The FCC begins to phase out of giving Amateur exams. A Volunteer Examiner Program is started , but there was an overlap period where the FCC gradually eliminated their involvement. 1985 - the 24 MHz and 902 MHz bands are opened for Amateur use. The 10 MHz band was allotted permanently, previously open with restrictions. In 1987, Novices and Technicians receive 10 meter SSB privileges from 28.3-28.5 MHz. The FCC mandates the 1500 Watt PEP limit for amateur radio station power output. The amateur allocations in 19878 . 1.8-2 CW/Phone (Subject to geographic and power limitations) 144-148 CW 144.1-148 Phone 3.5-4 CW 3.775-4 Phone Novice/Techs 3.7-3.75 CW Extra only: 3.5-3.525 3.75-3.775 Extra & Advanced only: 3.75-3.85 220-225 CW/Phone Novices 222.1-223.91 CW/Phone 7-7.3 CW 7.15-7.3 Phone Novice/Techs 7.1-7.15 CW Extra only: 7-7.025 Extra & Advanced only: 7.15-7.225 420-450 CW/Phone 10.1-10.15 CW 902-928 CW/Phone 14-14.35 CW 14.15-14.35 Phone Extra only: 14-14.025 14.15-14.175 Extra & Advanced only: 14.175-14.225 1240-1300 CW/Phone Novices 1270-1295 CW/Phone 21-21.45 CW 21.2-21.45 Phone Novice/Techs 21.1-21.2 CW Extra only: 21-21.025 21.2-21.225 Extra & Adv. only: 21.225-21.3 2300-2310 CW/Phone 2390-2450 CW/Phone 24.890-24.990 CW 24.93-24.99 Phone 3300-3500 CW/Phone 5650-5925 CW/Phone 10000-10500 CW/Phone 24000-24250 CW/Phone 28-29.7 CW 28.3-29.7 Phone Novice/Techs 28.1-28.5 CW 28.3-28.5 Phone 47000-47200 CW/Phone 75500-81000 CW/Phone 119980-120020 CW/Phone 50-54 CW 50.1-54 CW/Phone (Technicians had all privileges above 30 MHz) 142000-149000 CW/Phone 241000-250000 CW/Phone All above 300000 CW/Phone 1988 - The GMDSS system was established in 1988 by the International Marine Organization, a United Nations agency that oversees international shipping safety, and it was required to be on all passenger ships and cargo ships over 300 tons and all commercial ships that travel in international waters by today. This signals the end of morse code by both commercial and the military. 1989 -- The last of the WARC bands 17M becomes available in January 31. There were over 500,000 US Amateurs. In 1991, no-code licenses -- and the No-Code Technician is born. Technicians with code requirements are now Technician Plus. Since existing Techs had Novice HF privileges and new Techs would have only VHF/UHF, another semi license class, the Technician Plus, was created. Existing Technicians, and those who passed the 5 wpm code test, became Technician Plus class. 1993 The US Coast Guard discontinues monitoring 500kHz as the International Distress Frequency, largely replaced by GMDSS. Use of 500 kHz dates back to 1905. About March 24, 1995, Vanity calls for a price was opened up. See URL: FCC Ruling. Several "gates were set up for eligibility over the ensuing 18 months. The ARRL's suggested method is to open the system gradually through four "starting gates." Gate One would allow a previous holder to apply for that call sign or, where the holder is deceased, a close relative could apply. Gate Two would allow the 66,000 Amateur Extra Class operators, who have passed the most difficult license examinations, to apply. [Extras could apply for a vanity call in September 1996]. Gate Three would allow the 112,000 Advanced Class operators, who have passed the second most difficult license examinations, to apply. Gate Four would open the system to any licensee. A club station license trustee could also apply for the call sign of a deceased former holder. 1997 January 1st the E.A.S., Emergency Alert System goes 'on-line' in broadcast stations - replacing the aging technology of the E.B.S. - the Emergency Broadcasting System.23 1998 1999 -- USA Amateur population exceeds 740,000, Japan has almost twice as many. 1999 -- Many CW stations are closed after decades of service. The Globe Wireless stations, the last coast stations in North America to use Morse, closed down their Morse operations on Monday, 12 July, 1999. April 15, 2000 -- Latest Amateur Radio License Scheme Reduction of the number of license classes from six to three and eliminating the 20 and 13 WPM code tests, only three license classes are now issued --Technician, General, and Amateur Extra--and a single Morse code requirement--5 WPM. No new Novice and Advanced licenses to be issued. Licenses prior to the effective retain their current operating privileges, including access to various modes and subbands, and will be able to renew their licenses indefinitely. Starting April 15, 2000, individuals who qualified for the Technician class license prior to March 21, 1987, will be able to upgrade to General class by providing documentary proof to a Volunteer Examiner Coordinator, paying an application fee, and completing FCC Form 605. Under the new licensing scheme, there is four examination elements. Element 1 will be the 5 WPM Morse code exam. Element 2 will be a 35-question written test to obtain a Technician license; Element 3 will be a 35-question written test to obtain a General license, and Element 4 will be a 50-question written test for the Amateur Extra license. Technician Class with no Morse code are authorized to use all amateur VHF and UHF frequencies (all frequencies above 50 MHz). See Bandplans Technicians with 5 WPM Morse code are authorized to use all amateur VHF and UHF frequencies (all frequencies above 50 MHz) and HF frequencies with limited power outputs on the 80, 40, and 15 meter bands using CW, and on the 10 meter band using CW, voice, and digital modes. See Band plans

General Class. In addition to the Technician privileges, General Class operators are authorized to operate on any frequency in the 160, 30, 17, 12, and 10 meter bands. They may also use significant segments of the 80, 40, 20, and 15 meter bands. See Bandplans

Extra Class. Extra Class licensees are authorized to operate on all frequencies allocated to the Amateur Service. See Bandplans 2001 Many Old Timers still active on OT Nets and QCWA nets. For information, contact Jim Palmer W6FOB, president of section 75, QCWA. E-Mail: jkpalmer@charter.net Feb 2001. Amateur Radio history was made this month when amateurs in Canada and the UK completed what appears to be the first two-way transatlantic Amateur Radio exchange on 136 kHz. Larry Kayser, VA3LK, and Lawrence ''Laurie'' Mayhead, G3AQC, managed the LF feat using extremely slow CW that featured 90-second-long dits and 180-second-long dahs. The two-way contact took two weeks to complete! USA AMATEUR RADIO POPULATION8,15 1917 - about 6,000 1963 - over 250,000 1928 - about 17,000 1977 - 327,000 1936 - about 46,000 1989 - over 500,000 1950 - near 90,000 1997 June - 678,473 1956 - over 140,000 2001 Jan 1 - 682,240 1958 - about 160,000 2002 Oct 31 -- 684,355 William Gilbert 1544-1603 Born in England, he served Queen Elizabeth I as a physician. During his lifetime he performed many experiments on the nature of magnetism, and eventually offered the first comprehensive theories of magnetism, based on his assumption that the Earth itself was a large magnet. Modern aircraft pilots are well aquatinted with at least two of his findings, Magnetic Dip, and Magnetic Variation of a compass.

James Clerk Maxwell 1831-1879 Maxwell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and was the founder of electromagnetic theory. He built upon the works of Faraday, Thomson, Coulombe and Ampere - and eventually developed a field theory of electromagnetic phenomena. Maxwell suggested that when a current began to flow, it caused a series of vortices in the surrounding Aether. The crux of his work stated that only in a steady state can a magnetic field exist without causing an electric field - and vice-versa.

Guglielmo Marconi 1874-1937 Probably the name associated most with the invention of radio, Marconi was certainly a visionary of what it could become. Born into a very well-to-do family in Bologna, Italy, Marconi first read of the pioneering work in radio in 1894, in an obituary of Heinrich Hertz. He was the first to realized the possibility of using this new technology as a form of communication, and he began his life work. Within the year he was ringing a bell by wireless control a few yards away, and by 1897 the distance spanned by his wireless was nearly 10 miles. Among his innovations were a greatly improved 'coherer' or detector, antenna work - including an earth ground which greatly increased his range, and the use of a high antenna. A vertical antenna with an earth ground is still referred to as a 'Marconi'. He also worked with directional antenna's. At the age of 22 he filed for his first patent (#7777) for a system of radio communication. Five years later he succeeded in signaling across the Atlantic Ocean. Mahlon Loomis 1826-1886 Born in New York, and a dentist by profession Mahlon Loomis became interested in electricity and conducted several experiments on the effects of electricity on plant growth. His work on wireless communication - although not actually radio communication - could well have been more important had it not been for the economy of the day. He never had the financial backing to continue his work. Among his other experiments were attempts to replace batteries with electricity taken from the atmosphere - he planned to fly kites attached to long wires to gather this electricity.

Thomas Alva Edison 1847-1931 Edison was born in Milan, Ohio in 1847. A prolific inventor - in 1879 he developed the first commercially practical incandescent lamp. By 1882 he had developed a central power station for his lamps - necessary before they would become widely used. He invented the Stock Ticker, alkaline storage batteries, the carbon microphone and of course, the phonograph. In all, over 1000 of his inventions held patents - including a method of wireless telegraphy based on magnetic induction.

Edwin Armstrong 1890-1954 Born in New York City, Armstrong graduated from Columbia University in 1913, and received his first patent for his regenerative receiver in 1914. Without a doubt, Edwin Armstrong did more to advance the art of radio than any other inventor. Every radio and television receiver uses Armstrong's inventions. His list of patents and inventions includes regeneration, the superheterodyne receiver, and wide-band FM. During war time, Armstrong freely gave use of his patents to the military. From 1931 his efforts went into developing and promoting FM, and defending his inventions against suits by DeForest. Many years later almost every suit was decided in favor of Armstrong. Armstrong committed suicide in 1954.

Lee DeForest 1873-1961 Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa to a Congregational minister, Lee Deforest made his greatest contribution to radio and electronics with his invention of the Triode. Although he flooded the patent office with ideas, only a relative few of his over 300 patents proved important. In the early years of radio he installed many wireless transmitting stations, and his became one of the most famous of the early companies. His business sense however, was lacking, and he was taken advantage of by several associates. He concentrated his efforts on moving pictures in the 1920's - claiming the field of radio was getting too crowded. Later years found him suing other inventors - notably Howard Armstrong - for patent infringement.

Heinrich Hertz 1857-1894 Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany and attended the University of Berlin. In 1883 he became an instructor at Kiel University - where he first studied the work of Maxwell. Maxwell had theorized that electric fields in the form of waves propagated at the speed of light rather than instantaneously. To prove this, Hertz conducted a series of experiments between 1886 and 1889 involving measuring the strength of oscillations at differing points along a sheet of zinc. These experiments confirmed the existence of waves, and that these waves acted identical to light in regards to refraction and polarization. In short, Hertz had proven the theory of Maxwell that light itself was a form of electromagnetic radiation.

John Ambrose Fleming 1849-1945 Fleming was born in Lancaster, England and studied electricity and mathematics under James Clerk Maxwell. He served a number of electric lighting companies as advisor and engineer, and was a scientific consultant for the Marconi Company from 1899-1905. Besides his work in theory, he was also active in the practical application of his work. He made improvements in electric lamps, generators, and many pieces of radio-telegraph apparatus. In 1904, while searching for a better detector for wireless signals he recalled his work for Edison in the early 1880's - and the phenomenon known as the Edison Effect. He fashioned a lamp with a metal cylinder surrounding the filament, ran wires to the outside of the envelope - and started the industry of electronics with his electrical 'valve'

Nikola Tesla 1856-1943 Tesla was born in Croatia, but moved to the United States in 1884. Following his move he worked for Thomas Edison designing dynamos, and then established his own laboratory in 1887. Tesla's work laid the foundations for large scale electric power generation and transmission. Tesla experimented with high frequency alternators and invented the 'Tesla Coil' as a means for even higher voltages. His work included the forunner of the neon and fluorescent lights, he predicted radio as a means of communication in 1893, and spent a large amount of time in an effort to transmit electric power without wires. He built the largest Tesla coil ever made at Colorado Springs - a twelve million volt device which drew an arc up to 135 feet in length. Other predictions by Tesla included radar in 1917, and radio services of pictures, time, and weather information in 1900.

Karl Ferdinand Braun 1850-1918 Born in Germany, Braun shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Marconi in 1909 for their service in developing wireless telegraphy. His wireless equipment utilized resonant circuits in both the transmitter and receiver circuits, greatly improving upon Marconi's original system. Braun later introduced the use of the crystal detector in receivers. His work on observing waveforms using a phosphor-coated screen paved the way for cathode ray tubes, and eventually the television picture tube.

Edouard Branly 1844-1940 A French physicist and physician who's studies of nerve impulses led him to develop the 'coherer' as a device for detecting radio signals. His device was a glass tube filled with metal filings and two electrodes. The device decreased in resistance in the presence of electrical energy, as the filings stuck together - or 'cohered'. Many coherers utilized a small hammer-like device to tap the tube after each signal, breaking up the filings and increasing the resistance in preparation for the next signal. Marconi utilized the coherer in most of his wireless station in the early 1900's, and openly credited Branly for his invention

Reginald Aubrey Fessenden 1866-1932 Fessenden, a Canadian born in East Bolton, Quebec worked as a tester and Chemist in the Edison Machine works of New York, and later at Edison's laboratory in New Jersey. Among his patents were the electrolytic detector - far more sensitive than other early methods of detection, and the process of 'heterodyning' a signal - mixing it with another frequency to create a 'sum' and 'difference' of the original frequency. Personally, he is said to have been a bit arrogant - using phrases such as 'Don't try to think - you haven't the brain for it'. He obtained over 500 patents in his lifetime, many for advances in the art of radio.

Joseph Henry 1797-1878 Joseph Henry served as the first director of the Smithsonian Institution from 1846-1878. He was born in Albany, New York, and attended Albany Academy - even though his primary and secondary education were sub-standard. Upon reading a popular book on science he determined to make that his work, and began to study to gain entrance to the Academy. Henry's experiments with electromagnets allowed Faraday and other to have improved tools for their research. He greatly improved upon the electromagnet with the use of insulated wires, and is credited with having discovered inductive resistance. In fact, the unit used to measure inductive resistance is the 'henry', in his honor. Henry also invented an electric motor in 1829, a telegraph in 1831, and the relay in 1835. He went on to work with transformers and non-inductive windings.

Werner Siemens 1816-1892 Born into a family of engineers and inventors, Werner and his younger brother William developed the Dynamo - a device which converted mechanical energy into electrical energy by using 'self excitation', eliminating the use of permanent magnets. This led to the birth of the commercial power industry. Werner also invented an electroplating process, and a method of insulating electrical cable suitable for underwater telegraph cables.

Michael Faraday 1791-1867 Michael Faraday was an English physicist and chemist born in London. Faraday is thought by some to have been one of the greatest experimental scientists of all time, and was also a brilliant theorist. His theories on the nature of magnetism were later adopted by Maxwell, and played a part in Einstein's theory of relativity. With only a basic education of reading and writing - and some very basic math skills he began his working life as an apprentice bookseller and binder. He took every opportunity to read, and came across an article on electricity in an encyclopedia. This stirred his interest in the subject, and he went on to create the science of electrochemistry. A deeply religious man, much of his work seems to have been influenced by his belief in the divine harmony of the universe. Faraday's Laws include the Law of Induction, Law of Electrolysis, and the Second Law of Electrolysis. The Farad - a unit of capacitance, is named after Faraday.

David Sarnoff 1891-1971 Sarnoff was born in Russia, and moved to New York City as a boy. He worked as a telegraph operator in the Marconi company, and some accounts have him working at the key for three days straight during the Titanic disaster - although there is discussion of this being an exaggeration. There is no doubt that Sarnoff was a driven man, and he was a great figure in the growth of broadcasting. Sarnoff became the general manager of RCA in 1921, and quickly became its vice-president. He saw the company through the rise of radio broadcasting, supervised the creation of the first network (NBC) and the move into television. During World War II he was a communications consultant, and for his service was named as a Brigadier General.

Michael Idvorski Pupin 1858-1935 Michael Pupin was born in Hungary and came to the United States in 1874. He attended Columbia University and the University of Berlin. He was a professor of electromechanics at Columbia for 30 years, from 1901 to 1931. Pupin invented and improved upon many devices for telegraphy and telephony, including the use of inductors in telephone lines to improve the audio quality. His work with X-rays identified 'secondary radiation' - matter struck by X rays was stimulated to emit more X rays. He studied the behavior of vacuum tubes at low pressure, and invented an electrical resonator. A total of 34 patents were awarded for his inventions

Charles D. Herrold 1875-1948 Charles David Herrold was born in Illinois, and began his wireless work in San Jose, California. He was an inventor, teacher, and is thought by many to be the "Father of Broadcasting". 'Doc' Herrold was transmitting voice messages very early in the history of radio - as early as 1909 from the 'Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering' in San Jose. He had a regular schedule of transmitting between 1909 and 1917, and claimed to have coined the term 'Broadcasting'. In 1915, he broadcast to the Worlds Fair from 50 miles away, providing news and music. He patented the "Arc Fone" in 1915.

Frank Conrad 1874-1941 Frank Conrad's amateur radio station 8XK, located in his garage in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania was one of the seeds from which broadcasting grew. 8XK was later licensed as KDKA. His early experience with radio included building sensitive receivers to hear the Naval Observatory time signals from Arlington, VA. Conrad left school in the 7th grade to work. He was transferred to the testing department at Westinghouse shortly after his employment in 1890. He became general engineer in 1904 and assistant chief engineer in 1921. He supervised the development of transmitting equipment, among other duties. He received an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1928.

Sir Joseph John Thomson 1856-1940 Born in Cheetham Hill, England, Joseph Thomson attended Cambridge University and maintained an association with Cambridge for most of his life. In 1906 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the conduction of electricity by gasses. His work with X-rays and cathode ray tubes convinced him that cathode rays were actually charged particles -electrons- and that their mass was roughly 1,000 times smaller than hydrogen ions

Alexander Graham Bell 1847-1922 Bell was born in Scottland, and was home schooled until the age of ten. As a boy, his experiments with speech and sound reproduction led to a lifelong interest in the field. He was granted a patent in 1874 on a method of sending two or more telegraphic messages on the same wire, at the same time. The next year, as a result of an accident, words to the effect of "Watson - come here, I want you" were reproduced electronically by his 'telephone'. In August of 1876 the distance spanned by telephone was 8 miles, and 'long distance' became a reality by the end of that year, as he communicated over 143 miles. In 1880 Bell achieved the first wireless transmission of speech - using his invention -- the 'photophone' -- to transmit words on a beam of light.

Samuel Finley Breese Morse 1791-1872 By the age of 21, Samuel Morse showed an interest in electrical experimentation. A shipboard conversation in 1832 planted the seed for a method of telegraphy, and by 1835 the basic physical elements of a relay system were in place. A patent was issued in 1840, and the U.S. Congress gave him a grant for $30,000 to construct a line between Washington and Baltimore. The first message on this line was sent on May 24th, 1844. The "Morse Code" was invented by Morse, and his assistant Alfred Vail about 1840. The original code was simplified in 1851, and is called the 'Continental', or 'International' Morse code. An electric machine consists of the combination of two materials, which when rubbed together produce static electricity, and of a third material or object which acts as a collector for the charges. The first devices for producing electricity were very simple. The ancient Greeks discovered the strange effects of amber rubbed with fur and other material. In the 17th century, scientists used sticks of resin or sealing wax, glass tubes and other objects. By the time of Benjamin Franklin (Franklin became interested in electricity about 1745) large glass tubes about three feet long and from an inch to an inch and a half in diameter were popular; these were rubbed either with a dry hand or with brown paper dried at the fire. There are two major categories of electrical machines: Friction and Influence. A friction machine generates static electricity by direct physical contact; the glass sphere, cylinder or plate is rubbed by a pad as it passes by. Influence machines, on the other hand, have no physical contact. The charge is produced by inductance, usually between two or more glass plates. All through the 18th and 19th centuries there was tremendous interest in electricity. Scientists such as Franklin, Nollet, Coulomb, Volta, Oersted, Ampère, Ohm, Faraday, Joule and others made major advances. Prior to Faraday's invention of the induction coil in 1831 however, the only way to generate high voltage electricity was via a static generator such as these. Rotating the wheel created a static charge, which was available on the "prime collector" (the brass ball or cylinder at the top or front of the device). The charge could then be stored in a Leyden jar or measured by an electroscope. Otto von Guericke conceived the idea of making a machine of a ball of sulphur cast on an axle, and which was turned by a winch. This ball, when rapidly rotated, was rubbed by another person with the palms of his hands and the friction produced a strong electric charge on the sulphur. The experimenter then lifted the sphere by its spindle to use it for his experiments (see fig. 1). later it was found that a chain could be hung over the globe to receive the charge from the sulphur ball, and Sir Isaac Newton suggested the substitution of a glass globe. In 1740 von Bose, a professor of physics at Wittemberg, substituted glass for the sulphur, and improved the rotating mechanism. He also suspended a metal cylinder above the globe by silk strings, with a metallic chain to conduct the electricity from the globe to the cylinder. This form of machine is credited to the Abbe Nollet in the middle of the 18th century, but is simply a modification of the Bose machine

From that time the electrical machine evolved rapidly. First, the shape of the rubbed body was modified: Watson employed four glass globes; Wilson, Cavallo, and Nairne used cylinders instead of spheres, Sigaud de la Fond, Le Roy, Cuthbertson, Van Marum, and Ramsden, used plates of glass instead of cylinders or globes. This allowed a larger surface area to be rubbed, and increased the speed of rotation. Another improvement, suggested by Winckler of Erfurt, consisted of using cushions of wool or leather, covered with tinfoil, or with an amalgam of tin or zinc. Typically either an amalgam of zinc, tin and mercury was employed, or else mosaic gold (sulphide of tin) was used, which was laid on with a very small portion of fat or wax. The friction then occurs between the amalgam and the glass. In the early machines the electricity passed to the conductors as sparks, chains, or by strips joining the conductor to the insulated glass globes of the machine. In 1747 Franklin described his theory of the “power of points” where a pointed electrode was very effective at drawing the “electrical fire” at a distance. Wilson was the first to use points in the way that Franklin had just discovered. The prime conductor of his machine was a metal cylinder terminated in knobs and held by silk strings. A metal rod projected downwards from the conductor to the glass cylinder, and held a metal comb towards it.

Construction A large circular plate of glass1 is mounted vertically on a metal axle, about which it can easily be turned by a crank handle. When passing between the two wooden supports, the surface of the glass is rubbed by two pairs of pads fixed to the supports. The rotation of the glass then causes it to become electrified positively on both faces. The negative charge of the pads is neutralized by being connected to the ground through the frame, which is not insulated. Each pad is stuffed with hair, and is covered with leather: Its surface is coated with mosaic gold, or an amalgam of mercury with zinc, bismuth, or tin. Attached to the pads are silk cases which enclose the glass plate nearly as far as the combs, these are to prevent loss of charge. Once the electrical differential has been produced by the action of the pads on the glass, the charge must be collected in some way. Most friction machines do this via prime conductors. They consist of two long brass cylinders terminated at each end by knobs, and insulated by glass legs. These cylinders are connected to one another (at the opposite end from the plate) by a metal rod. The ends of the conductors nearest the machine carry metallic combs bent round and brought with the points close to both faces of the glass plate, but not quite touching it (Franklin's points). Operation When the handle of the machine is turned the glass plate is charged positively by friction against the pads; while in this state it acts by influence (inductance) on the conductors, repelling a positive charge to the ends of the conductors, and leaving the parts nearest to it, the combs, negative. The negative charge sets up an "electric wind" at the points of the combs, producing a continual discharge between the surface of the glass and the prime conductors. The glass is continually being re electrified positively by friction with the pads, thus causing an accumulation of electricity on the conductor. An electroscope may be placed on one of the conductors in order to show the increase of the charge of the electricity. To insure the proper working of the machine it is always necessary to have the room warm and dry; the glass legs supporting the conductors should be well cleaned before use, and wiped with a warm piece of flannel with a little paraffin oil upon it. In 1772 Le Roy, a French physicist, constructed a glass plate machine with only one pair of pads; he had, however, two insulated cylindrical conductors placed horizontally at opposite ends of a diameter, one attached to the pads and the other to the metallic comb, thus he collected both kinds of charge. Winter, an Austrian, slightly modified Le Roy's machine to a form shown

The conductors are spheres; one is attached to the pads whilst the other is connected to 'the combs, constructed as two rings, one on each side of the glass. One conductor is charged positively, the other negatively. Winter's machine does not give a large quantity of electricity at each discharge, on account of the small size of the conductor, but it gives longer. sparks than the other forms of machine of the same size. Nairne's machine is also arranged to give both kinds of charges. One of the conductors, attached to a comb, is charged positively as in the plate machine, while the other conductor attached to the pad is charged negatively. The machine uses a glass cylinder; it has a flap of silk attached to the pad passing over it to prevent loss. It is, however, found best not to collect both kinds of charge, but to join one of the conductors to the earth by a chain or wire. Van Marum2 designed an electric machine like either Ramsden's or Nairne's, capable of acting at will to collect either positive or negative charges, or both kinds at the same time. If mercury is shaken up in a dry glass tube in the dark, a glow is seen, proving the production of small charges of electricity. In fact, enough electricity is produced to cause the tube to attract light bodies. This demonstrates that the friction of liquid bodies against solids can produce electricity. This method was not used, however, until, in 1840, an accident showed an easy method of producing large quantities of electricity by driving a jet of steam against a solid body. This is the principle of Armstrong's An insulated boiler is filled with distilled water, which produces high pressure steam that escapes through a row of jets after being partly condensed by passing through pipes surrounded by cold water. The drops of water produced by the condensation strike against a plate of box wood round which the steam has to pass before it escapes from the jets made of the same wood,. Electricity is developed in proportion to the increase of the pressure of the steam; the jets become charged positively and the steam negatively. To collect the latter charge an insulated conductor is used, which is furnished with a series of points held opposite the jets. These hydro electric machines are very powerful but were so difficult to use that they were never adopted in place of friction machines. There was one at the Polytechnic in London with forty six jets, and which gave sparks two feet long, and one at the Sorbonne, in Paris, has eighty jets, and produced sparks several inches in length. 1Machines have been constructed with plates of sulphur. M. Richer has a note on this subject in the Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Sciences, 1865. The choice of glass makes a difference. Electric instrument makers agreed that the old plate glass with natural vitrefied surface was the best. It is said that the superiority consists in there being so little potash used in its manufacture a the surfaces being, for that reason, less hydroscopic. Olive coloured bottle glass, cobalt blue glass, and flint glass, are equally good for this purpose. Whatever is the nature of the plate, it is necessary to clean it at times with alcohol, naphtha, or paraffin oil, to remove any matter left from the Cushions. 2The same physicist made a machine celebrated in the history of the science ; it was shown among the Dutch historical. collection of apparatus at the International Electrical Exhibition at Paris in 1881. It was made by Van Marum in 1787, and was modified by Cuthbertson during the following years. Two discs 1'62 metres in diameter turned parallel between eight pairs of pads ; the metallic spheres terminating the conductors were thirty centimeters in diameter. Van Marum made some curious experiments with this machine, especially on sparks and brushes, which he obtained up to 60 centimeters (24 inches) in length. 3The discovery of the principles upon which this machine is constructed were made by chance. "A mechanic was busy repairing a steam engine near Newcastle, having one hand in a jet of steam which was escaping from a leak, with the other hand on the lever of the safety valve ; he drew a brilliant spark and received a violent shock. Armstrong studied the. conditions of the phenomenon," &e. (Mascart's Traité d'Electricite statique). First edition, rare offprint form, of this major work of Volta, in which he established that Galvani's 'animal electricity' was in fact the result of contact of two different metals in a conductive environment and that the muscle spasms observed by Galvani were the result of purely external electrical stimulation. Volta's 'brilliantly planned and executed experiments [detailed here]... step by step brought him to the invention of the [voltaic] pile' (DSB).' A collection of letters and articles relating to the controversy between Galvani and Volta over the nature of Galvani's discovery. Volta had been one of the first to take up Galvani's theory of animal electricity but he became skeptical as his own research progressed, finally concluding that all galvanic excitations were the result of external electrical stimulation produced by the contact of two dissimilar metals in a moist environment. He announced these conclusions in his "Memoria... sull' elettricità animale..", giving rise to a dispute with Galvani's adherents that persisted for many years. This collection contains the three parts to Volta's "Memoria"... as well as letters from Volta and Galvani, and the Galvani-Carminati correspondence' (Norman catalogue).See DSB XIV pp 69-82; Bakken p 47; Blake p 68; Fulton and Stanton 19; Norman 870 (this copy); Ronalds p 84; Wheeler Gift 577; NUC: CtY-M 1796 - Lettera I E II (Lettera III) Al Sig. Ab. Anton. Maria Vassalli Sull'Elettricità Animale Three letters on animal electricity written by Volta to Vassalli during the debate over galvanic current. Among the experiments described is the following: Four insulated individuals form a human chain, the first placing his finger on the tip of the second's tongue, the second likewise touching the uncovered eyeball of the third, and the third and fourth holding between them in their wet hands a freshly skinned and gutted frog. The first individual holds in his wet hand a sheet of zinc, the last a sheet of silver. When the metal sheets make contact, the electrical circuit is completed; the second individual immediately detects an acid taste on the tip of his tongue, a flash of light appears in the eye of the third individual and the leg of the frog convulses violently. In the words of Volta, "ecco dunque il fluido elettrico"! The Annali di Chimica appeared from 1790 to 1805, the Giornale Fisico Medico ran from 1792 to 1796. The editor, Luigi Brugnatelli (1761-1818), a colleague of Volta accompanied him on his triumphant visit to Paris in 1801. 1800 - On the Electricity Excited by the Mere Contact of Conducting Substances of Different Kinds. First edition of this paper, in French, sent by Volta to his friend Cavallo in London for communication to the Royal Society. In it, Volta describes the pile of alternating dissimilar metals (silver and zinc) which, when moist, generated the flow of constant electrical current electricity. With this new force, water was decomposed, metal was electro-deposited, the electro- magnet was created and the electrical age was begun.

Heinrich Hertz was the first to send and receive radio waves. James Clerk Maxwell had mathematically predicted their existence in 1864. Between 1885 and 1889, as a professor of physics at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, he produced electromagnetic waves in the laboratory and measured their wavelength and velocity. He showed that the nature of their reflection and refraction was the same as those of light, confirming that light waves are electromagnetic radiation obeying the Maxwell equations. All of these findings were first published in the journal Annalen der Physik,(see below right) then in Hertz's first book, Untersuchungen Ueber Die Ausbreitung Der Elektrischen Kraft (Investigations on the Propagation of Electrical Energy), shown at right. His book is considered to be one of the most important works of science. This is where he first describes his confirmation of the existence of electromagnetic waves. Annalen der Physik und Chemie is one of the oldest physics journals worldwide. The journal, still in publication today, publishes original papers in the areas of experimental, theoretical, applied and mathematical physics and related areas.

Ampère was present at the Académie des Sciences on Sept. 11, 1820, when François Arago performed - for the first time in France - Hans Christian Oersted’s experiment demonstrating the magnetic effects of current-carrying wires on magnetized needles. Inspired by Oersted’s discovery, Ampère immediately concluded that magnetism was electricity in motion, an intuitive leap which he sought to confirm by experiment. During September and October 1820, Ampère per-formed a series of experiments designed to elucidate the exact nature of the relationship between electric current-flow and magnetism, as well as the relationships governing the behavior of electric currents in various types of conductors. His investigations, reported weekly before the Académie des Sciences, established the new science of electrodynamics Ampère’s most detailed report on the events of September and October 1820 was published as a lengthy two-part memoir in the Annales de Chimie et de Physique. Written hurriedly and in disjointed segments, it is a rich source of information in spite of its chronological errors. . . .” (Hofmann, p. 238). Among the discoveries described in this memoir are Ampère’s demonstration of the tangential orientation of a magnetic needle by an electric current when terrestrial magnetism is neutralized; his proof that conducting planar spirals attract and repel each other and respond to bar magnets in an analogy to magnetic poles; and his demonstration of electrodynamic forces between linear conducting wires. The memoir’s plates illustrate the several instruments that Ampère devised to carry out his experiment

Ampère’s scientific genius, while capable of remarkable leaps of insight, was somewhat lacking in organization and discipline. It often happened that Ampère would publish a paper one week, only to find the following week that he had thought of several new ideas that he felt ought to be incorporated into the paper. Since he could not alter the original, he would add his revisions to the separately published reprints of the paper, and even modify the revised versions later if he felt it necessary; some of his papers exist in as many as five different versions. A separate reprint of Ampère’s Mémoire was issued in 1821; however, it differs substantially from the journal publication, which must be considered the original version of this foundation document in electrodynamics. First edition, containing the discovery of the fundamental law of electric circuits, that electromotive force is the product of current times resistance. Ohm utilized as an analogy to conductivity, the mathematical physics governing the flow of liquids and the thermodynamic equations of Fourier governing the dissipation of heat within a body. His results, now known as Ohm¹s law, were initially dismissed, and full recognition of his work did not come until 1841 when he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society and, belatedly, in 1881 when the International Electrical Congress established the ohm as the basic unit of resistance. The fully developed presentation of his theory of electricity appeared in this great work, Die galvanische Kette, mathematisch bearbeitet (Berlin, 1827)... As a preliminary to the formulation of his fundamental laws, Ohm defined the electroscopic force operationally as that force the presence of which was detected by means of an electroscope, and the quantity of electricity of a body as the product of the magnitude of its electroscopic times its volume. These definitions, in the context of the larger theory, gave the previously vague but universally used notions of intensity and quantity of electricity a precise interpretation.11 This is a superb collection of first editions of many of Faraday's most important papers, including his greatest paper, Series I of Experimental Researches in Electricity, in which he demonstrates the means for generating electricity by electromagnetic induction. Each paper, article or review extracted from the journal in which it originally appeared; the collection was purchased from the distinguished science library of Haskell F. Norman. Michael Faraday (1791 - 1867) was "one of the greatest physicists of the 19th century and one of the finest experimenters of all time. His principal contributions were made in advancing our knowledge of the nature and potentialities of electricity... he enunciated his theory of `lines' or `tubes' of magnetic force which was the starting point for, the revolutionary theories of Clerk Maxwell and later of Einstein... [his discoveries] laid the foundation of the modern electrical industry electric light and power, telephony, wireless telegraphy, television, etc."1 The present collection encompasses the entire range of Faraday's remarkable achievement, including his breakthrough discovery of electromagnetic induction (Phil. Trans., Series 1 2), his first general theory of electricity as a function of interparticulate strain (Phil. Trans., Series 11 13), and his last major series of researches on magnetism (Phil. Trans., Series 19 21) "containing the germ of modern field theory," from which Clerk Maxwell and .Einstein developed their own theories6. Including Faraday's greatest paper, reporting his discovery of the means for generating electricity by electro-magnetic induction. "Faraday became convinced that the relation of electricity to magnetism had to be extended, and that if a current could produce a magnetic field, a magnetic field also had to be able to produce a current. . . . Faraday brooded over [this problem] for about ten years, and made numerous experiments, all negative. . . . In the summer [of 1831], he built an iron ring on which he wrapped two coils of copper wire. He then noted that if he sent a current in one and connected the other to a galvanometer, the instrument would signal a current not in the stationary state, but only at the establishment or interruption of a current in the other coil. That was the clue he needed. By the end of September he had developed a clear understanding and experimental demonstration of electromagnetic induction. He had grasped the vital point that to generate a current, a conductor had to cut the lines of magnetic force. . . . Once the nature of electromagnetic induction was understood, Faraday was able to explain Arago's observations and to invent an electromagnetic generator of currents—a primitive dynamo" (Segrè, Falling Bodies to Radio Waves, pp. 143-44; also 132-55). Dibner 64. Horblit 29 (citing 1839 book-form reprint). Williams, Michael Faraday, pp. 137-90; 200-201. Jeffreys 187. 32209 The other extracts gathered here, 102 from Quarterly Journal of Science, 1816 30, and 13 extracts from Annals of Philosophy, 1821 26, include Faraday's first published paper, "Analysis of the native caustic Lime" (QJS, 1816); his 1825 paper announcing the discovery of benzene; his early "Historical Sketch of Electro magnetism" (1821), requested by editor Richard Phillips and contributed anonymously; his groundbreaking 1821 paper "On some new Electro Magnetical Motions, and the Theory of Magnetism," which records the first conversion of electrical into mechanical energy this paper also contains the first notion of the line of force (DSB) and three important follow up papers from the same year. The 30 Series of Experimental Researches in Electricity were collected in book form in three volumes dated 1839, 1844 and 1859, after the papers appeared in Philosophical Transactions. Series 3 10, not collected here, deal primarily with electrochemistry, in which Faraday demonstrates the common identity of all forms of electricity; Series 23 30, also not collected here, elaborate further on his earlier revolutionary discoveries.10 The other extracts gathered here, 102 from Quarterly Journal of Science, 1816 30, and 13 extracts from Annals of Philosophy, 1821 26, include Faraday's first published paper, "Analysis of the native caustic Lime" (QJS, 1816); his 1825 paper announcing the discovery of benzene; his early "Historical Sketch of Electro magnetism" (1821), requested by editor Richard Phillips and contributed anonymously; his groundbreaking 1821 paper "On some new Electro Magnetical Motions, and the Theory of Magnetism," which records the first conversion of electrical into mechanical energy this paper also contains the first notion of the line of force (DSB) and three important follow up papers from the same year. The 30 Series of Experimental Researches in Electricity were collected in book form in three volumes dated 1839, 1844 and 1859, after the papers appeared in Philosophical Transactions. Series 3 10, not collected here, deal primarily with electrochemistry, in which Faraday demonstrates the common identity of all forms of electricity; Series 23 30, also not collected here, elaborate further on his earlier revolutionary discoveries.10 The First Condenser - A Beer Glass Pieter Van Musschenbroek (1692 - 1761)

Pieter Van Musschenbroek, a professor of physics and mathematics at the university of Leyden, and E.G. Von Kleist, Dean of the Kamin Cathedral in Pomerania, independently created the electric condenser, named the "Leyden Jar" by Abbe Nollet. Von Kleist was the first to discover the surprising effects of the jar, but it was Musschenbroek (and his assistants Allmand and Cunaeus) who reported their results clearly enough for others to duplicate the experiment and so credit has gone to him. Musschenbroek announced the discovery in January, 1746. However, A letter dated February 4, 1745 (see excerpt below right) appearing in Philosophical Transactions suggests that the jar existed in Musschenbroek's laboratory almost a year before that date. There is still some controversy about this but the generally held opinion is: "Trembley, the editor, or the composter of the letter in PT either misdated the letter, or failed to translate properly into the new style (NS). Until 1752 the English began their legal year on March 25 so that, roughly speaking, their dates were a year behind continental ones for the first quarter of every continental year."14 This makes sense because there would be no reason for Musschenbroek and his staff to delay announcing for 11 months, especially given the potential claim to prior discovery by Von Kleist. Trembley's letter is fascinating as it is one of the earliest first-hand accounts of this new discovery. He happened to be in Holland about the time of the discovery and his letter was the first word to England of the marvelous new jar. 14 The Father of Thermodynamics - 1841 James Prescott Joule (1818 - 1889)

Joule's discovery of the universality of the conversion between electrical and thermal energy, a landmark in itself, led directly to the dramatically important law of the conservation of all energy. The International unit of energy, the joule, is named in his honor

one of the devices used in the earliest experiments with "Hertzian waves". This model was used for early demonstrations around the end of the 19th century. At about that time there was a significant problem of interference between signals coming from different sources, due to the increasing number of transmitting stations. Guglielmo Marconi was the first to adopt a tuning system of this type. It's essentially composed of a tesla type high frequency transformer, whose primary circuit is connected to a leyden jar, forming a resonant circuit which reduces the bandwidth of the signal to be transmitted coming from an induction coil. The signal then goes to the central coil (secondary circuit) whose terminals are connected to the transmitting aerial the earth circuit, to be sent into the space. A similar tuning circuit, mounted inside the receiver, ensures the reception only of the signal coming from that transmitting station, ignoring all other signals present in the aerial. This circuit has been called a "JIGGER" by Marconi, and was patented in April 1900. Frederick Collins ... Genius or Fraud

It had been two years since Marconi’s successful wireless telegraph transmission across the Atlantic ocean, and another year would pass before the invention of the vacuum tube. Wireless Telegraphy, though still in it’s infancy, held great promise for the future. Men with names like DeForest, Edison, Fessenden, Marconi, and Tesla were working intensely to make wireless a commercially viable alternative to the wired telegraph. Several of these technical visionaries had formed partnerships with businessmen of questionable character - men more interested in making a killing in wireless stock speculation than in building successful companies. At the same time, a much smaller group was attempting to take wireless to the next logical step – a wireless telephone. In May, 1903, one of these men, A. Frederick Collins, formed the Collins Marine Wireless Telephone Co, and soon after changed the name of the company to Collins Wireless Telephone Co. His first system was known as the “Inductive System” and featured coils of insulated wire four to five feet in diameter.

The transmitting coil carried current modulated by a microphone, which producedfield that varied with the speech of the speaker. The varying magnetic field produced an electric current in the receiving coil placed nearby, reproducing the speaker’s voice in a telephone receiver. Collins toured the United States. putting on demonstrations and selling stock in the Collins Wireless Telephone Co. He made wild claims about his technology and was vocal in predicting the downfall of telegraph stocks such as Marconi. He usually rented two adjoining rooms in a hotel for the demonstration, placing the coils on opposite sides of a wall. He would invite celebrities and government officials to demonstrate the apparatus. These demonstrations were spectacular and resulted in appreciable stock sales. Unfortunately the money received was used by Collins and his partners to cover the expenses of marketing their stock and to promote further speculation, not for building the assets of the company for the benefit of the stockholders

From 1900 to 1909 Collins wrote an incredible number of technical articles for science and trade journals, as well as best selling wireless books including "Wireless Telegraphy" (1905), "Manual of Wireless Telephony and Telegraphy" (1909), and "Design and Construction of Induction Coils" (1909.) In 1908 Collins issued a two part catalogue which described induction and conduction equipment in the first part, a true wireless set in the second part. He used an arc to generate the carrier and modulated it by a carbon microphone. He claimed this unit could span a distance of eighty miles with a power of 2.4 KW.

The company had a small shop in Newark. N.J. where demonstration equipment was built but little apparatus was ever sold. In December, 1909 Collins Wireless Telephone Company became a part of the Continental Wireless Tel. & Tel. Company, with A. Frederick Collins as Technical Director. The stock prospectus promised A Collins wireless telephone was to be installed in each Continental station. None were installed.

In December, 1911 four officers of the Continental Co. were indicted for using the mails to defraud in selling worthless stock. According to the trial records, they were charged with 5 counts in: 1. Selling worthless stock in the Collins Wireless Telephone Co. 2. Persuading owners of Collins stock to buy worthless Continental stock. 3. Selling worthless bonds of the Continental Co. 4. Selling worthless Continental stock. In addition, A. Frederick Collins was charged with giving a fraudulent demonstration of his wireless telephone on Oct. 14, 1909 at the Electrical Show in Madison Square Garden, New York, for the purpose of selling stock in the Collins Wireless Telephone Co. It was developed at the trial that the four Collins officers had claimed in their prospectus that the Collins wireless telephone had been perfected to such an extent that in a community equipped with it, any two subscribers could talk to each other with total exclusion of all other subscribers, that the Collins wireless telephone would do away with all central exchanges. the necessity for wire lines, etc, that an automobile so equipped would be in constant touch with a garage so as not to be stranded in case of trouble, that because of the lower cost of the wireless telephone, with no wires needed, the telephone and telegraph systems would soon be put out of business and that the demand for the equipment would increase so rapidly that the stock price would quickly increase. Click here to see an example of these claims. Four officers were convicted on all five counts. Three were fined and sentenced on January 10. 1913. to prison terms of up to four years. This was the end of the Continental Wireless Tel. & Tel. Co. A. Frederick Collins was sentenced to three years in jail in Atlanta. After serving one year he was released on parole. Before his conviction he had been a respected engineer, considered an authority on wireless in general and a specialist in wireless telephony. In his later career he wrote books on electricity and wireless for teenagers, including “The Collins Radio Amateur’s Handbook.” The collapse of Continental was mirrored by the downfall of other companies such as United Wireless and DeForest. The era of bogus stock selling had come to an end.

Bibliography "Wireless Communication in the United States", The New England Wireless and Steam Museum, 1989 "The Story of the Wireless Telephone", Collins Wireless Telephone Company, 1909 "Modern Electrics", Vol 1, No. 5. "Collins Wireless Telephone", Modern Electrics Publications "Modern Electrics", Vol 1, No. 7. "Collins Long Distance Wireless Telephone", Modern Electrics Publications

Heinrich Geissler (1814 - 1879)

Born in the village of Igelshieb, in the Rennsteig area of the Dukedom of Saxony-Meiningen, Geissler is a well known figure in the history of scientific instruments since the descendants of his inventions - the Geissler tube and the mercury vacuum pump are still in use today. Igelshieb is a suburb of Neuhaus am Rennweg in the state of Thuringia, Germany. The house of birth of Geissler is still there and contains a nice collection of Geissler tubes and those of other plasma heroes. This is organized by the Förderverein Heimatmuseum Geissler - Haus e.V. with its president Rolf Schöler in Neuhaus, available at sylvia.schoeler@web.de . Geissler's father Georg was an innovative glass-blower and maker of instruments such as barometers and thermometers. Heinrich Geissler's youth coincided with a flowering in interest in experimental natural sciences leading to a greater demand for laboratory apparatus, particularly hollow glassware, which was to catapult the craft of the glassblower from a cottage industry to a profession. Geissler, however, earned his living for a decade as a traveling instrument maker before settling and establishing a workshop in Bonn, a young university town with a demand for laboratory apparatus. Here Geissler worked closely with chemists, physicists, medical doctors, physiologists and mineralogists and built up an international client list. From 1855 he participated regularly in world exhibitions, winning several medals for his scientific apparatus. Geissler began experimenting with what were later to become known as the 'Geissler tube' in 1857 and full-scale production of these was well underway in the 1880s. He died in 1879 and is buried in Bonn. Source: Christie's, Mason & Woods Ltd. Webster 4597 Catalog, 1991 William Crookes (1832 – 1919)

Active in chemical and physical research for more than fifty years, William Crookes was trained in science by Faraday, Wheatstone and Stokes. He was knighted in 1897 and awarded the Order of Merit in 1910, for his contribution to scientific research. For most of his life he was a freelance chemical consultant, using a home laboratory. He produced a vacuum of one millionth of an atmosphere, thus making possible the discovery of X-rays and the electron. He also experimented on cathode rays - streams of negatively-charged particles - now called electrons. These are released from the surface of a metal plate called the cathode and fixed in a vacuum within a glass tube. In 1878, Crookes became convinced that the dark space he has observed between the cathode and the glow, extended farther from the cathode as the pressure inside the glass tube was reduced. The pressure could be reached to the point at which the dark space touched the far end of the tube opposite the cathode. This suggested that the electrical discharge in an evacuated tube was an actual illumination of the lines of molecular pressure. He produced special tubes to examine cathode rays at various configurations and gas pressures. He discovered that a bar magnet contorts the rays into a spiral, while a horseshoe magnet produced a curve. Galvanometers were the first instruments used to determine the presence, direction, and strength of an electric current in a conductor. All galvanometers are based upon the discovery by Hans C. Oersted that a magnetic needle is deflected by the presence of an electric current in a nearby conductor. When an electric current is passing through the conductor, the magnetic needle tends to turn at right angles to the conductor so that its direction is parallel to the lines of induction around the conductor and its north pole points to the direction in which these lines of induction flow. In general, the extent to which the needle turns is dependent upon the strength of the current.

1844 : Samuel Morse invents the telegraphy Before Morse invention, signaling systems were first vervals but there were not really efficient excepting in whisling or using wind or percussion instruments. Then the signaling systems became visual. At the end, of the XVIIIth century, the French Claude Chappe invented the semaphore or "optical telegraph" to transmit messages over long distance. The characters constituting the messages were defined by the position of arms. Placed on top of towers or on distant hills, the operators used flags or lights to send coded messages from one station to another. But the system was limited. It was quasi inefficient at night or when there was fog or heavy showers. In the 1800s the young American republic offered a prize of $30,000 to the inventor offering a more efficient system able to cover the entire Atlantic coast. Samuel Finley Breese Morse accepted the challenge. Morse didn't at all began his professional life in the field of electricity or any other related area. Born in 1791 - yes, in the 1800s ! - he was a painter and sculptor graduated from Yale College, and had opened an art studio in 1823. The legend tells that he had the idea of using electricity to communicate over distance during a conversation aboard the ship Sully when he was returning from Europe in automn 1832, at 41 years old. The ship's passengers were discussing about the Michael Faraday's recently invented electromagnet, when Morse came to understand how it worked, and began speculating that it might be possible to send a coded message over a wire. Between 1835 and 1836 Morse invented a first code made of numbers associated to a dictionnary to use with a key to fasten communications. The message was recorded on a long moving strip of paper. To the operator's skills to decode and interpret the code in real time, and to transcribe it into numbers and letters as he heard it. But this is not the Morse code yet but rather a telegraph code that requested a dictionnary to code words. Samuel F.B.Morse By December 1837, Morse had enough confidence in his new system to apply for the federal government's appropriation, and during the next year he conducted demonstrations of his telegraph both in New York and Washington. However, after the economic disaster of 1837 that caused a true panic followed with a long depression, nobody was interested in his invention and Morse was forced to wait for better times. In the meantime he visited Europe again and met in England Charles Wheatstone, the inventor of a competitor electric telegraph system. After the meeting, Morse realized that his system was far simpler, more efficient, and easier to use. In January 1838, thanks to the help of Alfred Vail, Morse gave up his telegraphic dictionnary where words were represented by number codes to use a simpler solution, coding each character with one or more dots and dashes. This method eliminated the need to encode and decode each word to be transmitted. On January 6, using an electric conductor 5 km long, for the first time he transmitted successfully the letters of the alphabet using his new code. The Morse code was born (unfortunatelly will say the gossip ! ). The Morse and Q codes Recall that the Morse code invented in 1835 is a system of representing letters, numbers and punctuation marks by means of a coded signal sent intermittently like the two samples displayed below demonstrates. These pure tones travel much easier than a modulated voice across QRM. Even weak signals emitted at 5 W pass through interference or fading, hence the power of this mode of communication. The characters sent were associated to abbreviations representing words or full sentenses to fasten communications in limiting the risk of error.

But as we seen previously, as soon as 1854 the hundreds telegraph companies existing across the USA were charged based on the length of the message sent, and by 1866 Western Union that merged with the American Telegraph Company as well as all european telegraph companies participated also in the expansion of Morse family Fortune. To reduce costs elaborate commercial codes were developed that encoded complete phrases in five-letter groups that were sent as single words. Example : "AYYLU" meant "Not clearly coded, repeat more clearly". Very soon standard abbreviations were used by all operators. Used in their formal "question/answer" sense, their meaning varied depending on whether they were sent as a question or an answer. So, the abbreviation "RST ?" requests to the contact to transmit his "RST" or Readability-Signal Strength-Tone report. Tens of abbreviations were edicted and I listed in this file some of the most commonly used of them. A few years later, in 1912 the abbreviations were modified and replaced by a standardized and international code name the "Q code" as all abbreviations began with a Q. The Q code The Q code was developed and instituted in order to facilitate communication between maritime wireless operators of different nationalities. Example, all amateurs know, whatever their language that "QRZ ?" means "Who is calling me ?". In the forecoming years the Q code was incorporated in ITU-R recommendation M.1172. The Q code was used to transmit a large amount of information from the adjustment of frequency to distress information or related to safety, urgency, identification, name, route, transit, strength of signal, quality of signal, keying, meteorology, and more. The code was defined as follows : - The Q code groups range from QOA to QUZ. - The QOA to QQZ series are reserved for the maritime service - Certains Q code abbreviations may be given an affirmative or negative sense by sending, immediately following the abbreviation, the letter C or the letters NO ( in radiotelephony spoken as: CHARLIE or NO). - The meanings assigned to Q code abbreviations may be amplified or completed by the addition of other appropriate groups, call signs, place names, figures, numbers, etc. - Q code abbreviations are given the form of a question when followed by a question mark in radiotelegraphy and RQ ( ROMEO QUEBEC ) in radiotelephony. - Q code abbreviations with numbered alternative significations shall be followed by the appropriate figure to indicate the exact meaning intended. This figure shall be sent immediately following the abbreviation. - All times shall be given in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) unless otherwise indicated in the question or reply. Soon hundred years after its released, the Q code is always used without the slightest change by maritime, military, civilian and amateur radio operators. This is probably one of the very scarce thing that doesn't change since Marconi's discoveries... even the ham spirit is today somewhat debased ! More confident than ever, owning an efficient transmission code, in 1843 Morse submitted his invention to the Congress asking for the $30,000 that would allow him to build a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore, 60 km (40 miles) away. The House of Representatives agreed and the Senate approved the bill in his last session. President Tyler signed the document on March 3, and Morse received the cash to build his first telegraph line. Engineer Ezra Cornell had the intention to place the electric wires inside a pipe when Morse discovered that Congressman F. O. J. Smith, had purchased wire with defective insulation. As the deadline approached, to fasten the project Cornell suggested that the fastest and cheapest way of connecting Washington and Baltimore was to string wires overhead on trees and poles. Desperated, Morse agreed and the line were hanged on poles. And this is this way that on May 24, 1844 the wired telegraphy was born in a dramatic way. Morse sent the telegraph message "What hath God wrought ?" between the Supreme Court chamber of the Capitol building in Washington to the Railroad Depot station in Baltimore. The message was received on a roll of paper and is always kept at the US Library of Congress archives Soon, a wired mesh connected cities all together from New Jersey to Florida using the new Morse code. Telegraph lines soon extended westward. In 1850 about 20 different telegraph companies installed an estimated 19,000 km (12,000 miles) of telegraph lines across the United States. In 1854, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Morse's patent claims for the telegraph. All U.S. companies that use his system began to pay Morse royalties. Morse won the jackpot of the century ! By 1855, the British and French built their first telegraph lines for the Crimean War. For the first time governments were able to communicate directly with commanders in the field, and newspaper correspondents "cabled" their first reports right from the front. This is during the Civil War of 1861 that the US Army understood the essential role of telegraphy in his strategy, and it constitued one of his major tactical tool. In 1866, the first Atlantic cable is at last successfully laid between Europe and the U.S.A. The broken cable of 1865 is raised and repaired, and soon two cables are operational. By 1880, an estimated 160,000 km (100,000 miles) of undersea telegraph cable have been laid ! Samuel Morse died on April 2, 1872 in New York City at 81 years old. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn. We can say that he was the father of all Silent Keys, in both senses of the word.

Birth of ITU (II) In Europe the first telegraph wired lines were laid down in 1848. At the beginning lines didn't run across the borders and messages must be delivered from hand to hand to be sent further. The favor that encountered this useful and marvelous communication means was such that nations felt the necessity to regulate, through agreements between governments, the use of well defined type of conductors and gears, the execution of standard operating instructions, and collection of taxes and their periodical breakdown. In 1848 for example Prussia, planning to connect its capital city to bordering localities, had to enter into not less than 15 conventions with german States to get the necessary permissions to route its telegraphic wired lines. All these conventions were only applied inside the sole Germany. This is in 1849 that the first convention about the "etablishing and utilization of electromagnetic telegraphs to exchange State telegrams" was concluded between Prussia and Austria. We had to wait ten years to see the setting up of true international union. Meanwhile, in 1852 the first submarine telegraph cable is successfully laid across the English Channel, what allowed the first direct London to Paris communications. The Austro-German Telegraphic Union (UTAG), the Berlin Convention and the Union télégraphique de l'Europe occidentale merged together and created la Convention de Berne, in 1858. This Union permitted to get a standardisation almost complete of the international telegraph service, uniformity that will be confirmed in 1859 when the UTAG joigned the Convention. Each Union continued however to develop its own activities with the Chruch's States, Duchy of Modène, Norway, Parme, Sweden and Toscana, as well as with the International Company and the Compagnie des lignes télégraphiques des îles de Méditerranée, then in 1860 with Turkey, including the danubean principalities. Following the dissolution of the German Convention at Sadowa battle, UTAG saw gradually its importance decrease and it was disolved in 1872, after the constitution of the German empire. In 1864 we note the existence of two international conventions, the one concluded at Brussels, and the one of Berne of 1858. The progress of science, the extension of wired network and the development of telegraphic relationships indicated that both conventions were no more in harmony with the needs and the conditions of the time. So, to take advantage of a complete standardization of telegraphy in international relationships, the French suggested to nations, not only to the members of the previous conventions, but to all European nations to meet at a conference to negociate a general treaty. Great Britain was not invited because, at that time, the telegraph service was in hands of private companies. The conference met in Paris between March 1 and May 17, 1865. Negociations were arduous but succeeded and the International Telegraph Union, ITU, was established. The memorable document was signed by the French emperor, the Swiss Ministery, followed by the ones of the Austrian (Hungry) representatives, Bade Grand-Duchy, Bavaria, Belgium, Denmark, Sain, Greece, Hamburg, Hanover, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Saxe, Sweden and Norway, Turkey and Wurtenburg. Those 20 States were the founders of the Union. Mecklemburg joigned to the Convention in the forecoming months. The ITU was born. Its mission was to set rules and standards for the telegraph industry now mature. Today the reasons which led to the establishment of ITU still apply, and the fundamental objectives of the organization, organizing and "adjusting" the all spectrum allocation, remain basically unchanged. In 1868, at Vienna Convention, members of ITU decided to give the Union a head office and a secretary. The Union office was set at Berne, controlled by the Swiss government until 1948. It had only three state employees, two of swiss nationality, and a third of belgian nationality. Although the modesty of its beginnings, the principle was put that any intergovernmental organization had to have a head office and its own employees. The works of Mahlon Loomis By 1860, the american dentist Dr.Mahlon Loomis was interested in electricity and tried to increase the growth of plants in buried metal plates connected to an electrical current furnished by batteries. In this same time I tried also to use the electrical charges obtainable from the upper atmosphere by throwing in the air kites carrying metal wires. His idea was to build a telegraph circuit in using this natural source of electricity instead of batteries. According many references he reached his objective is achieving a telegraph line 600 km long. In 1868 Mahlon Loomis demonstrated to a group of Congressmen and eminent scientists a wireless "communication", showing that a kite sent aloft affected the flow of current in another kite connected to a galvenometer located 29 km away (18 miles) from the first kite. This discovery triggered the development of wireless telegraphy for long distance communications. At his death in 1886, Loomis was credited for the next discoveries : - First formulation of the idea that "waves" travel out from an antenna - First use of a complete antenna and ground system - First experimental transmission of wireless telegraph signals - First use of balloons and kites to raise an antenna wire - First vertical antenna (a wood tower supporting a steel rod) - First patent for wireless telegraphy. 1883 : Edison, and the vacuum tube The american Thomas Edison was a prolific inventor. Among the many inventions that he is credited for, name the duplex telegraph in 1864, the phonograph and the microtelephone in 1877, and the incandescent lamp in 1878, the famous bulb that we use for more than 125 years ! Edison discovered also in 1883 the electron emission of a conductor filament heated at high temperature in the vaccum, an effect that will be explained by O.W.Richardson in 1901. His invention will be at the root of the electronic tube functioning. 1887 : Hertz, and the electromagnetic nature of waves The year when Loomis died, as if he desired to continue his works, the german physicist Heinrich Hertz performed a serie of classic experiments in order to detect and measure the properties of electromagnetic waves predicted by Maxwell's equations. Among his experiments note the creation of sparks across a loop at a distance, the antenna being probably tuned around 50 Mc. In 1887, Hertz demonstrated that the light, due to its wave nature, is an electromagnetic wave : like radio waves, we can attribute it the properties of an oscillating electric charge. In particular, it emits a magnetic field radially that travels in the 3 dimensions (spherical wave). If the oscillation stops, the radiation continues to travel. In other words a variable field creates an electromagnetic wave that moves independently and at the velocity of light. But Hertz was not interested in the financial benefits that he could derive from his discoveries and accepted freely that a young italian amateur name Guglielmo Marconi and fan of electricity develops further his ideas. Marconi : Time for business (III) Thanks to Hertz's discoveries and Morse's inventions, in 1894 the young Italian Guglielmo Marconi was convinced that he could transmit signals by electromagnetic waves, thus without using the support of a wire connecting stations. He created a "Hertzian oscillator" and "decoherer" to send a signal in the air over 3. 2 km (2 miles) in Salisbury Plain, England. Quickly he increased the distance separating the receiver from the transmitter and was able to transmit a CW signal over water, passing over the Bristol Channel. In 1895 he invented the "spark gap" transmitter that we will describe later. In July 1897 he formed The Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited (in 1900 re-named Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company Ltd). He gave a demonstration to the Italian Government at Spezia where wireless signals were sent over a distance of 20 km (12 miles). In 1899 Marconi established the first wireless communication across the English Channel between France and England. He erected then permanent wireless telegraph stations at The Needles on the Isle of Wight, at Bournemouth and later at the Haven Hotel, Poole, Dorset. Marconi also gave a large number of lectures. One of his readers was English man Meade Dennis that tried successfuly to repeat his experiments. In 1898 Dennis installed at Woolwich Arsenal on the Dartford to London route what is today considered as the first amateur experimental radio station. The Englishman Leslie Miller, an advanced amateur, published in the January 1898 issue of The Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician the first description of what he called a simple-to-build transmitter and receiver for an amateur audience. Next year the US magazine Scientific American published a long article discussing Marconi's results while the July 1899 issue of American Electrician magazine gave details on the construction of These three articles received a considerable interest not only from professionals who tried to apply this invention but also from the experienced amateurs, alway curious and attracted by new technologies, and the "wireless" counted among them. The French speaking countries knewn it as "T.S.F", standing for "Télégraphie Sans Fil" (wireless telegraphy) as printed on the original drawing displayed at left and sold by Guérin-Boutron chocolates. In 1900 Marconi took out his famous patent No.7777 for "tuned or syntonic telegraphy". To be complete note however that in 1943 United States Supreme Court overturned Marconi's patent on radio because Tesla's work on coils and transport of electricity by air had predated Marconi's invention Marconi's antenna and his wireless radio equipment.

1901 : First signal transmitted across the ocean On December 12, 1901, Marconi was determined to prove that waves were not affected by the curvature of the Earth and asked an operator to go to Poldhu, Corwall, England, with a spark gap transmitter and a long dipole to place about 20 m high. With an assistant, Marconi took his receiver and went to St. John's, Newfoundland where he launched one more time a large silk-and-bamboo kite in the air. In spite of the high wind, this time the wire hold. At 11:30 AM a telegram was hurriedly dispatched to Poldhu, asking the operator to begin transmission. While keying sparks of blue electric fire, on the other side of the Atlantic, at about 12:30 Marconi heard three distinct clicks, the Morse letter "S". Great ! For the first time in history, a radio signal was successfully transmitted across the ocean and covered a distance of 3360 km (2100 miles). That was a true revolution that the press and experimenters applaud warmly ! This demonstration launched the commercial use of radio. Ships were equipped with radio, huge commercial stations were set up to handle intercontinental messages, and this new technology was soon applied to many other areas. Marconi received the Nobel prize in Physics in 1909. The Birth of Amateur radio In the early days of wireless communications Marconi took advantage of Tesla discovery on coils that were able to transport electricity by air. He discovered that a voltage applied inside a spark coil was able to discharge a capacitor across a gap, creating an oscillating spark, which was coupled to an antenna. These "spark gap" transmitters produced RF but were broadband, up to spread the signal over a few hundreds of kilohertz ! The first transmitters were powered by either low voltage storage batteries, or a DC dynamotor generating about 5 to 30 V DC. The low voltage was fed to one side of a telegraph key. As the key was depressed, the circuit closed and current flew into the primary side of an induction coil. This induced high voltage currents to flow in the secondary windings of the coil. These high currents charged the antenna, then discharged across the sprak gap electrodes to ground. This action produced magnetic waves for each discharge across the spark gap electrodes. The wire antenna was connected to the induction coil by means of another coil with a moveable tap. A broad band wave, the word is weak, would then be radiated from the antenna. The spark was keyed on and off to transmit the code. Later Marconi employed a low voltage AC that was fed to the primary side of a transformer. The high voltage alternating currents at the secondary of the transformer could range from 2000 volts to 25000 volts AC, hence the label "DANGER" sometimes displayed in vintage hamshacks.

In 1905 a "state of the art" spark gap transmitter operated on 400 meters (750 Kc) and generated a signal from about 250 meters (1.2 Mc) to 550 meters (545 Kc). The receiver was simple unamplified detectors, generally coherers (small quantity of metal filings lying loosely between metallic electrodes). This later gave way to the famous and more sensitive galena crystal sets. Tuners were primitive or nonexistent. Although these wireless stations were terribly inefficient compared to you modern standards, these transmitters were able to reach distance from as little as 180 m (600 feet) with a 12 mm coil (0.5") coil to about 160 km (100 miles) using a 38 cm (15") spark coil and a kilowatt station. Professional installations like ships at sea used transmitters up to 5 kW and reached distances up to 800 km (500 miles), a record for the time. In 1904 the Englishman J.A. Fleming developed the first vacuum diode using a cathode and an anode, known as the the Fleming Valve and four years later he invented the tungstene filament. In 1906, Lee de Forest had a genious idea. He took Fleming's valve, added a third element, called the grid, and named the result the Audion. Placed in a new circuit the Audion could amplify a signal 5 times. But as it required much power and was still expensive his invention was not used by the amateurs until 1912 and the discovery of Edwin H. Armstrong (feedback) that we will describe on the next page. In 1908 the magazine Modern Electrics was the first magazine fully dedicated to wireless communication. In just two years its circulation passed from 2000 to over 30,000 copies ! The success was resounding. In the same time the first experimenters found on bookstore shelfs the first radio handbook titled "Wireless Telegraph Construction for Amateurs". By 1910 the time of the wired or "no wireless" was practically over and both professionals and amateurs had well understood the power of this new "wireless" medium. This year for example the Belgian Paul de Neck, future ON4UU, did one of the first experimental wireless transmissions using a spark gap transmitter. Paul de Neck was the first belgian amateur radio and will be later ('30s) the co-founder of the first Belgian Network as well as the President of the first Belgian Radio Clubs Union (URCB). This is in this context that the early experimenters interested in amateur radio ventured. But at that time their activity was not oriented to personal communications with other stations, or very few. In fact these "amateurs" concentrated on technical development, either in the interest of pure science through universities or personal interests, or more often, for the simple curiosity to share the first steps of this new "high tech" medium. But not everybody could experiment this new technology. Eveybody didn't go to school yet and learnt to read, and thus very few people were able to understood how these systems worked. Most experimenters were thus pioneer stations. Among them name Harold H. Beverage, the famous inventor of the (very long) longwire of the same name that we see here at left operating his amateur radio station in 1915, probably at the University of Maine. After the publishing of various designs for wireless equipment in magazines, many experimenters built their own radio transmitter and receiver. The modest installation emitted at short distances, a few tens of kilometers, and were not disturbed by interference yet, contrarily to their professional colleagues. At that time, where radio communications were not regulated yet, we estimate the number of "major" amateur stations capable of communicating over 15 km at 600, while "minor" stations emitting in a 1-3 km range probably to about 3000, maybe more. In parallel, by 1910 they were 488 merchant vessels and yachts active on wireless in the USA, some tens in european countries, and a handful in Russia, Brazil and Cuba. These people worked on 300-600 meters (1000-500 Kc) with a power ranging from 350 watts (most) to 2 kW using a relatively small Marconi antenna. Due to the spark gap their emissions were broadband and these professionals created already at that time much, much QRM. Ham, the poor operator (IV) Any amateur radio wonders one or another day what could be the origin of the word "ham". There are at least three possible origins. The first "legend", because never confirmed, tells that the word was given in G. M. Dodge's The Telegraph Instructor in the XIXth century, even before radio. The first wireless operators were landline telegraphers who left their offices to go to sea or to man the coastal stations. They worked in "plain text", bringing with them much of the tradition of their older profession, including jargon. Using spark transmitter, each spark occupied the whole spectrum or almost. If stations were too close each another this caused jam and nobody could receive any message. Government stations were concerned with this QRM but also ships, coastal stations and of course the increasing number of amateur operators; all competed for time and signal supremacy in each other's receivers. Among these amateurs, some stations emitted with 2 kW and, like today, some of them jammed all the other operations to a few hundred kilometers around. When this occured, frustrated commercial operators would call the ship whose weaker signals had been blotted out by amateurs and keyed back : "SRI OM THOSE B@$%#! HAMS ARE JAMMING YOU". Amateurs, possibly unfamiliar with the real meaning of the term, picked it up and applied it to themselves and wore it with pride as a word qualifying their activity... As the years advanced, the original meaning has completely disappeared. The second version tells that it is maybe in 1910 that the word was invented. Before the callsigns where regulated a powerful station able to emit at 5 kW and that everybody could hear at all hours of the day and night at distances of over 800 km (500 miles) operated with the initials H.A.M. No one knows if this rumor is true or false. The last version tells that the word "ham" was invented in 1933 for a publication dealing with amateur radio. But I have no more detail. In my humble opinion if the HAM station existed there would have had archives about it, but there are none. The first and the third "legends" are both likely but are not confirmed. In all cases "ham" became synonymous of amateur radio. In 1911 Modern Electrics printed 52,000 copies of his magazine. There were 10,000 amateurs in the USA, as many or almost in the United Kingdom and probably as many in gathering all other countries together. With tens of thousands of stations on the air, both amateurs and commercials, the level of interference became a serious problem, especially in marine communication. Due to their poor efficiency, it was not unusual that one spark amateur station transmits over a broad spectrum exceeding 100 or even 300 Kc, depending its coil diameter and output power ! Ships, because of their restricted antenna length were lost in this QRM and experimented difficulties to establish routine communications when other stations, more powerful, were transmitting. There was also deliberate interference created by commercial stations jamming voluntarily the transmissions of other companies. At last the US Navy used inefficient and outmoded equipment and suffered much from excessive interference. Due to all these complains, the U.S. Congress took a serious look at wireless regulation. But wait a moment, I have just received a wireless message that will, I sense, dramatically alter the future of the wireless communications.

1910 : Birth of the first Wireless Club This is 1910 that was founded the first national radio society in the world, The Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA). It was quickly followed in the spring of 1911 by the foundation of the first Wireless Club of Great Britain in Derby, near London. J. Parsons acted as the first Secretary and the station callsign was QIX. Quickly books were purchased and a lending library started. The Club gave valuable advice to other amateurs fan of wireless and on August 12, 1912 the Amateur Radio Movement was officially recognised in the U.S.A. The second organization was the London Wireless Club that was formed on July 5, 1913 and renamed the Wireless Society of London on October 10th. Its first president was A.Campbell-Swinton until 1920. The Club kept its name until 1922 when it became the famous Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). 1912 : The Titanic Tragedy On Monday, April 15, 1912, at 12:30 AM, in the middle of the night, the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic near Canada and sank at 41°46' N, and 50°14' West. Thanks to wireless, and the first S.O.S. in history, 745 passengers were saved but 1595 persons died in this accident among them some of the most prominent persons in the world. Behind this disastrer, it has been argued that the number of survivors could have been doubled or even tripled, if there were stronger wireless regulations in effect. Indeed at least three problems appeared and increased the slow response of rescuers. First, the radio operators were only on duty during the "open hours", thus only at daytime. Any event could thus occured at night without warning. Then, in 1905, the Morse code "SOS" (that does not mean Save Our Souls) was adopted by German ships for signifying distress while the British marine, working with Marconi operators, wanted to keep CQD (General Call Disaster that some translated by Come Quick Disaster) as a distress signal. Marcon had first decided to use SOE, but the small "E" dot could easily be lost in QRM and one suggested to replace it with an S, as in repeating three time the small tune the operators had much more chance to arrest the attention of anyone hearing it, hence SOS, that was adopted at the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Convention in 1906 as the official international standard for distress calls. But Marconi operators were slow to conform, and until 1907 Marconi companies continued to work with the "CQD", associated, if necessary, to SOS. At last, there was a commercial war between Marconi and his German competitor, Telefunken, that extended down to the individual radio operators. In these early days of telegraphy, where the Stock exchange was growing fast and gave the chance to small like major companies to increase their benefits, the smallest part of a market took at the competitor meant a probable increasing of shares price at short time. This is this context of commercial war that no routine traffic, even in an emergency, would ever pass from a Marconi station to his competitor. This arrived at such a point that when a "Marconist" was on the air, the others would be shut out, and often, the rules was respected. This story is interesting to remind because it emphasizes the problem of security aboard the ship, and the lack of a standard wireless regulation. Instead of developing this long affair below, I suggest you to read the dedicated page that I wrote about this tragedy and the behaviour of Marconists. Then don't forget to come back to know the consequences of this affair. The Radio Act of 1912 On May 18, 1912, Senator Smith introduced a bill in the Senate. Among its provisions (rather long) note a recommendation or rather a "command" for more security on ships, obliging for example maritime companies to engage up to three wireless operators per ship to ensure a 24-hour duty, a decision that was fully justified. To avoid "ownership" of the spectrum by the Marconi Company, Senator Smith wanted that licenses be now required, issued by the Secretary of Commerce. Each Government (Police, Forest, etc), Marine, or Commercial station would be authorized a specific wavelength, power level, and hours of operation. The initial legislation had considered the elimination of all private, non commercial stations, thus including amateurs. At the first reading the Congress realized that it would be hard and expensive to verify its application Since it was a "well known fact" that long wavelengths were the best to work, and that anything below 250 meters was considered "useless" except for local communication, a compromise was found. Amateurs received the 200-meter band and below (1.5 Mc and up), where they could work 40 km (25 miles) maximum. In fact Senator Smith thought that amateurs would die out in a few years by lack of means and support. In retrospect the Government thought that the only really useful frequencies for long distance communication were the very low frequencies between 100-1000 Kc (3000-300 meters). Thus, this regulation offered to the ham community an apple for the thirst but not really a bandplan suited for experimentation, and their survive seemed to be a question of time. This is thus under these conditions edicted by a state monopoly and without dialogue that amateurs were relegated to the wavelengths of 200 meters and below (1.5 Mc and up), the equivalent of all the spectrum above roughly the AM broadcast band, generally thought useless for DX communications. In the new law administered by the Secretary of Commerce, amateurs considered as "private stations" were also limited to a maximum power of 1 kW. At first, it appeared unfortunately that bureaucrats were correct. Before the Radio Act, there were an estimated 10,000 US amateur stations and still a handful outside the U.S.A. Now, there were only 1200 licenses issued by the end of 1912. Amateurs encountered difficulties to get their spark stations going on 200 meters, and, when they did, they discovered their maximum range was 40-80 km (25-50 miles) what reduced by ten the range they had on the shorter frequencies ! It seemed that there was no future for amateur radio. But "the air" doesn't make the song... Lee de Forest's triode vs. the King Spark Hams had difficulties to get effective communications on 200 meters (and in fact on any wavelength) because the spark transmitter and the unamplified receiver were both extremely inefficient. There was well some shy development in the vacuum tube area but these devices cost a lot of money, they provided quasi no amplification, and were power hungry. In 1908, after have invented the vacuum diode like the funny but operational one displayed at right, the Englishman J.A. Fleming developed the first triode but the device was not very efficient and expensive. Spark gap transmitters and crystal receivers reigned on the air until 1912, when a 22-year old amateur made an important discovery. The american electrical engineer Edwin H. Armstrong bought a Lee de Forest's Audion of Old for his receiver. Unsatisfied with the poor amplification, he changed the circuit and "fed back" a portion of the output signal back to the input to get a re-amplification. Thanks to this stratagem he got an amplification factor 100 times stronger than the input ! Better, when there was much feedback, the tube began to oscillate, and thus generated stable RF. This discovery permitted amateurs to use vacuum tubes offering a gain of 2000 times and more ! This solution placed immediately the "old" spark design to the back stage. Now a broad inefficient signal that took hundreds of Kc of bandpass, oscillated on a stable and pure frequency thanks to the modified Audion. The signal was so pure than a continuous wave could be emitted on one frequency rather than a broad and intermittent wave on almost all the spectrum. The "C.W." acronym was born and with it this revolutionary discovery revitalized the Phoenix; radio amateurs could survive and even grow ! Although Armstrong took more than 10 years to develop the stability of both transmitters and receivers for CW, realizing the importance of his "regenerative" design, but short of money to develop its invention, in January 1913 he took the wise decision to notarise his circuit. In 1913, Lee de Forest improved the triode invented by R.von Lieben using a positive feedback, and quickly after AT&T developed the first vacuum tube repeaters for its new telephony network. But these triodes offered a low gain, about 20 times, and had unsollicited capacity. To get greater amplification, additional grids were added to these tubes. Tetrodes come with 2 grids, the 2d being called the "screen" grid because it screens, or isolate, the control grid from the plate. Tetrodes produce output signals about 600 times greater than input, and pentodes, constituted of 3 grids, amplify the signal about 1500 times ! This time Lee de Forest's triode detroned the King Spark ! The American Radio Relay League (V) In the '10s amateurs learnt to work with the Audion waiting that the triode of Lee de Forest be widely distributed and accessible to amateurs. Now hams could build receivers able to discrimine signals to distances up to 530 km (350 miles) on 200 meters. But soon the Audion became a scarce and expensive device and many amateurs searched fo spares, in vain. Until Hiram Percy Maxim, 1WH, a 44 year old engineer, working with a 1-kW amateur station in Hartford, CT wanted an Audion for his receiver and was unable to find one. Finally, he heard of an amateur in Springfield, MA, who had one for sale but with his station Maxim could not cover the distance of 40 km (25 miles). He had to find an intermediate station that was willing to relay his purchase offer. Maxim thought about this problem and eventually realized that to relay reliable messages on long distance a national organization was needed to coordinate and standardize message relay procedures, as well as to protect the interests of radio amateurs. On April 6, 1914, Maxim with the backing of the Radio Club of Hartford, who appropriated $50 (of 1914 !), and some volunteers, proposed the formation of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). Maxim developed an application form explaining the purpose of the ARRL and invited every known station in the country to join the League. Maxim, like Armstrong, was a prolific inventor. Unlike Armstrong however, Maxim was also an orator-born and convinced national magazines such as Popular Mechanics to write favorable reports about his non-profit association. Maxim also traveled to Washington, D.C., to explain the ARRL objectives to the Department of Commerce and the Commissioner of Navigation. His "pioneer blitz" paid off. By September, 1914, there were 237 relay stations appointed, and traffic routes were established from Maine to Minneapolis, and Seattle to Idaho. Realizing that long distances on 200 meters were not possible at that time, even with a regenerative receiver, Maxim ask the Department of Commerce to authorize special operations on 425 meters (706 Kc) for relay stations in remote areas. They granted. Boosted by the publicity, the number of amateur stations as well as the relay stations in the ARRL continued to grow The ARRL emphased the word "Relay", the equivalent of the modern word "repeater", but less technical. Maxim wanted that ARRL stations handle traffic on the six main truck lines (3 N-S, 3 E-W) that served more than 150 cities. As a pioneer exercise to test the system nationwide, in 1916 a test message was sent to the Governors of every State, and President Wilson in Washington, D.C.. The message was delivered to 34 States and the President within 60 minutes. By 1917, the system was "so refined" that a message sent from New York to California took only 45 minutes. For comparison, in 1921 a reply requested only 6.5 minutes to transmit from coast to coast ! To deal with the increasing number of relay stations, the ARRL started a little magazine, which they called QST, always alive. It constitutes today the first ham magazine read worldwide and is stronger than ever. Birth of Radio News Magazine Almost at the same time a group of Californian amateurs published in January 1921 Pacific Radio News magazine, also dealing with amateur radio activities. In 1945 it will merge with other publications to became the famous CQ magazine. We will come back on the activities of its ancestor in the '30s. By 1916, there were 5,000 licensed US amateur licenses, 1000 ARRL relay stations, and 150,000 receivers in use. In the UK there were nearly 2,000 licences and ten times less or even a handful in the other european countries. The first ham prefixes On April 23, 1913, pushed by the Radio Act that requested the identification of all users of the spectrum, the London International Radiotelegraphic Conference allocated to each nation a call sign made of a number and 2 or 3 letters. Luxembourg received the number 1, the United Kingdom 2, 5 and 6, Germany 4, France 8, Denmark 7 and the Netherlands 0. As there was really few amateurs in Luxembourg at that time, and that transatlantic wireless communications were not established yet, in the same time the U.S. Department of Commerce decided also to assign the number 1 to the US amateurs. For the USA the Bureau of Navigation was assigned the responsibility of licensing all radio stations, including the existing ones using a 2-letter call. However during some years the US Department of Commerce used for amateurs and land stations a schema different from ships and commercial stations. Each amateur received a call sign constitued of 1 number and 2 letters while broadcasters and ships were assigned a three letter call sign. This is so that in Europe and the U.S.A. we hear the first call signs on the air and that hams exchanged their new QSLs identifying the ham station, the working conditions and the QSO information. We soon heard 1HW, 1FX, 8AB, 8BNY, 1JW (LX) some spoke English other French or German. This semi-anonymity last until the late 1920s. The spare-time activity becomes a service In March 1913, a severe windstorm knocked out power, telegraph and telephone lines in the US midwest, forcing the population to support a blackout during a few weeks. Thanks to battery powered, amateur stations handled routine and emergency traffic until regular service was restored. This was the first documented emergency communications in amateur radio history. The U.S.A., due to their large population, where the first country considering that radio amateurs, able to install communications means in less than a quarter, could also be used to service the nation in case of disaster (hurricane, severe weather, etc) and other emergency situations. Although this idea was adopted by most other countries in their regulation, it was transformed in the U.S.A. in true networks of volunteers to name ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) and MARS (Military Affiliate Radio System) among others. Today this is still one of the scarce country having developed such emergency networks that all work together with the local and national authorities. Every month QST remind us how active could be these amateur networks through their respective local section activities, contests and other field experience. Today and for several decades, in United Kingdom, France, Germany or Belgium the emergency services (Red Cross) work in collaboration with amateurs too. These network are not as developed as in the U.S.A. but amateurs provide the authorities with some radiolocation facilities like APRS for example to locate the teams or ambulances in the field. To confirm this change of mentality, in 1915 amateur station 2MN disovered that the powerful Telefunken station at Sayville, Long Island, was sending information concerning Allied and neutral shipping to U-boats at sea. Thanks to the work of this amateur, the government took over the ham station. The thrill of wireless "Wireless is a thrilling pastime. Fancy a boy sitting in his room at home with his fingers on a telegraph key and a telephone receiver to his ear listening-in to the news of the world as it is flashed out from the great coast stations or by ships far out at sea! It's a great experience. Yet thousands of boys are doing this wonderful thing every day and night of the year, and you, my young friend, can do it as easily as they, for any boy can own a real wireless station, if he really wants to." A. Frederick Collins, The Book of Wireless, 1915. 1912 : First telegraphic stations in Congo Belge Back to 1900, Léopold II, the King of Belgian, believed in the success of the "télégraphie sans fil" (TSF), the wireless, and to its major role for his new colony, the Congo, in Equatorial Africa. Marconi was invited at the Royal Palace of Laeken to discuss the possibilities to test the first wireless communications between Banana located in Belgian Congo, and Ambrisette in Portuguese Congo. Results failed and they gave up the idea in 1904. This is only on Mars 15, 1912 that the Ministry of Colonies decided to use the current telegraphic stations localed in Congo or to set up new ones at Banana, Boma, Coquilhatville, Lisala, Stanleyville, Lowa, Kindu, Kongolo, Kikondja, Elisabethville, and Lusambo. In 1913 the belgian Robert Goldschmidt founded the International Wireless Commission (CITSF) which mission was to develop the research on waves propagation. On King Albert I's initiative, a high power "TSF" station was built at Laeken, Brussels, in Belgium to maintain a permanent radio contact with nationals in Congo. A similar station was set up in Congo, at Leopoldville. A communication network was established between 1913 and August 1914. The belgian station used an antenna farm constituted of 8 towers of 80 and 125 m high ! To power such monsters, engineers built a special engine developing 300 horsepowers that drove a 1 kHz alternator, a huge spark system (éclateur) generating the required excitation. At a few hours from the German invasion, King Albert I ordered its destruction. This was achieved by the belgian Civil engineering while German went at fiercely on the garbages, probably by frustration. Several spark systems were however hidden in a church. '14-18 : The Great War While the Great War against Germany began in Europe, prior to U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917, by order of the Chief Radio Inspector of the US Navy, the Secretary of Commerce ordered that all amateurs and other non-government radio stations shut down. The message sent to all stations asked them that all transmitting and receiving stations had to be closed and disassembled, and all antennas taken down in order to no more render operating any transmitter or receiver. Complete radio silence was to remain until the war ended and the order was revoked. So amateurs by the thousands packed away their stations. The fact that amateurs were trained radio operators didn't go unnoticed - Maxim made all for this ! - and some 4000 hams marched off to war. More than ever the word "service" has to be emphasized. Not only hams represent a joined community but there are also of service to the public and to the nation, whatever circumstances. In a few months the 200-meter band was silent. In September 1917, with no radio activity permitted and over 80% of the amateurs at war, QST ceased publication. Hopefully, the madness of men ended on November 11, 1918. But the Navy didn't permit amateurs to go back on the air. They would like to keep control over all radio services, even at peacetime. A legislation was published to support the Navy objectives. Supported by thousands hams ARRL fought against this unilateral decision and ask the Congress for help. After practically one year of pending activity, Representative William S. Green (MA.) interceded with a House Resolution directing the Navy to end the prohibition on ham operations. The Navy eventually complied, and in November 1919, QST celebrated the return of amateur radio privilege on the air, closing his call with these words "Come on, fellows, and get into the air again.". The English amateurs resumed some months later, in 1920. In the occupied Europe and until the begin of '20s, radio transmissions were prohibited. However, many undeground stations continue to transmit, and civilians, taking refuge in their cellar or in their attic, continue to listen at the radio too, like they did again during WW II. The only difference, these first "pirates" stations, unlicensed, were only know by their call, to name among the first belgian stations B7, D2, K2, P2, W2, etc. Anonymity prevailed. The superheterodyne receiver In 1918 Armstrong developed the superheterodyne receiver that incorporated the first local oscillator and intermediate frequency modules. The "superhet" as it is sometimes called qualifies a receiver able to function over a range or band of frequencies. The word "heterodyne" means "beating", a technique producing a beating or heterodyne frequency by mixing two or more signals in a nonlinear device such as a vacuum tube, a transistor, or a diode mixer. The incoming frequency is converted to a fixed intermediate frequency (I.F.) where amplification and filtering are provided. In a typical AM receiver, this IF is set on 455 Kc and usually on 10.7 Mc for FM VHF receivers. The "superhet" uses a local oscillator called a variable frequency oscillator (V.F.O.) to maintain a constant difference between its beating frequency and the received frequency to get a constant I.F. In addition, in 1922 Armstrong created the superregenerative receiver, a simplified superheterodyne that improved the gain while simplifying the adjustment of the receiver. The "regen" as it was called was qualified as a receiver "unsurpassed in comparable simplicity, weak signal reception, inherent noise-limiting and AGC action and, freedom from overloading and spurious responses", nothing less. In fact the "regen" used an oscillating detector receiver that we will encounter in all V/UHF rigs in the '20s to the '50s, and that is still used today in children's walkie-talkies, and some receiver kits. The "regen" radios took the most of very few components. However, as parts became easier to obtain, the "superhet" replaced it in all radio activities. I will not learn you that the superheterodyne receiver is the most common receiver in use today. The 1920s : The discovery of HF and DX communications (VI) In 1921 it was asked to amateurs to organize the first wireless CW communication across the Atlantic to see how far a low power amateur signal could carry wavelenghts shorter than 200 meters (higher than 1.5 Mc). In fact the idea was not new. Remember that in 1901 Marconi did a first successful test between England and Canada using a spark gap transmitter. But this time it was a original test because amateurs used for the first time a tube transmitter. After some unsuccessful tests, on November 15, 1921 the ARRL decided to send Paul Godley, 2XE, to Ardossan, Scotland, aboard the ocean liner "Aquatania" with state-of-the-art receiving equipment to listen for amateur signals from the United States. On December 7 the equipment was set up under a tent on the coast of Scotland. With his official witness called a "checking operator" D.E. Pearson of the Marconi Marine Communications Company, Paul waited until midnight with the hope that the propagation should be open to the United States. Then at 1:42 UTC Paul heard the first CQ and the call sign 1AAW rising out of the static. In the next hours and days he would hear more than 30 amateurs signals from the US, the stronger coming from a special transmitter used by 1BCG located near Greenwicht, Connecticut. At last the first one-way transatlantic transmission was established ! Hearind so many signals from the US, Paul regretted not having a transmitter to reply them. He wrote in his journal , "I would give a year of my life for a 1-kW tube transmitter [...] To be forced to listen to a Yankee ham and only listen is a hard blow". But Marconi could be pride, his invention exceeded all his hopes. Hams had covered a distance of about 5000 km (3100 miles), and it was only a beginning... On November 27, 1923, at about 21:30 UTC John L. Reinartz, 1XAM and Fred Schnell, 1MO, in USA made the first two-way contact with the French Léon Deloy, 8AB, on the wavelength specially authorized of 110 meters (2.72 Mc) for this event. In the following months a ten of European and American amateur stations confirmed a transatlantic QSO by means of shortwaves. This time the triumph was complete. Amateurs proofed that the "useless" 200-meter band could carry signals across the ocean, even using amateur and low power equipment. They demonstrated also the superiority of CW over spark, all the signal energy being concentrated in a narrow spectrum, signals could be heard across much greater distances. These events marked the close of the spark era. The good news travelled around the world at the speed of shortwaves. Within a year, amateurs had communicated with most continents : there was QSOs worked between North and South America, South America and New Zealand, North America and New Zealand, and between Europe and New Zealand. The quest for DX stations was born ! In a few years more than 60 countries were active on the air. Like ragchewing between hams at short distance, the DX hunting was entered in habits. In 1926, Brandon Wentworth, 6OI achieved what was considered at that time as the "ultimate DX", work all continents from his base station in California; the first WAC award was born, but not released until 1930. The next year Hiram Percy Maxim, now 1AW and the ARRL organized the first international DX-party, the precursor of international DX contests. Like in 1894 when Marconi believed that he could pass over the sea using shortwaves, and succeeded, 30 years later amateurs demonstrated that ionospheric refraction (waves enter into the ionospheric layers and are then reflected to the ground) could enable worldwide communication by shortwaves. Experimented amateurs confirmed that using high frequencies (HF) between 3-30 Mc long distance communications could be established at any time of the day or the night when propagation conditions are open. In addition, in the 1920s the price of the vaccuum tube continued to drop, and amateurs can now use transmitters of low input power, giving up the huge kilowatts transmitters to AM broadcasters who worked at the lower frequencies. Now that Marconists occupied the long wave bands and radio amateurs had been relegated to the short waves, some kind of peace between the different services ended to reign on the bands. But in all cases this venture showed to the world all the utility of shortwaves. Marconi House, 2LO, at The Strand, London, in 1923. Look at all those dipoles on the roof. Suspect isn't it ? Don't worry, they're Marconists ! First taxes on radio licenses Belgium was one of the first country that, in accordance with the law of 1920, allowed to each citizen to get the permit to own a receiver for a tax of 10 francs ($0.25) per station. This is only in 1926 that the belgian government released the first emitting licenses, of course accompanied with a tax varying according the emitting power. The first calls begin with "EB", standing for "Europe Belgium", followed with the number 4 and two letters (e.g. EB4CQ). This prefix last until the 1929 Washington Conference. This is at the same time that in most countries we saw the birth of first radio clubs which members met in private houses or in clubs. Birth of the RSGB On November 11, 1922, the Wireless Society of London founded in 1913 was changed to the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB). In 1929 the government decided that existing licences to transmit were terminated, and that all amateurs have to use the new prefix G, as was the need to measure the sending frequency to a greater degree of accuracy. This led to the non-renewal of some of the Old-Timers' calls. It was estimated that of the previous total of 1,500 licenses, only 900 had been renewed in the U.K. First alphabetic prefixes assignation

After the Great War it appeared some problems in assigning US call signs, specially to foreign stations, there was also a difference between land and sea stations, experimental and training stations requested to be identified, and there was a lack of vowels as well as other constraints. In 1922, the first 4-letters calls were distributed to US broadcasters while amateurs continue using a call constituted of a number and two or three letters. The Department of Commerce assigned K and W prefixes to all stations, dividing the country in relation to the eastern borders of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana. It is only in January 1923 that the border was moved to the Mississippi that cut practically the land in two equal parts from north to south : all stations west of the river were assigned the K letter, all stations at east, W. By a strange mystery ship stations in Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico were assigned a K prefix while all ship stations in the Pacific area were assigned W, a way maybe to not confuse land and sea stations. In 1927, All US amateurs added a "W" or a "K" in front on their call depending on the area in which they lived. ARRL HQ emitted first with the call 1MK then received the call W1MK until they change for W1AW when they moved to Newington, CT, a call always used nowadays for his club operations. L.A.Corridon from US Department of Commerce explaining the new assignation of K and W prefixes to radio stations. From 1929 all countries members of ITU had to revise their call signs in adding a national prefix in respect with acts signed at the Washington Conference that sit between December 10, 1928 and January 5, 1929. United States received letters A, N, W and KDA to KZZ, Germany (Deutschland) received letters DAA to DQZ, France and colonies received the letters FAA to FZZ, all Great Britain received letters G and M. R was assigned to all Russia, LXA to LZZ to Bulgaria, ONA to OTZ to Belgium and colonies, etc. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg that was assigned the letters EX in 1913 asked "L" as second letter. It received UL then LX after WW II. Call signs assignation What about the call signs assigned to the other services ? This is ITU that manages the prefix attribution to each country but each national administration (FCC, ART, IBPT, etc) assigns informally and without official coordination his range of call signs, including vanity and custom call signs. So in the field, until the end of World War II, all USA stations were assigned W prefixes. K prefixes were used in US possessions (Puerto Rico, Guam, Alaska, Hawaii, etc.). This is only in the 1950s that FCC assigned the K prefix to US hams when the W calls ran out, then they eventually respected the country map edicted tirthy year earlier. The U.S.A. are one of the scarce countries to assign call signs to broadcasters. With the use of new technologies, most broadcasters kept their 4- or 5-letter call sign but are allowed to use the abbreviation of the mode in their suffix, like -FM (working on FM), -LP (low power), -TV (television), -DT (digital TV), etc. There is however one exception. Some broadcasters use a trade name (e.g. Voice of America, etc). Dan Ferguson, from the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB), Spectrum Management Division, remind us that in the U.S.A, the FCC oversees the operations of private sector international broadcasters, and assigns them 4 character alphabetic call signs. Operations of a station like "Voice of America" (VOA) and similar international services are the responsibility of the Spectrum Management Division of the IBB (set up in 1994) and do not fall under the regulatory authority of the FCC. In the '50s, broadcasts were transmitted from facilities in the U.S.A. owned by private entities. Those private owners were regulated by the FCC, and operated under FCC assigned call signs (e.g. Bound Brook, New Jersey, call WBOU). By 1965 all domestic facilities used for VOA broadcasts were government owned. This explain why they no longer operated with call signs - all programs were identified with a Voice of America announcement. At last, in the U.S.A. assignment of radio frequencies to government stations is managed by the Interdepartmental Radio Advisory Committee (IRAC). When assigning frequencies that are shared with (or primarily used by) civilians, like broadcasting channels, they cooperate with the FCC. Stations used for military two-way communications are assigned call signs by the military. These call signs are often assigned by officers in the field, for tactical reasons. Abroad, the assignation of calls to governmental stations is completely different. In the U.K. for example like in many other european countries, this the MoD who has the general responsibilty for all military radio communications, but with the exception of certain (mostly) naval units, there are no permanent military radio call signs, and operational call signs are issued on an 'ad-hoc' basis. Birth of mobile, 5 meters and up By the mid '20s a few amateurs ventured onto the new 5-meter band between 65 and 75 Mc that was just open to amateurs. In March 1925 they received also a small segment in the 75-cm band (400-401 Mc). Quickly QST's Technical editor's Robert S. Kruse wrote numerous articles dealing with equipment and antennas suited for UHF frequencies. This is also at that time that amateurs put their first transmitter and receiver in their car and work mobile. By March 1927 repeated QSOs occured on 5m between 2EB in New York City and 2NZ in New Jersey, some 24 km away (15 miles). It was not a great distance yet but QST reported this first two-way contact. In June the barrier of 1000 miles (1609 km) what broken. On June 11-12, 1927 ARRL sponsored the first 5 meter CQ Party. By the end of the decade amateurs were permitted to work on wavelengths from 160 through 5 meter, and 75 cm. Birth of JARL In the country of the rising sun, like everywhere the first amateurs where unlicensed and started their experiments and research by 1925. In 1926, a group of 37 radio amateurs founded the Japan Amateur Radio League (JARL). Next year Kankichi Kusama, JXAX, received the first Governmental license. Within the year about 10 private experimental telegraphy/telephony licenses were released. From then on, the experimental radio stations were subject to strict regulation about frequencies ranges, power output, and operating procedures. In 1929, call signs J0 through J9 were allocated by district, and JARL issued his first bulletin, "JARL NEWS". This is in 1934 that IARU admitted JARL as an affiliated member. We will come back on the activities of JARL during war. The ham spirit and the Art of radio The hearth of the ham spirit began to beat in 1928 when Paul M.Segal, W9EEA, suggested, to reinforce the ham community, to publish a code of ethic that the amateur radio should be pride to respect. His moral code was soon printed in the introduction page of the "ARRL Handbook for the Radio Amateur", and states that an amateur radio is : Considerate ...never knowingly operates in such a way as to lessen the pleasure of others. Loyal ...offers loyalty, encouragement and support to other amateurs, local clubs, and his or her national radio amateur association. Progressive ...with knowkedge abreast of science, a well-built and efficient station and operation above reproach. Friendly ...slow and patient operating when requested; friendly advice and counsel to the beginner; kindly assistance, cooperation and consideration for the interest of others. These are the hallmarks of the amateur spirit. Balanced Patriotic ...radio is an avocation, never interfering with duties owed to family, job, school, or community. ...station and skill always ready for service to country and community. If this code of ethic is always in application, since the late of the years 1970s and the fast growing of many new technologies (repeaters, computers, space communications, packet, clusters, etc) there are too many situations where the ham spirit is debased. Many young amateur radio operators lack of consideration for the other OM, some OT refuse or almost to make QSO if you do not count among their "friends" while on weekends or during pile-ups many operators lack of patience and use coarse words on the air. It is great time to come back to origins of the ham spirit if we don't want to loose all the interest of this activity ! Hopefully, some amateurs more diplomatic than others, radio clubs and ham magazines try to inculcate the principle of the ham spirit and the "Art of radio" to the newbies. The baton is in good hands. The Belgian Network and the first Belgian Radio Clubs In 1914, the famous Paul de Neck, future ON4UU, Robert Deloor, P2 then ON4SA, Joseph Mussche, ON4BJ then ON4BK, G. Pollart, D2 then ON4BY, Couppez, W2, and Haumont, B7, met in the house of the "Cercle belge d'études radioélectriques" (CBER) in Brussels to share their interest for the amateur radio. In 1922, they decided to take for name the "Réseau des Deux" (Network of 2) like there was a "Réseau des Huit" (Network of 8) in France by reference to their first call signs. In 1932, on G.Pollart's initiative, the network was dissolved and they founded the Belgian Network, aka "Réseau Belge" (RB). The RB published its first magazine QSO in February 1926. At that time the association gathered 220 members and many of them had already made contacts with stations worldwide. The association was officially set up in a non-profit organization (ASBL) in 1932. Meanwhile, between the two wars, the first belgian radio clubs were founded in most large cities of Belgium : Brussels, Ghent, Louvain, Charleroi, Brugge, Verviers, Knokke, etc. In 1924 these different clubs founded the Union des Radio Clubs de Belgique (URCB), which secretary was located at the home address of comte de Liedekerke, ON4DL. The URCB became an ASBL in 1932. Its President was Paul de Neck, ON4UU. At that time the mission of these clubs was to build receivers to pick up transmissions of time signals and weather bulletins as well as to perform the first radio transmissions. The first amateurs picked up emissions from Tour Eifel in Paris, the one from Scheveningen, Nordeich, etc, and later the first experimental transmissions from Haren air field, EB4BVA, and the ones from the Royal Palace of Laeken. The URCB published also a magazine called CQ. In 1932, the headquarters of the URCB and RB were located at the same place, at ON4DL's home address. Both associations merged to become the Union Belge des Amateurs Emetteurs (UBA), the belgian IARU society, on December 1, 1946. On June 1947 the magazines of both associations merged also to become CQ-QSO. However the UBA will receive its own transmitter and radio shack only ten years later, during the Brussels Universal Exhibition of 1958 thanks to military surplus. Birth of three majors : IARU, FCC and CCIR Three other events must also be highlighted. Between April 14-19, 1925 about 200 delegates from 23 countries met Paris, France and founded the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU), to be the "watchdog" as they still write, and the spokesman for the world amateur radio community. IARU was organized for better mutual use of the radio spectrum among radio amateurs throughout the world, to develop amateur radio worldwide, and to successfully interact with the agencies responsible for regulating and allocating radio frequencies. Since that time, at each World Radio Conference (WARC then WRC) IARU negociates hardly with all users of the spectrum to preserve our privilege of using two-way amateur radio communication. Their fight is never won in advance. Even between members of the IARU there are conflicts... Take for example the very short 30m band which is subject to many conflicts from some national administrations who seem not to understand that IARU was established to protect their interests and the ones of the amateur community, not to manage conflicts between administrations. I am not sure that Hiram Percy Maxim would appreciate their attitude But the problem is not new. Yet in the 1920s, in the U.S.A. the broadcast industry suffered of a deep lack of legislative authority and was in total chaos. To solve this the Congress passed a new Radio Act in 1927 and created the Federal Radio Commission, FRC. It was renamed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by the Communications Act of 1934 as it had to include not only radio communication but also the recent television. Today FCC is in charge with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions. His foreign equivalent are OFTEL in United Kingdom, ART in France, RTP in Germany, IBPT in Belgium, AGC in Italy, or MCI in Russia. In 1927, the International Radio Consultative Committee (CCIR) was established at the Washington Conference. The International Telephone Consultative Committee (CCIF set up in 1924), the International Telegraph Consultative Committee (CCIT, set up in 1925), and the CCIR were made responsible for coordinating the technical studies, tests and measurements being carried out in the various fields of telecommunications, as well as for drawing up international standards. The ITC (future ITU) headed all committees. The Crash of 1929 Unfortunately in 1929 our grandparents were the witness of the world largest economic crash. The depression was so wide, so deep and so long that hundreds of US banks and mutualities closed, and tens of millions people lost their job and became homeless in the U.S.A.. Europe suffered a bit less of this situation but the time was not to the fun. This crash occured because the international economic system was, for short, rendered unstable by British inability and United States unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it due to three main factors. First they refuse to maintain a relatively open market for distress goods (for financial reason they told), then they refuse to provide counter-cyclical long-term lending; and third, they refuse discounting in crisis. The world was subject to a first shock caused by the overproduction of certain primary products such as wheat, then there was a reduction of interest rates in the United States in 1927, added to the halt of lending to Germany in 1928. These shocks were handled in the stock-market break in the spring of 1920 and the 1927 recession in the United States, but this time the world economic system was too unstable unless some country stabilized it. But Britain had done in the nineteenth century and up to 1913. In 1929, the British couldn't support the charge and the United States wouldn't. When every country turned to protect its national private interest, the world public interest went down the drain, and with it the private interests of all. On October 29, 1929, it was the crash. The first financial "Big wave" stroke. The "Black Tuesday" entered in the History, setting off officially the Great Depression of the years '30s in North America. For a while the largest part of the mankind didn't believe any more in his capacity of invention and of work, but slowly, with tears, sweat and much suffering he succeeded to overcome these difficulties. The 1930s : The Great Depression (VII) Just after the crash of 1929 in the U.S.A. and Canada, income of almost every family was cut by more than half, and millions people lost their job. By 1932 the number of unemployed people was huge and increased still : a quarter of the US workforce was without jobs and many people became homeless. President Herbert Hoover attempted to handle the crisis but he was unable to improve the situation. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President of the U.S.A. and promised a "New Deal" for the American people. Congress created The Works Progress Administration (WPA) which offered work relief for thousands of people. But the end of the Great Depression came about only in 1941 with America's entry into World War II after the airraid on Pearl Harbor. In the meantime, the Great Depression crossed the Atlantic and hit Europe in 1932, generating millions of unemployed people as well. Non-stop progress In spite of the Great Depression, the world continued to imagine ideas and create new objects. During the years '30s the progress in science and technology was non-stop. There was the Chicago's second world's fair in 1933-34 and the Exposition Internationale de Paris in 1937. Now that all receivers and transmitters were equipped with vacuum tubes and that many of them took advantage of a superheterodyne circuit, the spark gap became an old souvenir, just good to be displayed on a shelf or in a museum, reminiscence of a glorious past. Thanks to Eugene Wigner and his team at Princeton University, the quantum theory met semiconductors, preparing the ground for Bell Labs development of the first transitors twenty years later but, silent, it is still an industrial secret. The public was also the witness of the discovery of Nylon and the electron microscope. Always ahead on the other nations, the U.S.A. opened the Empire State Building in 1931. The first drive-in movie theater opened in 1933, and during the entr'act the viewers could appreciate the new newspaper Newsweek. First TV commercial On July 2, 1928 a new medium appeared. The Federal Radio Commission issues the first television license, W3XK, to Charles Francis Jenkins. Jenkins was a prolific inventor who achieved over 400 patents, including 75 related to television, and many others like the automobile self-starter, radio navigation, paper milk carton technology, reversible propellers, time-lapse photography, and the front-mounted automobile engine... The television invention went back to 1876 when the American George Carey was thinking about complete television systems. In 1877, he put forward drawings for what he called a "selenium camera" that would allow people to "see by electricity". Many inventors experimented this technology until Jenkins demonstrated in 1925 what he called the "radio vision" to authorities and press. His invention that was looking as a "fantastic dream of science became an accomplished fact". On January 15, 1929 amateurs had already the opportunity to see this new medium. For example, the Englishman E.V.R.Martin, 2TL, gave a demonstration of Television with his home-constructed transmitter and receiver in the Mechanics' Institute of Derby. Now, in 1930, Jenkins broadcasted the first TV commercial and in the run the BBC began regular TV transmissions. At first the american television station was limited to primitive silhouette images because of its 10 Kc bandwidth, but soon it was allowed to move its carrier frequency to 4.95 Mc with a bandwidth of 100 Kc and a power of 5 kW. The future looked really fantastic: not only we had the sound of radio at home but also the image like at the movies! TVI and first UK licenses The straight TV receiver was in popular vogue in Europe also, and as a matter of support its interest, the English BBC reported that they had received some 7,023 complaints of interference caused by oscillating detectors ! An interest in direction finding had started among local enthusiasts, possibly due to the dearth of radiating oscillators. This is in 1934 that amateur radio licences were issued for the first time in the United Kingdom. The RSGB that was incorporated in 1926 has looked after the interests of the 55,000 English licensed radio amateurs and since that time, its internal rule states that the essential missions of RSGB are to promote the general advancement of the science and practice of radio Communication or other relevant subjects, facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on these subjects among its members, and aim to obtain the maximum liberty of action consistent with safeguarding the interests of all concerned. Wallace's Panadaptor, the first spectrum analyzer Panoramic reception was created in 1932 by the French engineer and ham Marcel Wallace, F3HM. The Panadaptor is the first spectrum analyzer portraying visually the signals in a selected part of the radio spectrum, making RF signals visible, identifiable my mode. It worked like does a modern spectrum analyzer or software like DigiPan used for PSK31 activities. This peripheral helped radio operators to find visually a clearing in the hash of all AM and CW emitters spread on a band. This technology was not really recognized until 1936, when QST magazine recognized that the "cathode ray tube", the oscilloscope, made an excellent tuning indicator for the receiver. The first article about panoramic adapter was published in 1942 but very few hams had the opportunity to read it. In this article Hallicrafters announced the release of the first panoramic receiver "when short wave equipment [will be] again available for civilian use". Eventually, the peripheral named Skyriger Panoramic SP-44 will be released end 1946. Immediately after, QST and Radio News described the vital role that panoramic reception had during the war to visually monitoring frequencies used by both Allied and enemy troops to coordinate operations. At that time, the SP-44 Panadaptor cost $99.75 (over $900 of 2004) and could operate in a bandwidth over 200 kc for an IF near 455 kHz. In the '60s, its competitors began marketing their own version of the Panadaptor : Radiophone Band Scanner Model 44 in 1962, Heathkit Ham Scan HO-12 Spectrum Monitor in 1964 followed by Squires-Saunders SS-1V Video Bandscanner.

Birth of SSB In its issue of September-October 1933, the small Los Angeles R/9 magazine published a three-part article entitled "Single Sideband Transmission for Amateur Radiophones" written by Robert M. Moore, W6DEI. It reported an experiment using no more AM mode for communication but a "single-side-band, suppressing carrier" mode, SSSC. The article didn't generate much enthusiasm and although amateurs understand well what could be the benefit of suppressing this carrier, this concept was not associated yet to receiver or transmitter able to support this mode. In was a fact that in using the AM, all amateurs experimented interference causes by the frequency-hogging of this mode. Amateurs bands became a mess and a new technology step had to be made. However, the SSB as it will be called had to wait until 1947 to benefit of a more fertile ground to develop. First International Field Day In its June 1933 issue, QST magazine announced the start of the first International Field Day activity. The event should last 27 hours beginning the second Saturday at 4 PM local time (there was no daylight savings yet !). The author, F.E. Handy, W1BDI told to conclude his annoucement, "the real object of this contest is to test 'portables' wherever they may be available. If successful, we want to make it an annual affair". The RSGB, NVIR and RB sponsored similar national Field Days in Europe. To score the event, each QSO worked with a fixed station counted 1 point, contacts with other portables counted 2 points, and DX contacts counted 3 points. Multiply QSO points by the total number of ARRL sections, plus countries worked. The winner of this contest was a non-club group signing W4PAW. Club members made 62 QSOs. For the second Field Day of 1934, the multiplier for sections and countries was removed, emphasing to the total number of stations contacted. At this point, multi-band contacts were not permitted. DX contacts, while still allowed, received no special point advantage. The scoring system began to ressemble Field Day as we now know it, with 3-, 2-, or 1-point multiplier per QSO depending on power ouput. But in the '30s, the breakpoints were set at 20 W and 60 W ! This is in 1937 that the "Field Day message" was born. This bonus gave 10 points (before multiplier) and was awarded for a single properly formed and serviced message to League HQ stating the number of ops, location, "conditions", and power. For the first time, the winning QSO total reached 204, with a breathtaking average rate of 7.5 QSOs per hour. Today copying the ARRL's W1AW message is worth 100 points. This is in 1940 that modern rules emerged, including contacts on multi-bands, 25 points for Field Day messages, and a 500-feet radius for all equipment what gave multi-transmitter teams a little breathing room. In 50 years the rules changed not less than 12 times, mainly the points assigned to message or the one associated to CW and SSB contacts ! Note at last that in 1941 a VHF-only category was introduced and in 1949 the first Field Day Mobile came to age. In 1975, to avoid the supremacy of SSB, the 2X rule for CW QSOs was introduced. In 1976 while amateurs celebrated the Bicentennial, W1VV/1 celebrated its 10,010 QSOs ! In doing so, the group surpassed the 1933 QSO record in its first 15 minutes of operation ! Today most national IARU societies organise their own Field Day that is usually accessible to all categories of amateurs. Some contesters work QRP with 5 or 10 W output while others work only on VHF, by satellite, powered by battery or even natural power source (e.g. using a bike if a muscled OM is supplied, HI !). In all categories the Field Day stays an event very appreciated by both novices and advanced amateurs. For the contester working in the field in the shadow of a tree this is always a moment of freedom and pleasure. Even SWL are happy as they can easily hear more than a hundred of countries in a weekend. First experimental coaxial cable On December 8, 1931 Lloyd Espenschied and H.A. Affel from AT&T received their first patent No. 1,835,031 for their "concentric conducting system", aka the coaxial cable. Their invention was not intended for amateur transmissions but rather for the first television signals that required a line broadband enough to transmit a range of frequencies compatible with television image. Espenschied and Affel 's invention involved placing a central conductor inside a hollow tube and holding it in place with washers spaced equally along the length of the tube. The low-loss dielectric was air. In 1936 only 200 TV sets were in use worldwide, some using a tilted mirror to reflect the cathodic image to the viewer or directly a straight or vertical screen. At the beginning, telephone (voice) and TV signals, analog, were carried on paired wires (cable or open wire) but quickly, it appeared that the number of voice channels could be improved. The same year AT&T, pioneer in many areas of electricity and electronic, laid his first experimental coaxial cable between New York and Philadelphia. In 1938 the "British Admiraly Handbook of Wireless Telegraphy" (section R37-38) went on to say about the coaxial : "It appears possible that this type of cable may find an increasing number of uses. it could be used very conveniently as a transmission line joining a high-frequency aerial system to its receiver". It was at this time that the coax acquired its RG/U (Radio Guide Utility) numbers. Coaxial cable is called "coaxial" because it includes one physical wire or channel that carries the signal surrounded, after a layer of insulation made of a solid or air spaced dielectric, by another concentric physical braid, both running along the same axis. The external braid serves as a ground. It is protected with either a aluminium sheet or directly with a more or less thick rubber sheath. These cables known as RG-58, RG-213 or L1 were and are always used to transmit television, telephone and data signals. The coax used by amateur is not cheap and today it is twice to three times more expensive that the simple electric wire (about 60€ for a 100 m roll of RG-58). However it is much more resistant and offer some protection against RFI. The first regular coaxial installations began in 1941 with RG-58/U that linked Minneapolis to Stevens Point, WI. At that time the original "L1" coaxial-cable system had 4 pairs or channels of coaxial tubes in one cable sheath, including backup protection channels. Each channel could carry 600 voice circuits for a total route capacity of 2400 communicaton lines. In practice, the L1 coax could carry 480 telephone conversations or one television program. Thirty years later the new types of coax carried more than 132,000 calls ! Grote Reber and Radioastronomy Radioastronomy is a direct descendant of amateur radio. In 1936, the famous Grote Reber, W9GFZ, contacted hams in more than 60 countries and achieved WAC, and thought that "there did not appear to be any more worlds to conquer". After have read Karl Jansky's article in the Proceedings of the IRE, explaining how he discovered the first emission from the centre of the Galaxy, Rebert found a new DX challenge ! He spent the summer holidays of 1937 to build a 10m-diameter parabolic dish antenna made of wood and iron tuned on what he called the "ultra high" frequency of 160 Mc to listen to the celestial bodies. He made also some tests at 900 and 3300 Mc but recorded too much made-made interferences. This is at this occasion that he discovered the radio emissions the Sun, Jupiter storms, the emission of the Milky Way and several deep sky radiosources among them Cygnus-A and Cassiopeia-A. Working for his own, Reber published his first radio map of the Milky Way in 1939 in the same Proceedings as well as in Nature, confirming Karl Jansky's observations made in 1933 who worked then for Bell laboratories then for the NRAO. Quickly, Reber was integrated in the NRAO team. In the '60s he donated his antenna to the NRAO and is today set up permanently on the NRAO grounds in Green Bank, WV. Meanwhile, Reber continued to study the sky and published many scientific works until the late 1980s. He First WAC and WAZ to Belgian hams In the '30s Radio News magazine, the ancestor of CQ magazine, released a certificate, WAZ, standing for "Worked All Zones". Dick Ross, K2MGA, and current Publisher of CQ, remind us that CQ zones were established by the staff and DX editor of Radio News magazine to reward amateurs having proved communications with each of the 40 CQ zones of the world. These zones are totally different from the 75 ITU zones that were only created when ITU moved to Geneva after WW II. Two models of WAZ were issued, a 40-zone worked on one or several bands and a 40-zone worked on each of the 5 bands or "200" zones (5BWAZ). Today both awards are always available. Dick remind us that the 5BWAZ can be earned with only 150 zones, and endorsements are accepted until the operator has confirmed all 200 zones. At that time, a special gold seal is awarded to the operator so he can add it to his basic 5BWAZ certificate. Only a very few minor corrections and adjustments have been made since the first ham won the WAZ.was a Silent Key in 2002.

Just after, ARRL issued a WAC certificate standing for "Worked All Continents". It is much easier to get than WAZ. It is delivered to all amateurs affiliated to a national amateur radio society having proved contacts with other amateur stations in each of the six continental areas of the world. For some time it was issued by IARU. Today, as in the USA, IARU Headquarters are the same as ARRL Headquarters, the certificate can be asked to ARRL or one of his official foreign checkpoints. In the same idea, some years later the ARRL released a WAS certificate standing for "Worked All States". Contrarily to most other awards, these three certificates, like the DXCC released later, were and continue to be only accessible to licensed radio amateurs, not to SWLs, as they require a two-way contact; they are what we call "operating awards". Although there were only 158 radio amateurs licensed in Belgium in 1934, they where quickly famous for their activities on bands and their know-how in award chasing. Who was for example the first amateur to won the WAZ and WAS awards ? This is ON4AU, in 1930, who was the first ham in the world to won the WAZ in phone, then working in AM. In 1937, he was again the first ham in the world to won the WAC. Even years later, belgian amateurs have continued to surprise the ham community. The first 5-band WAZ (200 zones) was granted to... another belgian amateur, John Devoldere, ON4UN, today President of the UBA, who won the first 5-band WAZ certificate on June 30, 1979. More recently Egbert Hertsen, ON4CAS, had gathered over 1000 awards, and is today the DXCC Field Checker and official checkpoint for WAZ, WAS, UIA, DCI & WABA/WASA awards for several european countries. Silent birth of FM On November 6, 1935, one more time the genius and prolific Edwin Armstrong invented something completely new, presenting a paper entitled "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation". It was the first description of the future FM radio. It preceeded the discovery made by the New York Institute of Radio Engineers, IRE, who became the IEEE in 1963. Yagi-Uta's invention In the '30s, in Japan, Dr. Hidetsugu Yagi of Tohoku Imperial University and his assistant, Dr. Shintaro Uda developed a new design of antenna combining a simple structure with high performance. It was a directional antenna made of parallel segments supported by a boom, and placed horizontally above the ground. It was dedicated to short and ultra short waves shortwaves like HF and upper frequencies. This is only a few years later, in 1940, that Dr Yagi and Uda registered their invention at the Japan Patent Office. The Yagi as it will be called was ahead of its time and no Japanese understood its utility. In Europe and North America on the contrary this revolutionnary antenna was immediately commercialized as receiving antenna, mainly for TV receivers. It is said that Japanese realized the true value of the Yagi during World War II when it was discovered that the invention was used as a radar antenna by the Allied Forces. Hams experimented this new design too, and soon "the beam" was reproduced at hundreds of units, using either a boom made of iron or wood. Although it was bulky to work on HF bands, many amateurs selected the Yagi because it was not only easy to design, but it offered a very important gain compared to dipoles and verticals. ARRL echoed this discovery.

In 1936, one of the cofounder of ARRL and IARU, Hiram Percy Maxim, passed away and rejoigned the large family of Silent Keys. The ham community lost an inventor, an engineer, an author, a photographer and a talented leader and manager. Let's pay tribute to this Old Timer who fought hardly to give to all of us our privileges on the air. While some advanced hams experimented communication of the 5-meter band and higher frequencies, in 1937 ARRL announced the release of the DXCC certificate (DX Century Club), a program which objective was to encourage hams to contact at least 100 DX stations in the new list of entities. Soon an Honor Roll was attributed to those who contacted the top ten DXCC entities (in 2004 this is 326 entities on 335). ARRL defined exactly what they heard by "country" and "entity", a debate always open three generations later as not everybody accepts that an isolated rock lost in the Pacific ocean be called "entity" when there is no the slightest activity on it for years or when it is prohibited to access for political reasons... Death of Marconi Another great famous Old Man rejoined the Silent Key family. On July 20, 1937, after more than fourthy years in the wireless industry, Guglielmo Marconi died in Bezzi-Scali, near Roma, Italy, not far from his birthplace in Bologna. He was 62 years old. In a tribute that was never more repeated thereafter, wireless stations worldwide shut down one minute, and for the first time for one hundred years the silent of the ether invaded again receivers. Wrapped in a white noise shroud the air became as quiet as it was before Marconi's birth. The 1940s : All at war, single on sideband (IX) In Septembre 1939, Europe entered once again into war. In the United Kingdom and all European countries, all amateur activity was suspended until 1946. Most British Commonwealth followed this decision as well, including Canada. A few German stations remained active throughout the war, some of them being spy stations in Nazi's pay. The US hams continued operating although their DX activity was rather reduced. The West coast Radio News magazine even announced the first annual international DX contest in 1939 as if nothing wrong happened a few thousands km away. It is is only in June 1940 that FCC forbid US hams to contact stations in the war zone. After the airraid on Pearl Harbor (7 December 1941) all ham radio operations were suspended, and the U.S.A. was also involved in war, in both front, in Europe and in South-East Asia. The sole hams allowed to emit were US hams members of the War Emergency Radio Service, but of course it was not really for the fun. At the start of hostilities, the U.S.A. had released more than 60,000 licenses to radio amateurs. Among them approximatively 25,000 served in the armed forces, 25,000 others helped war industries or where enrolled as instructors in military schools. This time ARRL stayed open and continued to publish QST, although it included much less pages due to the paper rationing. Some of its pages were replaced with advertisements dealing with the war effort. ARRL publications being very appreciated for years, they were used for military and civilian training. A special Defense edition of his Handbook appeared in 1942. Power rationing and "Système D" During the war, it was hard in the Western Europe to listen to the radio, and still worse to emit because many equipments were requisitioned, but also because there was no more mains (220V) either. After sunset the occupying forces cut the mains power to be sure of the occultation. In this way allied forces could not seen any light that would help them to identify their targets. This method was mainly used in strategic places like coastal areas. But thanks to resourcefulnesses of skilled handymen, the famous "Système D", it didn't prevent amateurs to use their radio to listen at the vital news transmitted by BBC, emitters located in "France libre" and other clandestine radio stations. Members of the Resistance in particular were waiting the famous message "Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne bercent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone", "the long sobs..." poem from Paul Verlaine used as a code message from London to the French Resistance to tell them that D-Day landings would commence the following day. How these amateurs make their radio working ? The problem was to find a system that was not too power hungry. A typical receiver needed over 80 VA. The first solution was to build a galena receiver. Due to the jam generated by Germans, this system had to be selective at the risk to don't pick up the least emission. An LC circuit followed with a detection could work but was not very efficient. The other solution was to use a vacuum tube receiver. The building is more technical and it required a low power tube and something to power it ! At that time we found the "transcontinentale" serie of tubes made by Phillips, EF 6, EF 9, ECH 3, and compatible EF 80, 85, etc. Their only drawback is that they got quickly warm under 6.3 V and 0.2 A. These famous "transco" tubes were painted red with pins on the side of the socket. Their power requirements was about 2.5 VA. These receivers were of course equipped with a single tube. To power it, amateurs used a bicycle dynamo. Most provided 3 VA. With 6.3 V in input you could produce 220 V ! Of course you needed to listen emissions with a high impedance headset. It was primitive but that worked ! You took a bicycle with a dynamo attached on the rear wheel. You turned it over, saddle and handlebars on the ground, and pedalling by hand, you could listen to the radio ! No more transmissions in Japan Before the outbreak of World War II, there were about 300 amateur stations in Japan, so about 1 Japanese ham for 200 Americans. Their skills had rapidly reached international standards. As soon as the Commonwealth entered into war, in 1941, just before Pearl Harbor, the Japan Government totally ban all private radio communications and it was ordered to amateurs to halt operations, and needless to say, JARL's activities were likewise suspended. Then, in the morning of a partly cloudy day, on August 6, 1945, inhabitants of Hiroshima, and three days later the ones of Nagasaki were the witnesses and the victims of the most horrible weapon that the humankind had ever built, the atomic bomb. In September 1945, the National Government lifted his ban on the reception of short waves but not for radio transmissions. This state of amateur radio persisted for about a decade until the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951. The Atomic bomb In 1907, Einstein published a short formula in the Annalen der Physics that looked insignificant but it was in retrospect the most important of his life, E = mc2. It means that the energy of a body is equal to its inertial mass. At that time and during some decades, nobody unerstood what it really meant. In 1939, Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, Fritz Strassmann and coworkers developed the concept of nuclear energy in controlling the chain reaction of a small quantity of heavy and fissil atoms, like plutonium (Pu-239) or uranium (U-235). They asked to Einstein and Szilard to solve some technical problems. Their idea was to create a free and powerful energy capable of power the world for centuries. It was a good idea, and probably even the best than man has ever had, but as usually military didn't consider the same applications. In their disturbed mind power associated to energy meant bomb, specially atomic bomb. We know the remain of the story. Unfortunately, this discovery appeared during WW II, and after the many japanese attacks in the Pacific, it seemed an excellent opportunity for the U.S.A. to test their bomb on the scene of operations. On August 6, 1945, in a fraction of second, "Little Boy", a 4-ton A-bomb killed 70,000 people and destroyed 62,000 buildings, the 2/3d of Hiroshima city. Three days later, Nagasaki was also stroke and did 35,000 innocent victims. Without condition Japan capitulated. But the effects of this dirty war were not ended. End 1945, four months after the end of war, Japan recorded 140,000 more victims, most burned in their flesh, irradiated and contaminated by the radioactivity released by the bomb. Some have suffered from the bomb up today... After these sad days, we learnt that the fallout generated by the explosion, not only released radioactivity and heat but it was also associated to intense but temporary perturbations of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the 1980s Sagan and Turok, learnt us that after a global nuclear war, it is more than probable that all wireless communications will be interrupted over a large area, and all unshielded computer devices will be affected and out of use until repair. A complete electronic and radio blackout will be observed for months due to the extreme ionization of the air and most electrons moving freely in the air due to Compton effect. Bad time for hams, and for all of us. Hopefully that always stayed at state of a simulation. End of WWII and birth of military surplus In January 1945, it was clear that Germany lost the war and that the return of peace and freedom was a question of months. A small American editor took the risk to publish a new ham magazine called CQ. In the beginning, the first purpose of CQ, subtitled "The Radio Amateur's Journal", was to promote mobile ham operating. Time running his interest extended to semiconductors, packet radio and satellites. This is today the main "competitor" of QST, followed immediately behind by 73 and other publications. The World War II ended on August 17, 1945. No more than 4 days later, the US hams were back on the air on VHF ! Europe restarted more slowly. The format of English licence changed, allowing more flexibility, and the first stations were heard on the air in 1946. By Summer 1946, the US hams saw all their amateur bands restored from 3.5 to 30 Mc. New modes were introduced, and more frequency spectrum was allocated for amateur operation world wide, reflecting the importance that is attached to it by the international community. The old 5 and 2.5m bands were replaced with the new 6 and 2m bands, always active nowadays. DXing stations were back on the air on HF and the DXCC program was restarted for the greatest pleasure of hams. January 1945, the first issue of CQ magazine.

Thanks to military surplus (called "American Stock" abroad), selling at low cost hundreds of transmitters, receivers, power tubes, rotators and all kind of components, many hams had a chance to operate on the V/UHF bands, setup sturdy HF antennas, and experimenting new modes of traffic like radioteletype, RTTY. But in the same time a new problem arose from the background noise hash : TVI. Under the interest of the public, the TV revolution was under way and many US families began to buy the first TV sets. But home devices being poorly protected against interferences and harmonics, radio amateurs were soon pointed at as some of them generate interferences in the first TV as well as in various other electric devices. At that time very few cables, connectors and power lines were totally isolated from external interference and most picked up RF signal emitted by amateurs emissions. The problem concerned few amateurs but in the next year it became urgent to solve it. Frequency shifts not without pain In November 1945, the FCC began to reorganize the ham bands, and since that time that looks to be one of their favorite activity... They moved first the 56 Mc to 50 Mc, giving birth to the 6-meter band. This allowed TV to use channel 2 without interfering with other services. Without interfering, excepting that using a frequencies range adjacent to broadcast always generates disputes. In March 1946, the 112 Mc was shifted to 144 Mc, starting the 2-meter band. This change displeased to the tens of thousands radio amateurs who had to adapt (and most replaced) all their equipement and antennas to the new frequencies. It was a good time for ham shops and editors ! Came back from the war, in 1946 radio amateurs began to use the new bands of 6 and 2 meters, and experimented the first Meteor Scatter communications (MS). In the fall of 1947, the propagation on 6m was wide open from the east coast of the USA to Europe and over the Pacific. Amateur CE1AH broke a record in working J9AA0, in Okinawa, with a distance over 16,800 km (10,500 miles) on 6 meters ! On 2 meters the DX record was over 1045 km (650 miles), on 235 MHz its was 338 km (210 miles), and on 432 MHz it was 299 km (186 miles). Meanwhile, crystal control was designed into 220 MHz gear in some advanced stations. New HF and VHF licenses in France and Belgium Until 1939 there were, in France, two types of licenses : one for the telegraphy and another one for the telephony. This is with the restoration of ham emission in 1946 that the Morse code became mandatory to work on the air, whatever the band. We have to wait 15 years to see the release of a code-free license limited to frequencies over 30 MHz. On August 1939, French licenses are not more released with ban of transmitting due to war. On May 10, 1940, all radio amateurs have to put on their gears back to the authorities. After war, the restoration of amateur privileges took some times. For Belgium the first good news arrived in May 1946, when the amateurs licensed before the war received a temporary license valid until January 1, 1947. In fact in most European countries, the government was always in state of pre-alert or almost, and until 1950 all nations wonder if the war was really ended. The military for example kept the clothes their wore at war and continue to train the reflexes they learnt, and this is only with time that things changed. On July 22, 1947, the belgian Régie des Télégraphes et Téléphones (RTT, future IBPT) imposed to all radio amateurs and applicants, including those licensed before the war, and who desired to restore their activities to take an examination on radioelectricity and Morse code in RTT offices. SSB, at last ! In September 1947, Oswald G. "Mike" Villard, W6QYT, and a group of student hams at Stanford University started new experiments with SSB, the famous challenging technology that was a big flop in 1933-34. Their pioneer experiments where published from January 1948 in QST in a three-part article dealing with the "Single Sideband, Suppressing Carrier", SSSC. In addition, some pages advertised EIMAC tubes as well as the new Eldico transceiver supporting this new mode. Although there was still a small number of AM aficionados, what will become the future SSB received immediately a favorable echo not only from the Technical editor of QST, George Grammer, W1DF, but also from the entire ham community. In a clear-sighted prognostic, Grammer wrote about SSB : "It may not be too much of an exaggeration to say that our present-day phone methods will be just as obsolete, a few years from now, as spark was a few years after c.w. got its start. "Old-fashioned'phone" will eventually be something that can be tolerated only where there is plenty of room for it". In July 1948, Assistant technical editor Byron Goodman, W1DX, titled in QST "On the Air with Single Sideband". His article was here also associated to advertisments for tetrodes from Eitel-McCullough specifically aimed at sideband enthusiats. Reading their article, it was not any doubt that amateurs were warmly encouraged to use the new mode instead of AM, a mode free of interference they said and using less bandwidth This time the SSB succeeded because it was brought by a market providing already the appropriate hardware, including SSB exciters for 144 MHz. I will not learn you that SSB, LSB or USB, is today the native mode of all transceivers.

LSB and USB But do you know why low bands are in LSB and upper bands in USB ? To explain this, we need to read the block schematic of a superheterodyne receiver. The image frequency works in inverted heterodyne; it has always its sidebands inverted. The first SSB transmitter had its IF on 9 MHz and the sideband was not switchable. This 9 MHz IF added to a 5 MHz VFO gives the USB of 14 MHz and upper frequencies, while subtracting these values gives the LSB on 80 meters. That is the reason why amateurs use LSB on 160, 80 and 40 metres and USB on 20, 15 and 10 meters, including on WARC bands. It became a de facto standard. In 1947, at the Atlantic City Plenipotentiary Conference, the International Frequency Registration Board (IFRB) was created. ITU became a specialized agency of the United Nations. They took advantage of this recognition to create a new logo. In 1948, ITU transferred his headquarters from Berne to Geneva. Since 1865, ITU grow rapidely. After WWII it was no more constitued of 20 countries but already 150 (and included 189 countries in 2005). How works ITU ? The countries members of the Union meet approximatively each 5 years at the occasion of a Plenipotentiary Conference, what represents the supreme board of the Union, whose responsibilities are to define the general polities principles that review the Convention. These countries participate at World Radiocommunications Conference (WARC then WRC) as well as to Regional Administrative Conferences. This is also to the Plenipotentiary Conference to name the members of the IFRB and to elect the general Secretary and the vice-general Secretary. His structure included, and has always, four permanent boards : the general Secretary (directing board) who takes financial and administrative provisions for the three international consultative committees; IFRB, dealing with the frequency registration; CCIR, dealing with radiocommunication; and CCITT dedicated to telegraphy and telephony. These three boards were renamed in 1992 after a structural reform. The supreme direction is entrusted to the Plenipotentiary Conference. In the meantime, the administration Council meets one a year. It is constituted of 36 major countries like the U.S.A, U.K., Russia, France, Germany, Japan, etc. Their mission is to audit the administrative functions and to coordinate the activities of the four permanent boards sitting at Geneva. In 1950, the first transistors were developed at Bell Labs and the military were immediately informed of this discovery. Next year, in the same time as the DNA discovery, the junction transistor was developed. Bell offered his licenses to other companies for $25,000, really not much when, in restrospect, we know the extension that had this technology up to date. In 1953, for the first time transistors were use in a commercial product, for hearing aids. In 1954, Texas Instrument USA had bought the Bell license and wanted to create a fun product that pleased to all the nation. In a flash of genius they used the transistors to manufacture the first hand-held radio, forging its nickname of "transistor". The first model was Texas Instrument Regency TR1, the left most model displayed above near other competitors, a portable radio 12 cm high (5") using four germanium transistors. Quickly sold out it was no more manufactured but another japanese company, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo sold a new model TR-55 that entered the US and European markets in Spring 1955. In January 1954, supported by military, the prolific engineers at Bell Labs built the first computer using no vacuum tubes, the TRADIC (standing for TRAnsistorized DIgital Computer). For the public this electronic machine looked like a magic box of about a cubic meter (27 cubic feet), more than 300 times smaller than the famous vaccuum tube computer ENIAC ! TRADIC contained approximatively 800 point-contact transistors and 10,000 germanium crystal rectifiers where ENIAC used 18000 vaccuum tubes ! TRADIC could perform a million operations per second, quasi as fast as the vacuum tube computer to date, and last but not least it operated on less than 100 watts of power. Only drawback a transistor was 20 more expensive than a tube, $20 vs. $1. But in respect to the Moore Law saying that the price of electronic components decreases by half each 2 years if not faster, it was sure that the price of the next computer should decrease, it was only a question of time. In all cases the micro-computing was in sight. The first integrated circuit In 1957, a new startup company set up, Fairchild Semiconductor. As its name stated it specialized in building semiconductors, and wanted to build what they called "unitary circuits", the future chips. In 1958, Jack Kilby from Texas Intruments invented the first monolithic integrated circuit. A semiconductor device was mounted in a hermetically sealed unit together with resistors and capacitors constituting an electronic circuit. The connections between the various components were made by soldering leads to tiny wires internally as shown on the picture displayed at right. J.Kilby won the Nobel price of Physics in 2000. The next year, R.Noyce from Fairchild Semiconductor had another idea and starting from the individual components arrived to insert a whole circuit in a single chip too.The patent office awarded Noyce invention while historians recognized the paternity of the discovery to both inventors as they individually conceived of the IC idea.

About Novice license in the USA and Canada In 1951, FCC instituted a new licence structure organized in three classes : the Novice, Technician and Extra, along with name changes of the old class A, B, C licenses to Advanced, General and Conditional, respectively. Next year, FCC changed again the rules. No new Advanced licenses will be issued and the special phone privilege on HF attributed to Advanced and Extra licenses were withdrawn, the other privilege remaining unchanged. In 1953, unlike in other countries, FCC allowed to Novices to transmit in CW in a segment of two HF bands as well as in a segment on 2 meters. The radioelectricity examination was a simple test quite easy to succeed. Hopefully on all VHF bands and up the code speed was reduced from 13 to 5 WPM at the great relief of Novices. ARRL released the first "Novice Licence Manual" to help Novice candidates to get prepared to the examination. Technicians received privileges on 6 meters in 1955 and on 2 meters in 1959. But all V/UHF licenses were associated the mandatory Morse code, even if this time it was reduced at 5 WPM. And with time US hams were used to see their regulation changed every ten years or so by FCC. It was scarely negative and even often in favor of a better protection of hams. The Canada didn't follow these changes immediately and they didn't introduce a Novice license yet. Licensed were first delivered by the Ministery of Transport, who became the Ministery of Communications-Canada then Industrie-Canada in the '90s. In the 50's full privilege canadian amateurs could work in CW at 15 WPM on all bands and in phone from 50 MHz and up. After a 6-month delay and the proof of CW contacts (thanks to his log book and QSLs) amateurs could ask the endorsement of their license on the 10-meter band too. These requirements were then remove. In Europe, at that time there was often two types of licenses, telephony and telegraphy, this latter requiring to reach not less than 15 WPM, whatever the band used. The good time... Today, when we speak with Old Timers who were active after WW II, it looks like if we do not belong to the same world... During the "transistor" years and the ones of Rock'n Roll most amateurs continued to work with gears equipped with vacuum tubes, oscillating detectors, and AM transceivers. SSB and the first transistored transceivers (1952) were rising at the horizon but were not in fashion yet. Till then the best way to modulate a carrier in amplitude was in modulating the plate with a class B modulator. Today only the OT still understand this language, Hi ! At that time amateurs didn't use to work on all bands from 160 to 2m as nowadays neither. The most used bands were the 75-80 meters, and thus often limited to regional QSOs. The OM exploring the 40, 20 and 10 meters were often considered as genius.

Amateurs working on the 2-meter band look like plumbers, as their resonating circuits were most of the time made of parallel lines built from copper tubing used by plumbers ! The hamshack of these OM was constituted of bulky receiver, transmitter, power supply, wattmeter, preamplifier, and other amplifier often set up on cumbersome racks like Paul Wilson's impressive installation displayed above. It was also a good time to become a high speed CWer or a skilled radio-teletype operator (RTTY). The '50s see the first transmissions in slow-scan television (SSTV) and facsimile (APT) using a thermal paper that gave off a strong smell of burning. This last device was still in use in some remote military airbase in the '80s to receive weather maps, I know something about it ! Mobile stations worked already well since the first test of Marconi. Of course amateurs worked only on HF and mainly on the 80-meter band. It was the time of "dynamotors" and "vibrators" power supplies that delivered the require high voltage to mobile stations as well as to some base stations. And high was the voltage ! The HV was ranging between 100 volts and a few thousands volts, depending on the output power ! Like fifty years earlier amateurs had to use these infernal power systems with a great caution at the risk to rejoin quickly the Silent keys family... and some OT experimented severe accidents (HV discharges) in their flesh. To wonder how they are still alive ! There is only one explanation : if they respected some security rules, they were especially lucky ! New licenses in Japan Before 1951 (before the War), there were about 300 licensed radio amateurs in Japan. They had to visit the Regional Bureau of Telecommunications to take exam individually. In 1951 the first amateur band allocation went into effect and the first national exam to license radio amateurs was implemented. There was two types of licenses : Grade I (full privileges) and Grade II (phone only, 100 W maximum). Today, Japanese call these licenses the "Old Classes". In July 1952, JARL resumed his activities and 30 Japan amateur radio stations were granted provisional licenses. But we had to wait until 1959 to see the implementation of the first national exams for radio amateurs and the introduction of two "New classes" : Phone and CW with a maximum output power of 10 W. This event spurred a rapid increase in the number of amateur radio enthusiasts, and within a mere two years the number of Japan amateur stations reached 2,000, the growth rate exceeding 6 times what it was before the war ! Meanwhile, on September 8, 1951 was signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty between Allied Powers and Japan that entered into force on April 28, 1952. But many Asian countries refused to participate for a simple reason : the Allied Powers waived all reparations claims for war damages, although it is one of the rights that are commonly recognized under international law against an aggressor state... The Japan might not become a new Power. But it is another debate. Since that time, within two generations Japan became in spite of everything one of the major Powers in the world. We will see how far it has progressed in the '90s. Captain, Old Man on the bridge ! In 1953, during a severe tempest that blew over the North Sea, the radio-lighthouse of the coastal Humber Radio station, on the western coast of Great Britain was suddently silent as it was relaying the urgent message sent by a boat; it was cut off the world by the hurricane as well as by radio. An English amateur listening by noticed that something went wrong and, after some moment of hesitation, tuned his transmitter on the distress frequency and began to relay the message. In the middle of the tempest that drove away the lighthouse-ships, he ensured the link with all boats calling desperately the Humber Radio, advising the companies on the status of their ships, and saved several streamers and other boats. This last several days. This event occured in the country the most confident in its maritime and communication networks. Some months earlier, the "Radio Amateur's Emergency Network" (today the "Old Womens Institute") had offered his participation to aid organisations. "This cannot happen here", one answered him. Today the RSGB's RAYNET (Radio Amateurs Emergency Network) works in co-operation with civilian authorities as do the French authorities which "Plan ORSEC" is managed in co-operation with the REF amateur union or like in Belgium where the Red Cross works in co-operation with the belgian IARU society, UBA. Unfortunately such rescue stories count by hundreds. Recall simply the story of the "Saint Didier" airplane, F-ALH, that crashed in Hoggar desert in 1928 during a long-distance trek. Thanks to the onboard amateur station belonged to F8KW, a French amateur heard his message and relayed it to the Air ministry. All ended well thanks to the collaboration of Algerian amateurs among them FM8IH.

Another time, during Christmas 1939, a French radio amateur heard an emergency call from ZS9F requesting assistance to save two hunters wounded by a leopard in the Jungle of North Rhodesia (Kenya). The message was relayed by an American amateur from Fairhaven, Mass., who heard better the Kenyan operator. After have been rescued, as thanks the hunter sent the skin of the leopard to the French amateur, closing his message with this words "Vive la France". Late 1951 at last, US Captain Carlsens, W2ZXM/MM, from the "Flying Enterprise" ship was took in a tempest in the Atlantic ocean, and tried to save his freight of zirconium, a scarce metal used in US atomic submarines. This "Captain Courage" asked all his crew to give up the ship, and he stayed alone onboard during fourteen days, then the wreck sank. Carlsen was rescued. Si tous les gars du monde... In 1956, the French director Christian Jaque and Henri Georges Clouzot released a drama film entitled "Si tous les gars du monde" (If all guys of the world). This film last 1h50m and told the story of the commander of a trawler in trouble at sea whose crew was saved by radio amateurs. It was played by the French actors André Valmy, Jean Gaven, Marc Cassot and Georges Poujouly. Although this film included no plot, no crime and no stars but only young actors, it became a success of the box office because of the directing work of Christian Jaque. Desiring to made an authentic and moving film, he made use of the modest but real hamshack of the French F8YT; the amateur transceiver of the "Lutèce", the tuna boat of Concarneau, Britain, was the transceiver used by another tuna boat from the same harbor; dialogues, technical expressions, and all details were as per the everyday reality. First Transatlantic Telephone cable On September 25, 1956, TAT-1, the first Transatlantic Telephone cable went into operation. It was inaugurated with a conversation between the head of AT&T and the British Postmaster General. In all, seven transatlantic coax systems were laid before the switch was made to fiber optics In January 1953, Ross Bateman, W4AO, and Bill Smith, W3GKP were working on the 2-meter band when they heard their own echoes come back very weakly to their antenna after reflection on the Moon. Due to the distance (800,000 km to go) the signals transmitted with a power of a few kW had lost some 250 dB... but that worked ! So began what is still considered as the ultimate DX, the moonbounce communication between amateurs, EME was born. Some years later, the Cold war began between the USA and USSR for some economical and political reasons about the Eastern totalitarism vs. the Western capitalism, joined to some spying problems. It reached its top on October 4, 1957 when the Soviets launched their first artificial satellite Sputnik I, a way to say "take care, boys, we can do it..." and demonstrate so their power to the world. This is not so much its famous "bip-bip" transmitted on 20,007 Mc and that ringed out over the U.S.A. and its NATO allies (European) joined in the same fight against the Red star that were "disturbing" but rather the disproportional celebration of this event in respect to the Soviet propaganda. It made the effect of a "Pearl Harbor" on the American people who already imagined that there was a huge technological chasm between the two nations. It was partly right but far from the reality. Nuts tovarich ! Meteor Scatter and Stacked Yagis on VHF Encouraged to use the 2 and 6-meter band just after WW II, amateurs used intensively these bands to experiment various new modes of propagation and antenna designs. In 1955, Paul Wilson, W4HHK and Ralph Thomas, W2UK participated in Meteor Scatter at such a point that ARRL offered him the Merit Award for his successs with MS on 2 meters. From that moment, for all fans of VHF, Meteor Scatter became the most popular propagation mode behind ionospheric and tropospheric propagations. The same year, the DX activity was also accelerated by the popular "five over five" stack of Yagi antennas. Big beams were also appearing on 144 and 220 MHz. In 1958, for the first time the 6-meter band was as crowded as VHF bands, amateurs finding at this hybrid VHF frequencies an efficient way to communicate via the ionospheric layers. It displayed, and continue, many of the properties of HF for DXing while allowing to use the amazing VHF scattering mode like ionoscatter, meteor scatter, etc. Birth of Citizen's Band In 1958, in the U.S.A, FCC introduced lower-frequency channels on AM to encourage use. The 11-meter band was taken from the Amateur Radio service for the "Citizen's Band", the famous CB. The U.S.A was the first country to legalise CB radio. Everywhere else CB was illegal. This is only in the '70s, when technology was improved to reduce costs that the CB market exploded. All began with US truckers that used CB to communicate over short distances between drivers as well as with their HQ. This is during this boom that CB clubs formed and that a special CB language was introduced, including the "10-code".We had to wait 1979 to see the explosion of CB in Europe and their legalisation by 1981. We will see that in the '60s CB had a negative effect on the growth of amateur radio. In 1960 QST magazine ran a survey of its readers to determine operating habits. They keep the idea of polls until now. At that time the division between AM and SSB operation fell at about 50-50, with the exception that 75% of voice operation on 20 meters was SSB. The old order of things was changing rapidly, all the more quickly that by 1960 transistors finally were being designed into most ham equipement, HF and V/UHF. Among the first SSB transceivers name the Heathkit SB-100 and the Collins S-line. Within two years, if you still worked with an AM receiver, you had noticed that amateurs were gradually "invisible" on shortwaves. You heard well some unreadable noises on bands but nothing intelligible. In fact most amateurs moved either on LSB or USB mode. Birth of SSTV Back to 1957. This year the concept of Slow-Scan Television, SSTV, was defined by Copthorn Macdonald, WA2BCW, now VY2CM, who developed also the first video camera, the Westinghouse 7290 vidicon in 1958. In 1960, FCC grants a Special Temporary Authorization (STA) to send SSTV. It was limited to those who Macdonald had given 7290 vidicons. While commercial television required a bandwidth of a few megahertz, in MF/HF bands signals require a bandwidth of a few kilohertz only. It was thus impossible to squeeze the thirty 525-line images per second in such narrow bandwidth. Macdonald created thus a new standard, SSTV. The early SSTV transmission used a bandwidth 1500 to 2300 Hz wide, a range wide enough to represent a grayscale from white to black. The first screens were radar surplus displays using very-long-persistence phosphor (P7). At the end of the 8-minute transmission, the image became to fade but was still visible. To send color images, the sender had to transmit the same picture three times, each time with a red, green or blue filter (RGB) in front of the vidicon. The receiving operator took three long-exposure photographs of the screen, placing RGB filters in front of the camera's lens. This was known as frame-sequential color SSTV. In the fall of 1968, SSTV was authorized by the FCC. This new digital mode permits amateur to transmit and receive static B/W or color pictures. SSTV uses a bandwidth 3 kHz wide on dedicated frequencies and quite specialized equipment (camera, modem, software, etc). Standard vidicons were developed the same year by WB8DQT and K7YZZ. In 1970, W7FEN invented the Double Sideband SSTV, providing simultaneously voice on lower sideband and SSTV on upper sideband. Vidicon images suffer distortion (pincushion and barrel) as electrons travel along the vidicon tube. The frame-sequential method had also problems among them the fact that the color image didn't appear until the final frame was received. But worse, any noise or RFI could ruin the image registration and spoil the picture. In the mid '70s, solid-state technology allowed to save the three RGB images in memory and to display them simultaneously on a color TV. The next step was the line-sequential method. Each line was scanned three times, one time for each color. Pictures could be seen in full color as they were received and overlay problems of the frames were reduced. Among these modes of transmission name Martin, Scottie and Wraase SC-1, three SSTV RGB modes accepting up to 256 lines. First OSCAR Satellite This is in 1961 that a group of american amateurs built and launched the very first Amateur Radio satellite OSCAR 1, standing for Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio, a term that is still used today to identify most Amateur Radio satellites. OSCAR 1 was launched on December 12, 1961, barely four years after the launch of Russia's first Sputnik. OSCAR 1 measured about 30 x 25 x 12 cm for a weight of 4.5 kg. OSCAR 1 used a 140 mW transmitter that discharged its non-rechargeable batteries after three weeks of operation only. 570 amateurs in 28 countries received however its sympathetic 'HI-HI' signal in Morse code on VHF at 144.983 MHz until January 1, 1962. The sample provided in the link was recorded on December 14, 1961 by Roy Welsh, W0SL, at half-speed so that the signal is well readable. Here is the same signal recorded at normal speed but harder to read. The speed of the HI-HI message was controlled by a temperature sensor inside the spacecraft. OSCAR 1 re-entered the atmosphere on January 31, 1962 after 312 revolutions. It was followed six months later by OSCAR 2, using a design almost similar. Since that time, in average amateurs have launched one satellite each year on orbit. We have had to wait until 1969 to organize this activity inside an amateur association, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, AMSAT, an educational organization chartered in the District of Columbia, USA. Its aim is to foster Amateur Radio's participation in space research and communication. FCC changed one more time the ham privileges. Back in 1952, they gave to all HF classes identical privileges. Many hams who had advanced skills wanted the incentive licensing system back and informed ARRL of their whish on October 1963. It was followed with a large debate during which the number of licensed hams decreased gradually in the USA as we noticed previously. At the end FCC restores incentive licensing on August 24, 1967. Exclusive segments on 80, 40, 20,15 and 6-meter bands were set aside for Amateur Extra and Advanced class licensees and withdrawn from use by General hams. Of course this decision displeased to all General who lost a part of their bands. FCC's decision partly subsisted until now and continue to feed forums and columns in magazines. In most other countries such "exclusivities" do not exist, excepted for Novices and other Foundation licensees like there are in the U.K. In Belgium, this is in the '60s that the Morse code examination was removed to access bands over 30 MHz. All owner of an "ON1" license could work on VHF and upper frequencies, in any mode. Many belgian amateurs forced to work on VHF took advantage of this opportunity to develop their skills in the new-born space communications. The know-how of these "technicians à la belge" was perpetuated until today. FCC changed one more time the ham privileges. Back in 1952, they gave to all HF classes identical privileges. Many hams who had advanced skills wanted the incentive licensing system back and informed ARRL of their whish on October 1963. It was followed with a large debate during which the number of licensed hams decreased gradually in the USA as we noticed previously. At the end FCC restores incentive licensing on August 24, 1967. Exclusive segments on 80, 40, 20,15 and 6-meter bands were set aside for Amateur Extra and Advanced class licensees and withdrawn from use by General hams. Of course this decision displeased to all General who lost a part of their bands. FCC's decision partly subsisted until now and continue to feed forums and columns in magazines. In most other countries such "exclusivities" do not exist, excepted for Novices and other Foundation licensees like there are in the U.K. In Belgium, this is in the '60s that the Morse code examination was removed to access bands over 30 MHz. All owner of an "ON1" license could work on VHF and upper frequencies, in any mode. Many belgian amateurs forced to work on VHF took advantage of this opportunity to develop their skills in the new-born space communications. The know-how of these "technicians à la belge" was perpetuated until today. During the '60s, pushed by the boom of mobile FM that occured twenty years earlier just after WW II, manufacturers provided at commercial purposes mobile FM transceivers but they were not really tightened up to their own channel spacing. This displeased to FCC who required an adjustement and the respect of the regulation. Suddently manufacturers had in stock thousands of useless but performing hand-held and base FM transceivers that worked already on the 6-meter, 2-meter and 70-cm bands. They modified them to requirements of FCC, and quickly these low cost gears appeared on the secondhand market. Rapidly manufacturers adapted to the new demand, and in the '70s FM repeaters knewn a great expansion to both amateur and professional use who had a choice among tens of hand-held transceivers to work remotely on FM. The first FM scanners (receivers) were introduced at that time. In 1972 there were not less than 310 VHF repeaters in the USA and 52 in Canada ! The popular "Bearcat" scanner 800 XLT covering 8 FM channels. It was manufactured in 1971. These FM transceivers worked not only on the 2-meter but also on the 1.5-meter (200 MHz) and 70-cm bands. One of these model was the Standard C-826M, a 12-channel FM transceiver quickly rejoigned by the "Bearcat" scanner 800 XLT, covering only 8 FM channels. This is also in 1972 that the first customers could pay their equipment thanks to Bank of America and Master Charge credits cards. This means of paiment was only imported in Europe in the '80s. In 1970, the Japanese equipment continued penetrate in the market. While Kenwood introduced its JR-500SE receiver and prepared the blue prints of its first transmitter (TS-120S in 1979), in less than 6 months Yaesu released two transceivers, the FTdx-560 and FT-101. Stateside, Drake released its Drake TR-4, Henry Radio introduced its Tempo-One transceiver and Heath announced the HW-100 and soon after the HW-101, two traditional tube-type SSB transceivers WARC bands In 1979, thanks to the hard fight of IARU, the union representing ham associations at WARC conferences (future WRC), amateurs get three new HF bands : 30, 17 and 12 m (10, 18 and 24 MHz). One more time most of us had to adapt their antennas and find a way to transmit on the new frequencies. Because it is very narrow, operation on the 10-m bands have been restricted to CW and RTTY, and soon to digital modes excepted packet. However in some european countries, and in spite of the notice of IARU, some hams not aware of this regulation continue to use this band for voice. There is however few violation of the rules. The 30-m band (10,100-10,150 kHz) is assigned to the hams as fixed primary service for narrow band digimodes and CW. The 17-meter band (18,068-18,168 kHz is an ham band shared equally between the amateur service including amateur by satellite, and fixed service (max. 1 kW) in some eastern european countries. Mode CW, RTTY, and USB are permitted At last the 12-meter (24,890-24,990 kHz) is allocated to primary amateur service and amateur service by satellite. Mode of traffic are CW, FSK, and USB. As this frequency approaching the 30 MHz, the reception is usually limited, mainly at the daytime during years of high sun activity. All three bands were, and are always, "denied of access" to contests. There are excellent for DXing as well as to regional QSOs, all the more that they are less crowded than the other bands due to this restriction. As the gossip will tell, "at last bands without contest on weekend !"... Packet, when computers come on stage In 1978, during the rising of home computing and networks, Doug MacDonald Lockhart, VE7APU, used to play with electronic kits, adapted the concept of packet mode of transmission to ham activities, used till then in computing networks. Remind that a "packet" is a fundamental unit of information made of a header, which contains the identification and the address of the information to send and receive followed with a data area, which contains the user's information, his data, the all constituting the datagram). Applied to amateur radio, data are the audio and the PTT keying. The protection against loss, duplication, or misdelivery of packets is usually ensured by TCP protocol located one layer down in the ISO layering standard. On wireless systems, signals are carry out no more by TCP/IP but by the AX.25 protocol, a version of the wired network protocol X.25 adapted to amateurs needs. However, details of AX.25 encapsulation rules may vary from country to country. But enough of theory !

Also of interest was the two AM stations located in the Oregonian Bldg. at SW 6th and Alder. KGW on 620 later became the NBC Red network and KEX (I believe 1190) became the NBC bluel network. They operated out of the same studios. As I remember there were three studios and several control rooms. As a kid on Sunday mornings I would walk dowtown to be in the studio when Uncle Van (Van Fleming) would read the funnies out of the Sunday Oregonian. Also on hand was Eddie King (Sol Silverman) who in later years was one of the network announcers in Los Angeles. In other 1930s Portland radio was the sharing of frequencies by KFJR and KALE. They shared a common frequency one leaving the air at a scheduled time and the other coming up in its place... KFJR was operated by Ashley Dickson and he had a laid-back version of reading the evening news over the air. There also was a KTBR but I forget the details. The big frequency movement in the 1930s shifted most stations up a little in frequency. KGW stayed on 620 but KXL which had been on 1420 and I believe was set to go to 1450 instead went to 750 and became a higher-power clear channel station; but at night had to reduce power to protect stations on that frequency in other parts of the country. In the frequency shuffle KVAN (Vancouver, WA) ended up on 910 khz which happens to be the 2nd harmonic of 455 khz which was the IF frequency in most AM radios of the day. That usually ended up with a whistle (heterodyne) on their received signal.

It lists for Portland: KALE 1300 @ .5Kw KBPS 1420 @ .1Kw KEX 1180 @ .5Kw KFJR 1300 @ .5Kw KGW 620 @1.0Kw KOIN 940 @1.0KW KWJJ 1040 @ .5Kw KXL 1420 @ .1Kw

KGW 832.7kc March 25, 1922 KGW 749.4kc November 18, 1922 KGW 749.4kc & weather on 618.1kc April 1, 1923 KGW 609.3kc May 12, 1923 KGW 610kc February 22, 1925 KGW 620kc November 11, 1928

May 1933 "Richfield Reporter" Program Selector (Oregon & Washington version) which has the entire NBC & CBS line-ups on a round paper dial which moves to programs and times. It says on the back "Listen in, Richfield Reporter Nightly 10 p.m. N.B.C. Network KFI, KFSD, KGO, KGW, KOMO, KHQ. Friendly dealers may be found in your neighborhood or in the country at most every turn of the road. Richfield Hi-Octane. Richfield Oil Co. of California."

Fortnightly Review, William Crookes, February 1, 1892:

SOME POSSIBILITIES OF ELECTRICITY. pages 174-176:

Whether vibrations of the ether, longer than those which affect us as light, may not be constantly at work around us, we have, until lately, never seriously inquired. But the researches of Lodge in England and of Hertz in Germany give us an almost infinite range of ethereal vibrations or electrical rays, from wave-lengths of thousands of miles down to a few feet. Here is unfolded to us a new and astonishing world--one which it is hard to conceive should contain no possibilities of transmitting and receiving intelligence. Rays of light will not pierce through a wall, nor, as we know only too well, through a London fog. But the electrical vibrations of a yard or more in wave-length of which I have spoken will easily pierce such mediums, which to them will be transparent. Here, then, is revealed the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without wires, posts, cables, or any of our present costly appliances. Granted a few reasonable postulates, the whole thing comes well within the realms of possible fulfilment. At the present time experimentalists are able to generate electrical waves of any desired wave-length from a few feet upwards, and to keep up a succession of such waves radiating into space in all directions. Possible, too, with some of these rays, if not with all, to refract them through suitably-shaped bodies acting as lenses, and so direct a sheaf of rays in any given direction ; enormous lens-shaped masses of pitch and similar bodies have been used for this purpose. Also an experimentalist at a distance can receive some, if not all, of these rays on a properly-constituted instrument, and by concerted signals messages in the Morse code can thus pass from one operator to another. What, therefore, remains to be discovered is--firstly, simpler and more certain means of generating electrical rays of any desired wave-length, from the shortest, say of a few feet in length, which will easily pass through buildings and fogs, to those long waves whose lengths are measured by tens, hundreds, and thousands of miles; secondly, more delicate receivers which will respond to wave-lengths between certain defined limits and be silent to all others; thirdly, means of darting the sheaf of rays in any desired direction, whether by lenses or reflectors, by the help of which the sensitiveness of the receiver (apparently the most difficult of the problems to be solved) would not need to be so delicate as when the rays to be picked up are simply radiating into space in all directions, and fading away according to the law of inverse squares. Any two friends living within the radius of sensibility of their receiving instruments, having first decided on their special wave length and attuned their respective instruments to mutual receptivity, could thus communicate as long and as often as they pleased by timing the impulses to produce long and short intervals on the ordinary Morse code. At first sight an objection to this plan would be its want of secrecy. Assuming that the correspondents were a mile apart the transmitter would send out the waves in all directions, filling a sphere a mile in radius, and it would therefore be possible for any one living within a mile of the sender to receive the communication. This could be got over in two ways. If the exact position of both sending and receiving instruments were accurately known, the rays could be concentrated with more or less exactness on the receiver. If, however, the sender and receiver were moving about, so that the lens device could not be adopted, the correspondents must attune their instruments to a definite wavelength, say, for example, 50 yards. I assume here that the progress of discovery would give instruments capable of adjustment by turning a screw or altering the length of a wire, so as to become receptive of wavelengths of any preconcerted length. Thus, when adjusted to 50 yards, the transmitter might emit, and the receiver respond to, rays varying between 45 and 55 yards, and be silent to all others. Considering that there would be the whole range of waves to choose from, varying from a few feet to several thousand miles, there would be sufficient secrecy ; for curiosity the most inveterate would surely recoil from the task of passing in review all the millions of possible wave-lengths on the remote chance of ultimately hitting on the particular wave-length employed by his friends whose correspondence he wished to tap. By "coding" the message even this remote chance of surreptitious straying could be obviated. This is no mere dream of a visionary philosopher. All the requisites needed to bring it within the grasp of daily life are well within the possibilities of discovery, and are so reasonable and so clearly in the path of researches which are now being actively prosecuted in every capital of Europe that we may any day expect to hear that they have emerged from the realms of speculation into those of sober fact. Even now, indeed, telegraphing without wires is possible within a restricted radius of a few hundred yards, and some years ago I assisted at experiments where messages were transmitted from one part of a house to another without an intervening wire by almost the identical means here described. reply to yours of the 26th inst., in which you say that Sir William Crookes has told you that he saw some experiments of mine on aërial telegraphy in about December 1879, of which he thinks I ought to have published an account, and of which you ask for some information, I beg to reply with a few leading experiments that I made on this subject from 1879 up to 1886:-- In 1879, being engaged upon experiments with my microphone, together with my induction balance, I remarked that at some times I could not get a perfect balance in the induction balance, through apparent want of insulation in the coils; but investigation showed me that the real cause was some loose contact or microphonic joint excited in some portion of the circuit. I then applied the microphone, and found that it gave a current or sound in the telephone receiver, no matter if the microphone was placed direct in the circuit or placed independently at several feet distance from the coils, through which an intermittent current was passing. After numerous experiments, I found that the effect was entirely caused by the extra current, produced in the primary coil of the induction balance. Further researches proved that an interrupted current in any coil gave out at each interruption such intense extra currents that the whole atmosphere in the room (or in several rooms distant) would have a momentary invisible charge, which became evident if a microphonic joint was used as a receiver with a telephone. This led me to experiment upon the best form of a receiver for these invisible electric waves, which evidently permeated great distances, and through all apparent obstacles, such as walls, &c. I found that all microphonic contacts or joints were extremely sensitive. Those formed of a hard carbon such as coke, or a combination of a piece of coke resting upon a bright steel contact, were very sensitive and self-restoring; whilst a loose contact between metals was equally sensitive, but would cohere, or remain in full contact, after the passage of an electric wave. The sensitiveness of these microphonic contacts in metals has since been rediscovered by Mons. Ed Branly of Paris, and by Prof. Oliver Lodge, in England, by whom the name of "coherer" has been given to this organ of reception; but, as we wish this organ to make a momentary contact and not cohere permanently, the name seems to me ill-suited for the instrument. The most sensitive and perfect receiver that I have yet made does not cohere permanently, but recovers its original state instantly, and therefore requires no tapping or mechanical aid to the separation of the contacts after momentarily being brought into close union. I soon found that, whilst an invisible spark would produce a thermo-electric current in the microphonic contacts (sufficient to be heard in the telephone in its circuit), it was far better and more powerful to use a feeble voltaic cell in the receiving circuit, the microphonic joint then acting as a relay by diminishing the resistance at the contact, under the influence of the electric wave received through the atmosphere. I will not describe the numerous forms of the transmitter and receiver that I made in 1879, all of which I wrote down in several volumes of manuscripts in 1879 (but these have never been published), and most of which can be seen here at my residence at any time; but I will confine myself now to a few salient points. I found that very sudden electric impulses, whether given out to the atmosphere through the extra current from a coil or from a frictional electric machine, equally affected the microphonic joint, the effect depending more on the sudden high potential effect than on any prolonged action. Thus, a spark obtained by rubbing a piece of sealing-wax was equally effective as a discharge from a Leyden jar of the same potential.1 The rubbed sealing-wax and charged Leyden jar had no effect until they were discharged by a spark, and it was evident that this spark, however feeble, acted upon the whole surrounding atmosphere in the form of waves or invisible rays, the laws of which I could not at the time determine. Hertz, however, by a series of original and masterly experiments, proved in 1887-89 that they were real waves similar to light, but of a lower frequency, though of the same velocity. In 1879, whilst making these experiments on aërial transmission, I had two different problems to solve: 1st, What was the true nature of these electrical aërial waves, which seemed, whilst not visible, to spurn all idea of insulation, and to penetrate all space to a distance undetermined. 2nd, To discover the best receiver that could act upon a telephone or telegraph instrument, so as to be able to utilise (when required) these waves for the transmission of messages. The second problem came easy to me when I found that the microphone, which I had previously discovered in 1877-78, had alone the power of rendering these invisible waves evident, either in a telephone or a galvanometer, and up to the present time I do not know of anything approaching the sensitiveness of a microphonic joint as a receiver. Branly's tube, now used by Marconi, was described in my first paper to the Royal Society (May 8, 1878) as the microphone tube, filled with loose filings of zinc and silver; and Prof. Lodge's coherer is an ordinary steel microphone, used for a different purpose from that in which I first described it.2 During the long-continued experiments on this subject, between 1879 and 1886, many curious phenomena came out which would be too long to describe. I found that the effect of the extra current in a coil was not increased by having an iron core as an electro-magnet--the extra current was less rapid, and therefore less effective. A similar effect of a delay was produced by Leyden-jar discharges. The material of the contact-breaker of the primary current had also a great effect. Thus, if the current was broken between two or one piece of carbon, no effect could be perceived of aërial waves, even at short distances of a few feet. The extra current from a small coil without iron was as powerful as an intense spark from a secondary coil, and at that time my experiments seemed to be confined to the use of a single coil of my induction balance, charged by six Daniell cells. With higher battery power the extra current invariably destroyed the insulation of the coils. In December 1879 I invited several persons to see the results then obtained. Amongst others who called on me and saw my results were-- Dec. 1879.--Mr W. H. Preece, F.R.S.; Sir William Crookes, F.R.S.; Sir W. Roberts-Austen, F.R.S.; Prof. W. Grylls Adams, F.R.S.; Mr W. Grove. Feb. 20, 1880.--Mr Spottiswoode, Pres. R.S.; Prof. Huxley, F.R.S.; Sir George Gabriel Stokes, F.R.S. Nov. 7, 1888.--Prof. Dewar, F.R.S.; Mr Lennox, Royal Institution. They all saw experiments upon aërial transmission, as already described, by means of the extra current produced from a small coil and received upon a semi-metallic microphone, the results being heard upon a telephone in connection with the receiving microphone. The transmitter and receiver were in different rooms, about 60 feet apart. After trying successfully all distances allowed in my residence in Portland Street, my usual method was to put the transmitter in operation and walk up and down Great Portland Street with the receiver in my hand, with the telephone to the ear. The sounds seemed to slightly increase for a distance of 60 yards, then gradually diminish, until at 500 yards I could no longer with certainty hear the transmitted signals. What struck me as remarkable was that, opposite certain houses, I could hear better, whilst at others the signals could hardly be perceived. Hertz's discovery of nodal points in reflected waves (in 1887-89) has explained to me what was then considered a mystery. At Mr A. Stroh's telegraph instrument manufactory Mr Stroh and myself could hear perfectly the currents transmitted from the third storey to the basement, but I could not detect clear signals at my residence about a mile distant. The innumerable gas and water pipes intervening seemed to absorb or weaken too much the feeble transmitted extra currents from a small coil. The President of the Royal Society, Mr Spottiswoode, together with the two hon. secretaries, Prof. Huxley and Prof. G. Stokes, called upon me on February 20, 1880, to see my experiments upon aërial transmission of signals. The experiments shown were most successful, and at first they seemed astonished at the results; but towards the close of three hours' experiments Prof. Stokes said that all the results could be explained by known electro-magnetic induction effects, and therefore he could not accept my view of actual aërial electric waves unknown up to that time, but thought I had quite enough original matter to form a paper on the subject to be read at the Royal Society. I was so discouraged at being unable to convince them of the truth of these aërial electric waves that I actually refused to write a paper on the subject until I was better prepared to demonstrate the existence of these waves; and I continued my experiments for some years, in hopes of arriving at a perfect scientific demonstration of the existence of aërial electric waves produced by a spark from the extra currents in coils, or from frictional electricity, or from secondary coils. The triumphant demonstration of these waves was reserved to Prof. Hertz, who by his masterly researches upon the subject in 1887-89 completely demonstrated not only their existence but their identity with ordinary light, in having the power of being reflected and refracted, &c., with nodal points, by means of which the length of the waves could be measured. Hertz's experiments were far more conclusive than mine, although he used a much less effective receiver than the microphone or coherer. I then felt it was now too late to bring forward my previous experiments; and through not publishing my results and means employed, I have been forced to see others remake the discoveries I had previously made as to the sensitiveness of the microphonic contact and its useful employment as a receiver for electric aërial waves. Amongst the earliest workers in the field of aërial transmission I would draw attention to the experiments of Prof. Henry, who describes in his work, published by the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., vol. i. p. 203 (date unknown, probably about 1850), how he magnetised a needle in a coil at 30 feet distance, and magnetised a needle by a discharge of lightning at eight miles' distance.3 Marconi has lately demonstrated that by the use of the Hertzian waves and Branly's coherer he has been enabled to transmit and receive aërial electric waves to a greater distance than previously ever dreamed of by the numerous discoverers and inventors who have worked silently in this field. His efforts at demonstration merit the success he has received; and if (as I have lately read) he has discovered the means of concentrating these waves on a single desired point without diminishing their power, then the world will be right in placing his name on the highest pinnacle in relation to aërial electric telegraphy.--Sincerely yours,

J. J. FAHIE, Esq., Claremont Hill, St Helier's, Jersey. On the publication of this letter in the 'Electrician' (May 5, 1899), Mr John Munro called on Prof. Hughes, and was accorded the privilege of inspecting his apparatus, mostly self-made and of the simplest materials, and his note-books, filled with experiments in ink or pencil, dated or dateless, and some marked "extraordinary," "important," and so on. An interesting account of this interview was afterwards published by Mr Munro,4 from which I make a few extracts, as they help to illustrate and supplement the Professor's own account. After satisfying himself as to the cause of the trouble in his induction-balance experiments as stated above (p. 296), Prof. Hughes joined a single cell (fig. 1) in circuit with a clockwork interrupter I, and the primary coil C of the induction balance. This "transmitter" was connected by a wire W, several feet in length, to the "receiver," which consisted of a telephone T in circuit with a microphone M. With such an arrangement the "extra spark" of the transmitter was always heard in the telephone. These sounds were found to vary with the conditions of the experiment: thus, with an electromotive force of 1/50 volt the sound was stronger than with several cells; it was also louder and clearer when the contact points of the interrupter were of metal--not metal to carbon, or carbon to carbon. Again, an iron core in the coil C, though productive of a stronger spark, rather diminished than increased the corresponding sound in the telephone. Indeed, the spark from the Faraday electro-magnet of the Royal Institution, excited by a large Grove battery, had little effect, and even a dynamo at work beside the receiver gave a very poor result. Prof. Hughes tried many experiments to satisfy himself that his receiver (his microphone and telephone) was influenced by the extra spark solely, and not by the ordinary electro-magnetic induction. He inserted coils in the transmitting and receiving circuits, placing them parallel, and at right angles to each other--that is, in positions favourable and unfavourable to such induction--but without modifying the effect. He also reduced the number of turns of wire on the coil C, and even removed it altogether, connecting the battery and interrupter by only three inches of wire, and still heard the sounds as distinctly as before. That electro-static induction had no part in the phenomenon was shown by inserting charged conductors of large surface (for example metal discs) in the two circuits and shifting their positions with respect to each other without producing any effect on the receiver. Having concluded from these and numerous other observations that the results were conductive in principle rather than inductive, and were due to electrical impulses or waves set in motion by the sparks at the interrupter and filling all the surrounding space, Prof. Hughes set himself to find the most sensitive form of microphone to receive the waves. Contacts of metal were found to be apt to stick together, or "cohere," as we now say. A microphone which is both sensitive and self-restoring or non-cohering is made with a carbon contact resting lightly on bright steel, as shown in fig. 2, where C is a carbon pencil touching a needle N, and S an adjustable spring of brass by which the pressure of the contact can be regulated by means of the disc D. An extremely sensitive but easily deranged form of microphone is shown in fig. 3, where S is a steel hook, and C a fine copper wire with a loop on the end which has been oxidised and smoked in the flame of a spirit-lamp. The carbonised loop and steel hook are placed in a small bottle B for safety. Another form of microphone which the Professor tried was a tube containing metal filings, which forestalls the Branly tube, but as the coherence of the filings was a disadvantage he abandoned it. Contacts of iron and mercury were sensitive, but very troublesome; while contacts of iron and steel cohered, but were sensitive, and kept well when immersed in a mixture of petroleum and vaseline, which, though an insulator, does not bar the electric waves. Some of these microphone arrangements were found to be very sensitive to small charges of electricity---far more so than the gold-leaf electroscope and the quadrant electrometer. Even a metal filing on a stick of sealing-wax carried enough electricity from a Leyden jar to affect the microphone and give a sound in the telephone, while it had no effect on the electroscope or the electrometer. With such delicate receivers Prof. Hughes discarded the connecting wire W in fig. 1, thus separating the receiver from the transmitter, and producing the germ of a wireless telegraph. His first experiment of this kind was made between October 15 and 24, 1879, the transmitter being in one room and the receiver in an adjoining room, but a wire from the receiver limited the air gap to about 6 feet. Fig. 4, which is roughly copied from the Professor's own diagram, shows the arrangement, where W is the wire, B the battery, I the interrupter, C the coil, T the telephone, M the microphone, and E, E' the earth (gas-pipes). In another experiment, made about the middle of November 1879, he connected a fender to the interrupter "to act as a radiator," and afterwards, instead of the fender, he used wires (answering to the "wings" of Hertz) on both transmitting and receiving apparatus, the wires being stiffened with laths to bold them in place. The use of an "earth" connection led him to try the effect of joining the telephone to a gas-pipe of lead, and the microphone to a water-pipe of iron, as shown in fig. 5. The result was an improved sound in the telephone, and he concluded that the different metals formed a weak "earth battery," from which a permanent current ran through the circuit. On this supposition he reasoned that the electric waves influencing the microphone, and perhaps changing its resistance, would rapidly alter the strength of this current, and so account for the heightened effects in the telephone. Acting on this idea, he included an E.M.F. in the receiving circuit. A single cell was more than enough, and had to be reduced to as little as 1/25 of a volt in order not to permanently break down the contact resistance of the microphone. "Thus," says Mr Munro, "Prof. Hughes had step by step put together all the principal elements of the wireless telegraph as we know it to-day, and although he was groping in the dark before the light of Hertz arose, it is little short of magical that in a few months, even weeks, and by using the simplest means, he thus forestalled the great Marconi advance by nearly twenty years!" In the fifty years (just completed) of a brilliant professorial career at Cambridge, Sir George Stokes has given, times out of number, sound advice and helpful suggestions to those who have sought him; but in this case, as events show, the great weight of his opinion has kept back the clock for many years. With proper encouragement in 1879-80 Prof. Hughes would have followed up his clues, and, with his extraordinary keenness in research, there can be no doubt that he would have anticipated Hertz in the complete discovery of electric waves, and Marconi in the application of them to wireless telegraphy, and so have altered considerably the course of scientific history. As a recent commentator pithily says: "Hughes's experiments of 1879 were virtually a discovery of Hertzian waves before Hertz, of the coherer before Branly, and of wireless telegraphy before Marconi and others." The writer goes on to say, "Prof. Hughes has a great reputation already, but these latter experiments will add enormously to it, and place him among the foremost electricians of all time"5--praise which, knowing the learned professor as I do, I consider none too great.

_________________ 1 Prof. Lodge subsequently and independently observed this fact, and illustrates it beautifully is his 'Work of Hertz,' pp. 27, 28.--J. J. F. 2 Prof. Hughes is rightly regarded as the real discoverer of the electrical behaviour of a bad joint or loose contact, the study of which in his hands has given us the microphone; but as in the case of Hertzian-wave effects before Hertz, so, long before Hughes, "mere phenomena of loose contact," as Sir George Stokes called them, must have often manifested themselves in the working of electrical apparatus. For an interesting example see Arthur Schuster's paper read before the British Association in 1874 (or abstract, 'Telegraphic Journal,' vol. ii. p. 289), where the effects are described as a new discovery in electricity, and disguised under the title of the paper, "On Unilateral Conductivity." Schuster suspected the cause--" Two wires screwed together may not touch each other, but be separated by a thin layer of air "--but he missed its real significance. The phenomenon was a kind of bye-product, cropped up while he was engaged on other work, and so was not pursued far enough.--J. J. F. 3 The 'Polytechnic Review,' March 25, 1843, says: "Professor Henry communicated to the American Society that he had succeeded in magnetising needles by the secondary current in a wire more than 220 feet distant from the wire through which the primary current, excited by a single spark from an electrical machine, was passing." Indeed Prof. Henry noted many cases of what we now call Hertzian-wave effects, but what he and every one else in those days thought were only extraordinary cases of induction. Many experimenters after Henry must have observed similar effects. See for example 'Telegraphic Journal,' February 15, 1876, p. 61, on "The 'Etheric' Force"; and the 'Electrician,' vol. xliii. p. 204.--J. J. F. 4 'Electrical Review,' June 2, 1899. 5 The Globe, May 12, 1899. Prof. Hughes, full of honours, on January 22, 1900, aged sixty-nine.

Both the telegraph and the telephone transformed communications in the 1800s, and at the close of the century radio was poised to start a third revolution. Some of the earliest speculation about radio's future centered on the almost mystical idea of portable individual communication. In the February, 1892 issue of Fortnightly Review, Sir William Crookes' Some Possibilities of Electricity looked forward to the day when two persons could use radio signals to privately communicate with each other. Crookes' review included one particularly arresting sentence: "...some years ago I assisted at experiments where messages were transmitted from one part of a house to another without an intervening wire by almost the identical means here described". J. J. Fahie contacted Crookes about this intriguing statement, and was told that the unidentified experimenter was David Hughes, who beginning in 1879 apparently had transmitted and received radio signals, although he was discouraged from further research by reviewers who thought he had not done anything unusual. In 1899, Fahie convinced Hughes to write a short memoir of what he had accomplished twenty years previously, which was included in the Researches of Prof. D. E. Hughes appendix of A History of Wireless Telegraphy. A few months later Hughes was dead -- his obituary appeared in the January 26, 1900 issue of The Electrician. Two decades after that, the March 31, 1922 issue of The Electrician carried an announcement in Wireless Notes (Hughes Equipment) that the inventor's original instruments had been found in a storage area, and put on display at the Science Museum in South Kensington. A photograph of some of this equipment appeared in World's First Wireless Outfit Found in London Tenement, from the August, 1922 issue of Popular Science Monthly. It is interesting to speculate how history might have been changed had Hughes been encouraged to continue his original research.

Guglielmo Marconi soon experimented with mobile communication, as reviewed in Military Automobile for Wireless Telegraphy from the July 27, 1901 Western Electrician, and in a speech to a New York City meeting of the Automobile Club of America, reprinted in the May, 1902, The Cosmopolitan, suggested that in the future Wireless Telegraphy from an Automobile would be a "handy thing for automobiles in general". Charles Mulford Robinson, in the June, 1902 The Cosmopolitan, speculated about the effect unchaperoned Wireless Telegraphy communication would have on romance, and, more practically, suggested the new technology would ensure up-to-the-minute shopping lists. (Twenty years later, romance was still on people's minds, as a song published in 1922, Kiss Me By Wireless proclaimed "There's a wireless station down in my heart... operating just for you and me".)

Five years after Crookes' article, Professor William Ayrton predicted that widespread personal communication using radio would eventually be developed -- a review of his thoughts, Syntonic Wireless Telegraphy from the June 29, 1901 Electrical Review, foresaw that someday "the calling which went on every day from room to room of a house" would be expanded into worldwide communication "extending from pole to pole", although "On seeing the young faces of so many present he was filled with green envy that they, and not he, might very likely live to see the fulfillment of his prophecy." (Ayrton died in November, 1908) Wireless Telephony, from the August 1, 1902 issue of The Electrician (London), reported that "a number of scientists scattered all over the civilised world are eagerly seeking the solution to the problem of wireless telephony", and although so far there had been only limited success, "A future generation may conceivably accomplish as much in wireless telephony as is dreamed of to-day by visionaries." (This review also gently chided Prof. Ayrton for his earlier assertion that being unable to contact someone by wireless telephone would mean that person was dead -- perhaps it was just a case of being temporarily unavailable for less dramatic reasons).

The development of compact radio receivers, especially the crystal detector, increased public speculation about personal telephones, although some foresaw disadvantages to being in constant contact with the outside world, as an editorial comment in the December 17, 1906 New York Times, A Triumph, but Still a Terror, asked "How will it be when we're told, not that somebody's 'on the wire,' but that somebody's 'on the air,' and we are exposed to answer calls from any part of the atmosphere?" In a section of Recent Developments in Wireless Telegraphy, from the June, 1907 Journal of the Franklin Institute, Lee DeForest made light of the idea of wireless telephone as premature. However, following the introduction of Poulsen arc-transmitters for audio transmissions, speculation increased in the period from 1907 to 1911, as promoters claimed that important advances were at hand -- for example, in the August, 1908 Modern Electrics, The Collins Wireless Telephone by William Dubilier suggested that in the near future "every auto will be provided with a portable wireless telephone" in order to call for help if the car broke down. Two years later, A. Frederick Collins was again featured, this time in Wireless Telephone Wizardry from the May, 1910 Technical World Magazine, as author Winston R. Farwell enthusiastically reported "It is now possible to talk without the use of wires with persons in distant parts of a building or in adjacent buildings regardless of the number and thickness of walls and floors intervening. One may take a wireless telephone on an automobile, a motor boat, a yacht, an airship or a submarine, into a caisson, a tunnel or a mine and be able to converse with others at any given point or points on the surface as freely and as plainly as one can now talk over a local telephone with nearby points." Actually the article was a little too enthusiastic, for during the next year Collins and some of his associates at Continental Wireless would be arrested for stock fraud, as the company's actual accomplishments did not match its broad claims. (In its February 12, 1910 issue, Telephony magazine had warned its readers about Collins' dubious reputation in Another Wireless Installation in the Stock Selling Campaign). And not too be left behind in the race to sell worthless stock, United Wireless, in R. Burt's The Wireless Telephone from the November, 1908 issue of that company's The Aerogram, foresaw broad advances in both personal communication and broadcasting, which would actually come years after the company had disappeared into bankruptcy.

By 1911, the lack of progress had triggered widespread skepticism, and when Modern Electrics reviewed Another Wireless Telephone in its October, 1911 issue, it noted dubiously that "the inventor displays the characteristic assurance of success". There were, however, continuing small advances, as Electric Auto as Wireless Station reviewed a successful radiotelegraph transmission, by W. B. Kerrick, from a car located outside Los Angeles, California, as reported in the July, 1911 Technical World Magazine. Also appearing in the same magazine was William T. Prosser's Wireless Telephone for Everybody, from the April, 1912 issue, which reviewed William Dubilier's high-frequency spark system, while the September, 1913 issue featured Edward J. McCormack's favorable report on Victor Laughter's work, also using high-frequency spark, in The Voice From the Air. But commercial success would continue to be elusive.

After a lull of a few years, the introduction of vacuum-tube transmitters reinvigorated the development of audio radio transmissions, and in January, 1916, The Electrical Experimenter looked ahead humorously to the day when people would find it impossible to escape being contacted, in The Wireless 'Phone Will Get You. (Eighty-three years later, Peter Laufer's Wireless Etiquette reviewed this same phenomenon, now a reality, in The wireless as leash). In the U.S. Navy Department's 1916 annual report, Secretary Josephus Daniels reported in Communication by Wireless Telephony that a May, 1916 test had successfully "brought to reality the prediction made to the Secretary some time previously that the time would come when he could sit at his desk and converse with the captain of a ship at sea". In the March, 1917 The Electrical Experimenter,Wireless 'Phone for Hotel Plan reported on investigations by Pacific Coast hotels into the possiblility of installing wireless telephones for guests to communicate with ocean liners. Alfred N. Goldsmith, in Future Development of Radio Telephony section of the 1918 Radio Telephony, predicted "a very rapid development", with the result that "it should become ultimately possible to keep in immediate touch with the traveling individual regardless of his motion or temporary location". In the 1919 U.S. War Department Annual Report, Signal Corps head Major General George O. Squier talked of "the day which I believe is not far distant, when we can reach the ultimate goal so that any individual anywhere on earth will be able to communicate directly by the spoken word to any other individual wherever he may be". In the August, 1919 Radio Amateur News, The Auto Radiophone by A. H. Grebe reported on the author's test installation of a wireless telephone in an automobile. Anticipation was also increasing in Britain, as Pocket Wireless Soon, Predicts Marconi Official, which appeared in the August, 1919 Electrical Experimenter, reported that managing director Godfrey Issacs "foresees the day, not far distant, when pocket wireless telephones will be in wide use". And the November 7, 1920 issue of the Boston Sunday Post featured John T. Brady's Talking by Wireless as You Travel by Train or Motor, which noted "It is now possible for a business man to talk with his office from a moving vehicle", as it reviewed a test two-way radio conversation the author had with Harold J. Power, head of the American Radio and Research Corporation, while Power was in a moving automobile.

In Margaret Penrose's 1922 The Radio Girls of Roselawn (communication extracts), two characters discussed whether they might, pretty soon,"carry receiving and sending sets in our pockets" which would allow them to "send or receive any news we wanted". Jessie is optimistic at first, declaring "It is going to be wonderful before long", and they might even be able to not only hear, but also see persons being talked to. However, later in the book she becomes more conservative, eventually dismissing the idea with "Oh! But that is a dream." And individual communication by radio was, in fact, still largely "a dream" at this time. In Radiotelephony and Wire Systems, from the January 7, 1922 Telephony, Henry Shafer calmed nervous telephone company executives by reviewing the "very substantial reasons why the radiophone cannot supplant the wire telephone systems". It wouldn't be until the 1980s that the technology needed for such things as pagers and wireless telephones would be perfected to the point that they became widely available consumer products. So, although the telephone's use for individual communication largely overshadowed its applications for distributing entertainment and news, the reverse would be true for radio, with broadcasting dominating for decades, before radio transmissions would be significantly developed for personal, mobile communication.

The first major use of radio was for navigation, where it greatly reduced the isolation of ships, saving thousands of lives, even though for the first couple of decades radio was generally limited to Morse Code transmissions. In particular, the 1912 sinking of the Titanic highlighted the value of radio to ocean vessels.

Prior to the introduction of radio, maritime communication was generally limited to line-of-sight visual signalling during clear weather, plus noise-makers such as bells and foghorns with only limited ranges. Beginning in the mid-1800s, an international convention was developed using special semaphore flags to exchange messages between merchant ships, as reviewed by the The International Code of Signals section of the 1916 edition of Brown's Signalling. In the same book, Examination Paper on the use of the International Code of 1901 provided an overview of signalling proficiency that a candidate needed to master in order to qualify for a Certificate of Competency issued by the British Board of Trade Examinations. Over time a huge vocabulary of signals was created, even as the expansion of radio was beginning to make visual signalling obsolete. The Urgent and Important Signals: Two Flag Signals section of Brown's Signalling reviewed over 600 basic signals, grouped by category, with meanings as diverse as "Where are you bound?" (SH), "In distress; want immediate assistance" (NC), "Keep a good look-out, as it is reported that the enemy's war vessels are going about disguised as merchantmen" (OJ), and "Heave to or I will fire into you" (ID). And in addition to the two-flag signals, there were thousands of three- and four- flag groupings, for communicating a huge variety of messages, including ship identifiers, geographical names, temperature and barometer readings, compass points, and units of measurement. The thousands of signals in part resulted from an apparent attempt to include every possible variation of a phrase, e.g. BUP stood for "He, She, It (or person-s or thing-s indicated) had (has, or, have) not done (or, is, or, are not doing)", which is included in a small selection of these additional signals from the U.S. Navy's 1909 edition of The International Code of Signals. The development of radio resulted, by 1911, in the addition of two more visual signals -- ZMX for "Wireless telegraph apparatus" and ZMY for "Report me by wireless telegraphy" -- which heralded the beginning of a major decline in the use of seaboard visual signals. However, to this day NC continues to be an international distress signal when using flag signalling.

In the 1872 edition of the annual Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, Captain P. Columb's Visual Telegraphy. Signals of Distress, &c., in the Mercantile Marine reviewed the confusion and limitations often encountered, prior to the invention of radio, by ships trying communicate during emergencies, while suggesting that the "immediate object for the Telegraph Engineer... should be devising means for communicating at night, and in fog". Just a few years after Heinrich Hertz's historic proof of the existence of electromagnetic radiation, the Notes section of the April 10, 1891 The Electrician (London) included a strikingly advanced suggestion, that someday lightships might use microwave beams to overcome the problem of fog interfering with shore communication. In a December, 1891 lecture given at Inverness, Scotland, Frederick T. Trouton returned to this topic, noting that "There is little doubt that a powerful beam of this sort would, unlike light, be unabsorbed by fog; so, looking into the future, one sees along our coasts the light-houses giving way to the electric house, where electric rays are generated and sent out, to be received by suitable apparatus on the passing ships, with the incomparable advantage that at the most critical time--in foggy weather--the ship would continue to receive the guiding rays." A similar prediction appeared in the July, 1892 issue of The New England Magazine, as an extract from Elihu Thompson's Future Electrical Development stated "electricians are not without some hope that signalling or telegraphing for moderate distances without wires, and even through dense fog may be an accomplished fact soon", making possible a sort of radio-wave lighthouse. Although it turned out it would take decades before practical microwave transmissions were developed, a few years later Marconi would introduce a successful system using longwave signals, and soon many of the larger passenger liners began carrying radio equipment. The addition of shipboard operators quickly captured the public imagination -- The Work of a Wireless Telegraph Man, by Winthrop Packard, from the February, 1904 The World's Work, recounted the activities of a Marconi operator on the passenger liner St. Paul, at a time when shipboard radio transmitters were so rare that operators had to wait for other similarly-equipped vessels to come into range. In the December 23, 1911 issue of Chamber's Journal, an unnamed Marconi Wireless operator reminisced about a decade of Life as a Wireless Telegraphist, including a time when mysterious printing by a tape-coherer receiver turned out to be due to the fact that "a big beetle was crawling about the relay of the receiver". Wireless Telegraphy on Mail Steamers, from the November 19, 1904 Electrical Review, featured Emile Guarini's overview of radiotelegraphic operations by mail packets running between Ostend, Belgium and Dover, England. Wireless Tracking of Fish, from the December 1, 1906, Electrical World, reported that six Atlantic Coast vessels of The Fisheries Company had been outfitted with DeForest equipment, so they would be able to "notify each other and all assemble without delay to the location where the fish are being caught".

By 1912, when Francis A. Collins' The Wireless Man was published, all the major passenger liners were equipped with radio transmitters. In the opening chapter of this book, Across the Atlantic, Collins reviewed how radio now kept vessels on transatlantic voyages in nearly constant communication with shore stations and each other. Initially large passenger liners were the primary commercial ocean-going vessels to install radio transmitters. But in the 1913 edition of Marconi's annual The Yearbook of Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony, Wireless Telegraphy and the Mercantile Marine promoted the money-saving benefits of radio for smaller ships, proclaiming that "Wireless telegraphy is now recognised as an essential part of the equipment of ocean-going passenger vessels, and, to a rapidly increasing extent, of cargo vessels and smaller craft." The 1916 edition of Brown's Signalling noted that "Any book dealing with signalling in general is incomplete without a reference to wireless telegraphy which, for mercantile signalling, offers so many advantages over other methods of signalling" in its The Quenched Spark System section, which featured a shipboard installation offered by Siemens. The General Information chapter of Percy S. Harris' 1917 book, The Maintenance of Wireless Telegraph Apparatus, covered the basics for operating a Marconi shipboard radio installation, in part noting that "Nothing is more irritating than to find, when the point of a pencil suddenly breaks, that there are no sharpened pencils in reserve."

In 1905, the distinctive Morse code character string ...---... (SOS) was adopted by Germany for signifying distress, as reported in German Regulations for the Control of Spark Telegraphy, from the May 5, 1905 issue of The Electrician. (A German-language account of the adoption of the April 1, 1905 regulations appeared in the April 27, 1905 issue of Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift: Regelung der Funkentelegraphie im Deutschen Reich). In 1906, SOS was adopted at the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Convention as the official international standard for distress calls, although Marconi operators in particular were slow to conform -- G. E. Turnbull's Distress Signalling, from the 1913 edition of the annual The Yearbook of Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony, noted that the Marconi companies had adopted "C.Q.D." as a distress signal in 1904, only to have it supplanted by the international ratification of "SOS" two years later. Turnbull reports that even after this some of the old-time Marconi operators continued to use C.Q.D. for a time, although "The change of the call letter is, however, a sentimental regret, and 'C.Q.D.' is being gradually forgotten." However, in 1909 not all the Marconi operators had made the switch, reflected by the title of Alfred M. Caddell's article about sinking of the Republic, C Q D, which appeared in the April, 1924 issue of Radio Broadcast magazine. The February, 1909 issue of Modern Electrics printed a transcript of radio communication related to this event in Operator Binns' Wireless Log. And a review by Baltic Captain J. B. Ranson of the twelve long hours it took to find the Republic, The Triumph of Wireless from the February 6, 1909 issue of The Outlook, included Ranson's opinion that, due to recent scientific advances -- especially radio communication -- "the passenger on a well-equipped transatlantic liner is safer than he can be anywhere else in the world."

Radio greatly reduced the terrible isolation of ships during emergencies, and was quickly responsible for saving thousands of lives. Notable Achievements of Wireless, from the September, 1910 Modern Electrics, reviewed early cases where radio had provided maritime assistance, beginning with the January, 1909 sinking of the Republic. Radio Broadcast later ran two articles about SOS emergencies which had occurred in the 1910s, written by George F. Worts under the heading "Adventures of a Wireless Free-Lance". My First SOS--A Farce Comedy was humorous, while A Thrill that Came Thrice in a Night-time reviewed a series of events which saw both rescue and tragedy. Some Stirring Wireless Rescues, a chapter from Francis A. Collins' 1912 The Wireless Man, reviewed a number of incidents which had occurred over the previous three years, while noting that radio had changed things so much that an "up-to-date Robinson Crusoe", instead of facing years of isolation after a shipwreck, would now be able to radio for help, then listen to the latest stock market quotations while awaiting rescue. However, radio did not eliminate all the fatalities, as American Marconi's J. Andrew White, in the July, 1915 The World's Advance, reported the dedication of A Memorial Fountain to Wireless Operators, which commemorated ten operators who had lost their lives at sea. A February 1, 1916 pamphlet issued by the Department of Commerce, Important Events in Radiotelegraphy, included an extensive section, Wireless as a Safeguard to Life at Sea, reviewing radio's use in seagoing emergencies and rescues.

One of most dramatic sea disasters was the sinking of the Titanic in the North Atlantic on the morning of April 15, 1912. The Titanic -- along with the Carpathia, which picked up the survivors -- was staffed by Marconi Wireless operators, and Marconi shore stations along the Canadian, Newfoundland, and U.S. coasts handled most of the communication as the Carpathia slowly made its way to New York City. In addition, many inland stations tried to get information about the disaster, which in this unregulated era resulted in extensive interference and confusion. Included in all this was the American Marconi equipped facility, MHI, located atop the New York Wanamaker department store, where David Sarnoff was station manager. Sarnoff would later vastly exaggerate his importance, in progressively embellished retellings, including completely false claims that he was first in the United States to hear of the disaster, and that President Taft silenced other stations so that Sarnoff could become the sole link for gathering information. However, the operators at the New York Wanamaker station did spend long hours listening for reports and survivor lists. A collection of extracts about the Titanic comes from the Boston American and recountings by David Sarnoff: The Titanic and the New York Wanamaker Station. Marconi management also sent messages to the operators aboard the Carpathia, telling them to limit what they were publicly reporting, until their accounts could be sold to the newspapers. These activities, plus a complaint that the operators aboard the Carpathia were unresponsive to Navy vessels sent by U.S. President Taft, were covered by the New York Herald: Marconi Company and Titanic Disaster Communication. Amateur radio operators were blamed for much of the chaos experienced immediately after the Titanic sank, but it has never really been clear how many of the problems were actually their fault. In 1922, in The Book of Radio (Titanic extract), Charles William Taussig wrote about the next evening after the Titanic sank, as amateur operators, voluntarily responding to the emergency, scrupulously maintained complete radio silence in the New York City area, in order to avoid interfering with the survivor lists being transmitted by the Salem.

One area where radio's revolutionary effect on ocean-going communication was readily apparent was when shipboard newspapers started to include daily news summaries. As early as 1899 Guglielmo Marconi used onboard reception in order to prepare a shipboard newspaper, as reported in A Wireless Telegraphy Newspaper, from the November 22, 1899 Electrical Review. Regular nightly summary news transmissions by Marconi shore stations followed, beginning in June, 1904 -- their introduction was reported in Mid-Sea Wireless Telegraph News, from the May, 1904 The Electrical Age. Thanks to radio, the late 1906 issues of the S. S. Hamburg's onboard newspaper, The Atlantic Daily News, featured news reports "received by Special Marconigrams", and passengers were also notified that they could send telegrams to nearby ships and shore stations.

In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi became the first person to successfully demonstrate the controlled transmission and reception of longrange radio signals. But once the details of his advances became widely known, a large number of competitors sprang up on both sides of the Atlantic, many of whom developed important refinements of their own.

Scientists in the United States were particularly intrigued by reports of Marconi's advances. A short notice in the January 23, 1897 Scientific American, Telegraphy Without Wires, stated that "a young Italian, a Mr. Marconi" had recently demonstrated to the London Post Office the ability to transmit radio signals across three-quarters of a mile (one kilometer), and that "if the invention was what he believed it to be, our mariners would have been given a new sense and a new friend which would make navigation infinitely easier and safer than it now was". (The May 14, 1898 issue of the same magazine, in a short note titled Wireless Telegraphy, repeated a completely unfounded rumor that Marconi had lost his financial backers, because "the syndicate which kept it going for over a year has arrived at the conclusion that there is no money in it".) A few months later, the May 26, 1897 New York Times' Topics of the Times--Marconi Extract reported that "English electricians, particularly those connected with the army and navy, are much interested in the Marconi system of telegraphy without wires" as the inventor had now increased the signalling range to two or three miles (five kilometers), with expectations of developing even greater ranges. At a December 15, 1897 meeting in New York City, W. J. Clarke gave "an exhibition of the Marconi apparatus" consisting of a spark-gap transmitter and a coherer receiver, reported in the Wireless Telegraphy section of the 1897 edition of Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. Two years later the Institute returned to the topic at a November 22, 1899 gathering, as reported in Possibilities of Wireless Telegraphy (New York Meeting) from the 1899 edition of organization's Transactions. However, by now Marconi's work was better understood, and this time the participants, with much stronger electrical engineering backgrounds than the self-taught Marconi, identified certain inefficiencies and errors in Marconi's approach. Although the coherer receiver had sometimes been referred to as a "marvelously sensitive electric eye", Reginald Fessenden, a professor at the Western University of Pennsylvania, reviewed his experiments using detectors that were far more sensitive and reliable, and reported measurements which disputed Marconi's assertion that the range of radio signals was proportional to the product of the heights of the sending and receiving antennas. And although the Marconi companies would long promote the supposed superiority of the "whip-crack" effect of spark transmitters, Michael Pupin, a Columbia University professor, expressed his belief that spark transmitters were inherently inefficient, and suggested that an ideal transmitter would create undamped "oscillations in a wire without a spark-gap", outlining basic ideas which would eventually be incorporated in far more efficient continuous-wave transmitters.

An expansive review in the May 7, 1899 New York Times, Future of Wireless Telegraphy, looked optimistically at the prospects for radio technology, predicting that, once a few technical obstacles were overcome, "no prudent man will try to set limits to the development of wireless telegraphy", including the possibility that "All the nations of the earth would be put upon terms of intimacy and men would be stunned by the tremendous volume of news and information that would ceaselessly pour in upon them". An article in the February 21, 1903 issue of Harper's Weekly Magazine, American Wireless Telegraphy, profiled Lee DeForest and Reginald Fessenden, who would be the two most prominent researchers in the United States during the first decade of the 1900s. (It was, however, a bit of a misnomer for this article to describe Fessenden's work as a "system of wholly American origin", because he was actually born in Canada.) A more technical overview of the industry, by William Maver, Jr., appeared in the August, 1904 The American Monthly Review of Reviews: Wireless Telegraphy To-day. Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.'s The Advance of "Wireless", from the January, 1905 issue of World's Work, gave readers a comprehensive look at the still developing industry, including various participants, government activities, outstanding technical issues, and radio's applications in such things as commercial shipboard use and military adaptations. The author also speculated about future developments, including the possibility that someday "a lone ranchman in Arizona might set up a pocket-receiver and learn the latest news", and that "millions of such little receivers" might eventually come into use.

Unlike the telephone, which was quickly adopted for business and home use, it took many years before radio's financial returns would match its great potential. In the United States, this resulted in a series of companies which sold stock at vastly inflated prices, backed mostly by vastly inflated visions of the companies' profits. Industry Comments appearing in 1901 issues of Western Electrician warned that the radio "field is still so uncertain that investors, remembering the liquid-air fiasco, should relinquish their money only after assuring themselves that display advertisements and glowing prospectuses are based on sound common sense". Wireless Telegraphy Stock, in the November 30, 1901 Electrical Review, noted the high prices already being paid for stock in companies with minimal assets and limited prospects, and opined that "The American public is to-day very much the same as it was when the late illustrious P. T. Barnum made his discovery that it liked to be fooled." In the November, 1904 issue of The Electrical Age, Wireless Telegraph Earnings warned that, even though "alluring" advertisements promoting stock sales continued to appear in the daily newspapers, there still was no reason to believe that the operations of any of the U.S. radio companies were even remotely profitable.

After it absorbed the successor to the American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company, reported by Wireless Companies Merge in the January 10, 1904 New York Times, the American DeForest Wireless Telegraph Company was the largest radio company in the United States. Although the company would prove more adept at promotion than actual achievements, in early 1904, London Times war correspondent Captain Lionel James arranged to rush two American DeForest transmitters to China, in order to report on a developing conflict between Japan and Russia. A land station was established at Wei-hai-Wei on the Chinese coast, with the second transmitter placed aboard a ship, which allowed James to transmit daily updates directly from the war zone. In the August 31, 1904 New York Times, Wireless Workers Back From the Scene of War, provided a first-hand report from the two DeForest engineers, "Pop" Athearn and Harry Brown, who had operated the stations. At the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis, Missouri DeForest's Wireless Telegraphy was one of the latest inventions featured in the Exhibit of the Department of Interior Patent Office pamphlet. Meanwhile, the company pursued its hard-sell stock promotion, setting up a prominently located display tower, and putting on numerous demonstrations for the crowds, with the company's exaggerated exploits and potential profits "boomed" by publications such as The DeForest Wireless Telegraph Tower: Bulletin No. 1. Following successful tests at the Fair, the U.S. Navy awarded American DeForest a contract to build five stations in Panama, Pensacola, Key West, Guantanamo, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. And in the ongoing stock promotion, articles like Spanning the Seas With De Forest Wireless Telegraphy from the July 10, 1904 New York Times vastly exaggerated the company's achievements and future. In November, 1906, American DeForest president Abraham White announced the formation of a new company, United Wireless, which took over the American DeForest assets. United was also falsely said by White to be taking over American Marconi, as reported in Wireless Telegraph Consolidation, from the November 24, 1906 Electrical World, and strongly denied by Marconi officials in No Consolidation of Wireless Companies, from the April 4, 1908 Electrical Review. A short time after the formation of United Wireless, White was replaced by Christopher Columbus Wilson as company president. But the company continued to be run as a huge stock promotion fraud, and over the next few years absorbed a number of smaller, legitimate, companies which found they could not compete--Wireless Telegraph Companies Unite, from the July 11, 1908 Electrical Review reported United's takeover of the International Telegraph Construction Company, which had the side-effect of its obtaining the services of a very talented engineer, Harry Shoemaker.

Meanwhile, reporter Frank Fayant was in the middle of writing a multi-part series about stock fraud -- Fools and Their Money -- when he stumbled across the shenanigans going on in radio stocks. The result was a two-part exposé, The Wireless Telegraph Bubble, which details the sorry state of much of the U.S. radio industry during its first decade -- Fools and Their Money/The Wireless Telegraph Bubble, Success Magazine, January, 1907 through July, 1907. Fayant's article included one hopeful note -- "A Westerner, with western ideas of common honesty, some months ago acquired a very large interest in American De Forest, and he has been trying to bring order out of chaos." However, if this was a reference to Christopher Columbus Wilson, the assessment would prove to be wildly optimistic. To Holders of United Wireless Telegraph Company Stock , from the November, 1908 issue of United Wireless' The Aerogram, reviewed the company's new officers and directors, and stockholders would take little solace that the company treasurer -- Wilson's nephew -- was described as a "clean, clear-cut, able and conscientious young man". How About Wireless?, from the August 31, 1907 Electrical World, featured an impatient reviewer noting that "behind all the dubious experiments and more dubious financiering lies something that the world really needs" and although, as "one of the biggest things of the new century... some day wireless telegraphy will come into its own", until then "the period of exploitation seems indefinitely prolonged, and the procrastination grows tiresome". And in the December, 1907 issue of The World's Work, Transatlantic Marconigrams Now and Hereafter (Stock fraud extract), cataloged the ongoing excesses, noting that "The time may come when the wireless will become suitable for consideration by investors. It will not come until some strong, clean, honest financial interests take charge and utterly eliminate the miserable, fraudulent, unwholesome methods that have marked the whole market history of these issues." But a year later, the inflated claims in promotional articles, such as Robert Matthews' assertion that the "The wireless telegraph is here, real, virile, expanding." in American Development of the Wireless Telegraph from the November, 1908 issue of United Wireless' The Aerogram, showed that the stock promotion schemes were continuing unabated. In the 1909 edition of Operator's Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Hand-book, Victor H. Laughter lamented the current state of the industry, but felt that radio's bright future was assured, and predicted "It will only be a matter of time before all the 'get rich quick' wireless concerns will be forced out of existence".

In its July 10, 1909 issue, Telephony reported on a brewing revolt by United Wireless investors, in Wireless Stockholders Protest Against Management. Finally, on June 15, 1910, the federal government moved to shut down what it called "one of the most gigantic schemes to defraud investors that has ever been unearthed in this country", and arrested the principal United Wireless officers, as reported in Government Raids United Wireless, Modern Electrics, July, 1910. C. M. Keys' The Get-Rich-Quick Game, which appeared in March, 1911 issue of The World's Work, reviewed assorted financial schemes, and included in its "Arrested by Government on Charges of Fraud" list were the "Officers of the United Wireless Company". (This action, while welcome, seemed overdue, as the author noted "this [United Wireless] fraud was so patent that it has been a four-years' marvel to me how it could be carried on so long without someone stopping it.") Commenting on the seemingly endless list of victims, Keys closed pessimistically with "It seems quite hopeless, this article. When a patent and above-board swindle like the United Wireless sells stocks to 28,000 people... how may one hope to stop the pillage?" But progress was being made against the United Wireless frauds, and a story on the front page of the May 30, 1911 New York Times reported Five Wireless Men Are Found Guilty, as the prosecuting attorney celebrated that "For once a lot of crooks are going to jail after being convicted at their own expense." In addition to stock fraud, United Wireless was also guilty of extensive patent infringement. It was sued by the Marconi company, and had no defense. The receivers who had been appointed to oversee United Wireless' affairs entered into negotiations with Marconi for the company to be taken over, and a short time later an announcement appeared in the April, 1912, Modern Electrics with the result -- Marconi Absorbs United Wireless.

Federal prosecutors continued to investigate dubious stock promotion practices, and in its December, 1911 issue, Modern Electrics reported in Twelfth Anniversary of Wireless that although some within the industry had used radio "as a tool for extorting money from thousands of victims", a "purification" was now taking place. In the November 25, 1911 Telephony, the unfolding troubles of James Dunlop Smith, former president of the Radio Telephone Company, and a number of his business associates, including Lee DeForest, were reported in Wireless Telephone Promoter Arrested. DeForest was eventually acquitted on all the counts except one, which the divided jury couldn't agree upon, and was never retried on this final count. However, three others were convicted, and the Radio Telephone Company and its subsidiaries effectively shut down.

A third major company to face Federal prosecution for stock fraud was the Continental Wireless Telegraph & Telephone Company, which most prominently included A. Frederick Collins -- the company's formation had been announced in Wireless Companies Consolidate in the May 21, 1910 Electrical Review and Western Electrician. Shortly thereafter, a front page article in the November 22, 1910 New York Times, Postal Raids Show Vast Stock Frauds, announced that "Officers of Burr Bros. and Continental Wireless Co. Arrested in War on Swindling Concerns" as part of a major sweep against financial fraud. The trial start for four company associates was covered by Say Wireless Had a Wire in the November 16, 1912 New York Times -- all four would be found guilty.

With the elimination of three major fraudulent U.S. radio firms, the field was cleared for legitimate companies. And with its takeover of the United Wireless assets, the American branch of Marconi Wireless was now by far the largest radio company in the United States, a status it would hold until after World War One. For some, however, the prospects for the radio industry were still in doubt. A somber analysis appeared in the March, 1914 Technical World Magazine, as George H. Cushing reviewed the still shaky finances of the various companies, and in Wireless' Fate speculated about the next fifteen years. Cushing's predictions were profoundly pessimistic, suggesting that the private radio companies would find that "a new method of carrying messages does not, of itself, create messages to be sent", and they would prove incapable of competing with the established land telegraph lines and international cables. Finding themselves unable to "find a new use for a new tool", the radio companies were seemingly doomed to eventual failure, which would lead to a government takeover of the industry.

New York Times, May 7, 1899, page 20:

FUTURE OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

Nobody will accuse the Secretary of the Wireless Telegraph Company of exaggeration when he says that Sir THOMAS LIPTON and the authorities of Great Britain and the United States feel an intense interest in the company's plans for transmitting messages across the Atlantic Ocean without wires on the occasion of the yacht races for the America's Cup. The whole world will await the result of that momentous experiment with an unimaginable intensity of interest, for the success of it would work a revolution in the affairs of men and nations to which no advance due to any recent invention can be compared save that due to the original discovery of the electric telegraph, of which telegraphy without wires constitutes the most astonishing development. In a most interesting article on the subject in the May issue of The North American Review J. A. FLEMING, Professor of Electrical Engineering in University College, London, says that "the future will slowly unroll the scope and limitations of this new telegraphy. Its practical uses are indubitable, but it has a wider interest from a scientific standpoint in that it opens up a vista of fascinating speculation as to the possible revelations in store for us concerning the powers and potencies of this mysterious ether." Ether, in truth, is at the bottom of the business, and scientific curiosity as to that inscrutable agent is so keen that we can readily understand why Prof. FLEMING should feel that from that point in wireless telegraphy is wider than from the point of view of practicable business. Its practical interest, however, is great enough to make MARCONI'S experiments quite the most important matter now before the civilized world. The possibilities of liquid air are alone comparable with it. A word or two as to the apparatus and its working. As is well known from descriptions already given, MARCONI creates by an electric spark the wave impulse that passes between his distant stations. Two spark balls are placed about half an inch apart, one connecting with the earth by a wire and the other suspended by a long insulated copper wire, the length of this wire being proportioned to the distance between the two stations. When an ordinary telegraph key between the battery and an induction coil is pressed the long vertical conductor is charged and a spark passes between the two balls. "The discharge is an oscillating one," says Mr. MARCONI in a description of his method, also published in The North American Review for May, "and the insulated conductor becomes a powerful radiator of electric waves." By pressing the key at long or short intervals the receiver at the distant station is affected in a manner that by the use of a proper recording apparatus reproduces the dot and dash characters of the Morse alphabet. The receiver is a short glass tube fitted with silver plugs and containing nickel and silver fillings. Under the influence of the electric waves set in motion by the spark at the other station the filings cohere, make the tube a conductor, and a current from a cell passes through it to a relay and rings a bell or works a Morse writer. At the end of each wave impulse a little hammer automatically taps the tube, causes the filings to fall apart, makes the tube a non-conductor, and puts it in readiness for the next impulse. All this could not happen without that "mysterious" ether which so fascinates Prof. FLEMING According to the modern theory ether is the great transmitter of energy. The light of the sun is not a part of the Sun's matter sent to us across ninety-two million miles of space. The light rays leaving the sun impinge on the ether which fills space and set up a wave motion that is transmitted through the ether to the earth at a speed of about a thousand million feet a second, which on reaching our atmosphere gives off the energy that set it in motion, which produces the phenomenon of light. Ether is not matter, but it seems to permeate matter and to exist comfortably in matter and where there is no matter, as in the inter-stellar spaces. This makes wireless telegraphy possible, for MARCONI sends his wave impulses across the English Channel quite undisturbed by winds, storms, or rain; and intervening hills and trees offer no obstacle. The oscillatory spark sets in motion waves that travel through the ether in every direction. If a thousand stations were set up within the range of influence of the discharge, each one would get the message. But MARCONI has found a way to do away with this universal publicity: "By means of reflectors it is possible to project the waves in one almost parallel beam, which will not affect any receiver placed out of its use of propagation. This would enable several forts or islands to communicate with each other without any fear of the enemy's tapping or interfering with signals; for if the forts are situated on small heights, the beam of rays would pass above the position which might be held by an enemy." What has been done already establishes the utility of the invention. The apparatus is in daily and perfectly successful use between the South Foreland lighthouse and the lightship on the Goodwin Sands, a distance of twelve miles; between the South Foreland light and Boulogne, France, thirty miles across the Channel; it has been used between Bournemouth and the Isle of Wight, fourteen miles; on Salisbury Plain, with the vertical conductor suspended from kites, over a distance of thirty-four miles; at Spezzia, between an Italian warship and the shore, twelve miles, and in reporting the Kingstown regatta, the positions of the yachts being signaled to the shore ten miles distant. It is now proposed to set up a station at Sandy Hook and to send the news of the cup races to another station near Waterville, on the Irish coast, three thousand miles away. If that experiment succeeds even moderately well, if intelligible electric impulses are transmitted between the Old World and the New, MARCONI'S wireless telegraph will take its place among the great transforming inventions of history. It may be well to add that nothing so far accomplished by MARCONI justifies confidence that the experiment will succeed. Theoretically the thing looks possible. There is no known limit to the distance to which an ether wave will travel. The dimension of the apparatus needed to create the wave impulse may impose a limit. MARCONI uses a vertical conductor forty feet high for four miles, eighty feet for sixteen miles, and one hundred and fifty feet for the thirty-mile stretch across the Channel. It is plain that if his experiments in shortening the conductors do not succeed ocean wireless telegraphy will not be realized. If he does succeed in sending a message across the ocean without a wire his method must come at once into universal use. There will be a wonderful cheapening of telegraphy and an inconceivable extension of its use in common affairs. Five-cent messages to Chicago and a satisfactory talk with a friend at Manila for a dollar or so ought to be easily possible. For private messages, business communications, and press dispatches the use and development of the system would transcend the power of the imagination to picture them forth. We boast now that we have annihilated time and space, but a father on the old New England farm and his son in Seattle are still pretty widely separated by the prohibitory cost of electric communication. Wireless telegraphy would make them neighbors--perhaps by the use of their own private apparatus. All the nations of the earth would be put upon terms of intimacy and men would be stunned by the tremendous volume of news and information that would ceaselessly pour in upon them. One of the most interesting changes wrought by the invention would be the abolition of the unearthly aloofness of travelers by sea. Wireless telegraphy developed as we may expect it to be developed would bring every ship on the sea into daily and hourly communication with the Maritime Exchange. It is appalling to think of this fearful multiplication of the means of sending from man to man and from city to city and nation to nation communications mostly of no consequence whatever. Any scientist you meet will smile at this picturing forth of the developments of wireless telegraphy. Scientists are apt to be incredulous. They see the obstacles. The electricians ridicule the idea of a wireless message to Ireland. But the telephone had been in use as a toy for ten years in Germany before GRAY and BELL made it a practicable instrument. Years after the arc light had been in use all over the world it was still held that it would never be possible to subdivide the current to permit of its use for domestic purposes. The invention of the incandescent lamp settled that. Fifteen years ago two dozen of the most eminent electrical experts in this country put their names to a circular affirming that it would not be possible to place electric wires in underground conduits because of induction and the interference of currents. The history of the locomotive and of the steamboat shows how foolish are the skeptics who with their puny powers attempt to set bounds to the accomplishments of inventive genius. Already there is a hint that by the use of a syntonizing apparatus, that is, of a receiver that will respond only to a wave impulse sent out from the transmitter to which it has been adjusted, MARCONI may be able to make a station in Chicago or Hongkong pick out its own messages from the thousands simultaneously coming in from all parts of the world. If this can be done, and if next Fall's experiment shall prove that messages can be sent across the ocean, no prudent man will try to set limits to the development of wireless telegraphy.

At the present moment, when such strained relations exist between Spain and this country, nothing could be more welcome than the announcement of a practical method of carrying on electrical communication between distant points on land, and between ships at sea, without any prearranged connection of any kind between the two points. Many years ago it was found possible to transmit signals through space at a very short range by means of electrical vibrations, but not until the spring of last year had anything of much practical value been accomplished in this direction, with the exception, perhaps, of the method of telegraphing from moving trains which was patented in this country in 1881, and used for limited period on short sections of two of our eastern railroads. During last year Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian student, devoted considerable time to the development of a system of wireless telegraphy, and although he has made use of well known principles, he has so arranged and designed his instruments that he has found it possible to transmit intelligible Morse signals to a distance of over ten miles. It has been left, however, for the American inventor to design apparatus suitable to the requirements of wireless telegraphy in this country. After months of experimenting Mr. W. J. Clarke, of the United States Electrical Supply Company, of this city, has designed, and his company is placing upon the market, such a complete set of wireless telegraphy apparatus that it will in all probability come rapidly into use. For the information of our readers, we illustrate the various pieces of apparatus used, and also explain, with the aid of diagrams, its internal construction and method of operation. By reference to the diagrams it will be seen that both the transmitting and receiving stations are shown, station A being the transmitting and stations B and C the receiving. The transmitter shown at station A consists of an induction coil, A, specially constructed so as to give the most efficient kind of spark for the purpose. The coil is fitted with an ordinary vibrating make and break, constructed so as to give just the requisite number of interruptions. A special Morse key, B, is placed in the primary circuit, and the condenser is so connected as to kill the spark at the key contact as well as at the vibrating contact. Mounted on the upper part of the coil are three solid brass balls, C, the center one being stationary, and the outside ones adjustable, so that their distance from the center ball can be regulated at will. The two outside balls are connected to the terminals of the secondary coil, as are also the binding posts shown at the side of the coil. It will now be readily seen that when the key, B, is depressed, sparks will pass between the balls and will immediately cease when the key is released. By means of the two binding posts at the side of the coil, one terminal of the secondary coil is connected to earth, and the other terminal to the large metallic plate, C, which should be placed high in the air. The coil may be operated by any suitable battery, but a small storage battery is very much to be preferred.

The receiver at station B consists of two separate instruments, the Clarke coherer relay being mounted on one base, and the polarized receiving relay and sounder upon another. The coherer, G, is a small glass tube made of selected glass, and carefully fitted with two metallic plugs, whose distance from each other in the tube can be readily and accurately adjusted by means of the screw and spring adjustments shown at each end of the tube. The space in the tube between the plugs is partly filled with specially prepared metallic powder, and the two plugs are connected to the binding posts shown, through the small choking coils, 5. These posts are connected to the magnets, L, of the receiving relay through the main battery, J, and binding posts of polarized receiving relay as shown. One terminal plug of the coherer, G, is connected to earth as shown, and the other terminal plug is connected to the large metallic plate, C, which like the plate at the transmitting station should be placed high in the air. When the powder between the plugs in the tube is lying in its normal condition its resistance is extremely high, often reaching 20,000 ohms, but when the key of the transmitter at the distant station is depressed, electric waves are sent out into space; these waves travel from the plate, C, of the transmitter to the plate, C, of the receiver, and finally reach the powder in the tube, G. Under the action of the waves, the particles of powder in the tube immediately cohere, and their resistance instantly drops down to between 7 and 25 ohms, which great decrease in resistance permits the current from the battery, J, to pass through the circuit, and energize the magnets, L, of the polarized receiving relay, which in turn operates the sounder, N, using the large local battery, K. When the powder in the tube once coheres, it remains in that state until the tube receives a sharp tap, when the powder instantly decoheres and its resistance rises again to an extremely high point. In order that Morse signals can be transmitted it is necessary, of course, that the tap on the tube be automatically accomplished. In order to secure this the decohering magnets, D, are provided and placed in multiple with the magnets of the sounder, so that the sounder and decohering apparatus will operate simultaneously; the decohering magnet operates the vibrating hammer as shown, which it will be seen will keep constantly tapping the tube as long as the key at the distant station is depressed, the powder refusing to decohere as long as the waves are passing through it; but the moment that the key at the transmitting station is released, the last tap of the vibrating hammer, F, decoheres the powder, and thus practically opens the circuit of the battery, J. In order that the apparatus may work properly, it is necessary that every part of it be very carefully constructed, and a wide range of adjustments provided; this last is especially true of the decohering apparatus, which must be so arranged that the vibrating hammer can be adjusted to strike the tube with just the necessary strength of blow. It is also found necessary to have all the magnets wound to a very high resistance, and their terminals provided with resistance coils of still higher resistance; and as the sparks produced by the contacts of the polorized receiving relay, and also by the vibrating contacts of the decohering apparatus, send out waves which affect the coherer, these sparks must be almost entirely suppressed by the use of suitable condensers in the bases of the instruments. This set of apparatus is used for the transmission of Morse signals to moderate distances only, but for longer distances it is simply necessary to use a much larger and properly designed induction coil in connection with the transmitter.

It is frequently desirable to dispense entirely with Morse signals, and this is especially true on shipboard or in places where there is much noise and where a much louder signal or a visual signal is required. To meet these requirements a much less expensive set of apparatus has been designed. The transmitter is precisely the same as in the preceding case, but the polarized receiving relay, R, is much smaller and is not provided with as sensitive adjustments, it having been found that for bell signals they are not necessary. The sounder is entirely dispensed with, and is replaced by a high class vibrating bell, shown at P in the diagram of receiving station C. This bell is so arranged that it can be adjusted to work in unison with the vibrations of the decohering apparatus. The Clarke coherer relay in this case is mounted on top of a mahogany box which contains the decohering magnets, resistance coils for bridging the terminals and also condenser for suppressing the spark at the vibrating contact, as fully shown in the diagram at station C. The plugs in the cohering tube, G, are provided with the same adjustment as in the more elaborate set. The working of the apparatus is perfect in every respect. When required, the vibrating bell, P, can be replaced by an incandescent lamp which can be readily turned on and off from the distant station. It is certainly extremely interesting to place the transmitter of this set in one room and the receiver in another and then listen to the vibrating bell ring out loudly in response to every impulse of the waves. No ground connection, however, or air plate is required for either set of apparatus when the distance between the transmitter and the receiver is comparatively short. For the benefit of those who wish to experiment, and perhaps endeavor to build their own apparatus, a simple coherer is provided which is shown in perspective in one of our half tone illustrations and in detail in the lower engraving. The outer binding posts of this coherer are intended to hold two light rods of metal of equal length projecting out on either side. These rods or wings are necessary when it is desired to transmit to any considerable distance without using the earth connection or earth plate.

Radio signals were originally produced by spark transmitters, which were noisy and inefficient. So experimenters worked to develop "continuous-wave" -- also known as "undamped" -- transmitters, whose signals went out on a single frequency, and which could also transmit full-audio signals. High-speed electrical alternators was one approach used to generate continuous-wave signals, and by 1919 international control of the Alexanderson alternator-transmitter was considered so important that it triggered the formation of the Radio Corporation of America.

All early radio work used spark transmitters, which could only transmit the dots-and-dashes of Morse code. But, just as the telegraph had led to the telephone, various experimenters worked to develop radio transmitters which could transmit full audio, although it would take a number of years before cost efficient systems would be developed. In a 1891 lecture, Frederick T. Trouton noted that if an electrical alternator could somehow be run fast enough, it would generate electromagnetic radiation, as reported in Radiation of Electric Energy--Alternator extract, from the January 22, 1894 The Electrician (London). However, the main proponent for using high-speed alternators as radio transmitters would be Reginald Fessenden. As early as 1891, Fessenden had investigated transmitting lower-frequency signals along telegraph lines to create a multiplex telegraph system, according to his letter, Sine Form Curves of Alternating E. M. F., printed in the September 15, 1894 The Electrical World. In 1901, Fessenden, now doing experimental work for the U.S. Agriculture Department, applied for a U.S. patent for a radio transmitter that used a high-speed electrical alternator to produce what became known as "continuous waves". This revolutionary design was the first to employ the same basic principles which AM (mediumwave) radio stations still use today. At this time Fessenden was also busy developing a rotary-spark transmitter for the ill-fated transatlantic service, so it wasn't until late 1906 that the alternator-transmitter was perfected to the point it was ready for public demonstration. Although the transmitter was designed mainly for point-to-point telephone service, AT&T's review of this historic presentation at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, Experiments and Results in Wireless Telephony, by John Grant, The American Telephone Journal, January 26 and February 2, 1907, noted that Fessenden's invention was "admirably adapted to the transmission of news, music, etc." One day in November, 1906, while conducting audio transmission tests at Brant Rock using the new alternator-transmitter, Fessenden received a remarkable letter -- one of his operators at Macrihanish, Scotland, who wasn't even aware of the tests, reported hearing a few sentences spoken by one of Fessenden's assistants. The incident wasn't publicized at the time, and planned follow-up tests were aborted by the collapse of the Macrihanish tower. But 12 years later, Fessenden wrote a letter, The First Transatlantic Telephone Transmission, printed in the September 7, 1918 Scientific American, which detailed what he remembered about the events, while asking if any readers had additional information.

Although radio's unique ability to travel through the air without using any connecting wires immediately caught the public imagination, in many ways radio transmissions were very inefficient, because the signals tended to spread out in all directions. In 1911, George D. Squier of the U.S. Army Signal Corps successfully employed one of the new alternator-transmitters to direct low-power audio radio signals to specific locations, by using wires as wave-guides, as reviewed in Multiplex Telephony and Telegraphy by Means of Electric Waves Guided by Wires, from the May, 1911 Proceedings of the American Institute of American Engineers and René Bache's Many Talk on One Wire, from the March, 1911 Technical World Magazine. And although Squier's main objective was to show how radio signals could be used to transmit multiple telephone conversations simultaneously along a single wire, this "guided signals" concept would be expanded over the decades into areas as diverse as carrier-current radio stations, cable television, and fiber optics.

In the October, 1916 issue of The Electrical Experimenter, New System of Radio Telephone reviewed Edward G. Gage's work with the National Electric Signaling Company to develop a radiotelephone system at Hoboken, New Jersey, for use with the railroad. Meanwhile, Ernst Alexanderson, the lead General Electric engineer for the original Fessenden alternator, continued to work on improvements, and eventually developed alternators with power ratings of hundreds of kilowatts. The Electrical Experimenter for August, 1916 announced A 100 K.W. Radio Frequency Alternator, developed by Alexanderson, while an extract from Transoceanic Radio Communication, written by the engineer himself, from the October, 1920 issue of General Electric Review, covers information about a 200 kilowatt Alexanderson alternator, constructed for transatlantic service from New Brunswick, New Jersey. At the time this paper was published, it appeared that alternator-transmitters would be one of the most important radio technologies for the foreseeable future, and in fact the formation of Radio Corporation of America was largely the result of the fear by the U.S. government that control of alternator-transmitter technology was about to fall into Marconi -- hence British -- hands, as reviewed by the The Navy and the Radio Corporation of America chapter of Linwood S. Howeth's 1963 History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy. However, within just a few years alternator-transmitters would suddenly drop out of favor, when the tremendous range of low-powered shortwave signals -- which could only be produced by vacuum-tube transmitters -- became known. As relatively slow mechanical devices, alternator-transmitters could only generate longwave signals, so although a handful of existing ones continued operation through the 1940s, new construction came to an abrupt halt in the early 1920s. The Electrical World, September 15, 1894, page 264:

Sine Form of Curves of Alternating E. M. F. _______

The following communication has been received from Prof. R. A. Fessenden, from Bermuda, where he is spending the summer. The opening paragraph is an explanation of the unavoidable delay in the transmission of the letter, and is therefore omitted: To the Editor of The Electrical World: SIR--I disagree entirely with the London "Electrician," and consider the sine form of curve to be the best one. It is true that, on account of the presence of iron in the circuits, a rectangular curve will give a slightly greater amount of power in a circuit for a given amount of hysteresis, but this is more than offset by the greater losses from eddy currents and by the greater cost of line and generators and motors for the rectangular curve, if the same amount of loss is to take place in both circuits. Under ordinary circumstances an irregular or rectangular shaped curve would not get very far before it would be modified so as to more closely resemble a sine curve, and one might just as well make the dynamo give the sine curve at once, and so avoid the eddy current and line losses due to the components of higher periodicity in the rectangular curve. I do not, however, believe that it is necessary, as has been stated by some electricians, to use a surface wound armature to get a sine curve, as a sufficient approximation to that form can be obtained with a properly designed toothed armature. The experiments of Mr. Scott, of the Westinghouse company, show that in practice, as in theory, the sine curve is the best. I may say, in this connection, that it does not seem to have been generally noted that the sine curve is a necessity for efficient telegraphy. In January, 1891, I designed and experimented upon the system of multiplex telegraphy which Dr. Pupin has recently rediscovered, and noticed this fact. As a result, a method was devised by which the operator did not make or break the line circuit with his key, but put in circuit a device which automatically sent out sine waves into the line. REGINALD A. FESSENDEN. In this extract, Trouton proposed that one method for generating electromagnetic radiation might be by running an electrical alternator at very high speeds. At this time Tesla's alternator was capable of operating at up to 20,000 cycles-per-second, but this was too slow to generate radio waves. However, the author thought that with improvements the device might someday achieve the required higher speeds.

The Electrician (London), January 22, 1892, page 302:

RADIATION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY.*

What we do here is apparently to give the molecules of these substances a great shake every now and then, they continuing to vibrate between each disturbance after their own fashion as little electric radiators, thus affording us light. Experiments lately made by Prof. Tesla, of America, seem to show that the more frequently they are disturbed the better. An ideal, of course, would be to give them a help each oscillation by a synchronous alternating current. Prof. Tesla has built an alternating dynamo, which afforded currents alternating 20,000 times a second; but this is far and away short of what would be required, if in truth such a thing is possible, as a circuit carrying a current alternating in periods comparable with that of light. The speed of rotation and the number of coils which can fit on a rotating disc seems nearly reached in his machine; but by combining the principle of the transformer with that of the dynamo, we could push the rate of alternation beyond these mechanical limits: for instance, by passing an alternating current through the field-magnets of an alternating dynamo instead of the usual continuous current. We might suppose this done by having two machines on the same shaft, the first arranged as usual, while the field-magnets of the second derive their current from the armature of the first, and in such a way that when the armature coils and field coils are closest the current in the field coils should be zero. The current from the armature of the second machine would thus be of double the rate, for we have superimposed on the geometrical zero position of the armature coils which occur half way between two field coils, zero position situated at the field coils. The two machines might, of course, be combined, only in that case the field-magnets of our second machine rotate, and are in fact the armature coils of the first, while the second set of coils to form the second armature would remain at rest. Unfortunately, we cannot go on in the same fashion doubling the rate, only, indeed, adding subsidiary vibrations by further machines. _______________ * The conclusion of a series of lectures delivered in Inverness, December, 1891, under the auspices of the "Ettle's Trust." MULTIPLEX TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY BY MEANS OF ELECTRIC WAVES GUIDED BY WIRES _____

BY GEORGE O. SQUIER _____

I. INTRODUCTION Electrical transmission of intelligence, so vital to the progress of civilization, has taken a development at present into telephony and telegraphy over metallic wires; and telegraphy, and, to a limited extent, telephony, through the medium of the ether by means of electric waves. During the past twelve years the achievements of wireless telegraphy have been truly marvelous. From an engineering viewpoint, the wonder of it all is, that with the transmitting energy being radiated out over the surface of the earth in all directions, enough of this energy is delivered at a single point on the circumference of a circle, of which the transmitting antenna is approximately the center, to operate successfully suitable receiving devices by which the electromagnetic waves are translated into intelligence. The "plant efficiency" for electrical energy in the best types of wireless stations yet produced is so low that there can be no comparison between it and the least efficient transmission of energy by conducting wires. The limits of audibility, being a physiological function, are well known to vary considerably, but they may be taken to be in the neighborhood of 16 complete cycles per second as the lower limit and 15,000 to 20,000 cycles per second as the upper limit. If, therefore, there is impressed upon a wire circuit for transmitting intelligence harmonic electromotive forces of frequencies between 0 and 16 cycles per second, or, again, above 15,000 to 20,000 cycles per second it would seem certain that whatever effects such electric wave frequencies produced upon metallic lines, the present apparatus employed in operating them could not translate this effect into audible signals. There are, therefore, two possible solutions to the problem of multiplex telephony and telegraphy upon this principle by electric waves, based upon the unalterable characteristic of the human ear, viz., by employing (1), electric waves of infra sound frequencies, and (2) those of ultra-sound frequencies One great difficulty in designing generators of infra-sound frequencies is in securing a pure sine wave, as otherwise any harmonic of the fundamental would appear within the range of audition. Furthermore, the range of frequencies is restricted and the physical dimensions of the tuning elements for such low frequencies would have a tendency to become unwieldy. The electromagnetic spectrum at present extends from about four to eight periods per second, such as are employed upon ocean cables, to the shortest waves of ultra-violet light. In this whole range of frequencies there are two distinct intervals which have not as yet been used, viz., frequencies from about 3 X 1012 of the extreme infra-red to 5 X 1010, which are the shortest electric waves yet produced by electrical apparatus, and from about 80,000 to 100,000 cycles per second to about 15,000 to 20,000 cycles per second. The upper limit of this latter interval represents about the lowest frequencies yet employed for long distance wireless telegraphy. Within the past few years generators have been developed in the United States giving an output of two kilowatt and more at periods of 100,000 cycles per second, and also capable of being operated satisfactorily at as low a frequency as 20,000 cycles per second. Furthermore, these machines give a practically pure sine wave. The necessary condition for telephony by electric waves guided by wires is an uninterrupted source of sustained oscillations, and some form of receiving device which is quantitative in its action. In the experiments described in multiplex telephony and telegraphy it has been necessary and sufficient to combine the present engineering practice of wire telephony and telegraphy with the engineering practice of wireless telephony and telegraphy. The frequencies involved in telephony over wires do not exceed 1800 to 2000, and for such frequencies the telephonic currents are fairly well distributed throughout the cross section of the conductor. As the frequency is increased the so-called "skin effect" becomes noticeable, and the energy is more and more transmitted in the ether surrounding the conductor. It has been found possible to superimpose, upon the ordinary telephonic wire circuits now commercially used, electric waves of ultra-sound frequencies without producing any harmful effects upon the operation of the existing telephonic service. Fortunately, therefore, the experiments described below are constructive and additive, rather than destructive and supplantive. Electric waves of ultra-sound frequencies are guided by means of wires of an existing commercial installation and are made the vehicle for the transmission of additional telephonic and telegraphic messages.

APPARATUS AND EQUIPMENT Under a special appropriation granted to the Signal Corps by Congress in the Army Appropriation Act of 1909, a small research laboratory has been established at the Bureau of Standards, in the suburbs of the city of Washington. This laboratory is equipped with the latest forms of apparatus now employed in the wireless telephone and telegraph art, and also with the standard types of telephone and telegraph apparatus now used upon wire circuits. The small construction laboratory of the U. S. Signal Corps is located at 1710 Pennsylvania Avenue and is also equipped with the usual types and forms of apparatus used in transmitting intelligence by electrical means. Each of these laboratories is supplied with a wireless telephone and telegraph installation with suitable antennæ. In addition, these two laboratories are connected by a standard telephone cable line about seven miles in length, which was employed in the experiments described below.

THE 100,000-CYCLE GENERATOR The high-frequency alternator, which is shown complete with driving motor and power panel in the accompanying illustrations, is a special form of the inductor type designed for a frequency of 100,000 cycles with an output of two kw., making it adapted for use in wireless telephony or telegraphy. Driving Motor. The motor is a shunt-wound 10-h.p. machine with a normal speed of 1,250 rev. per min. It is connected by a chain drive to an intermediate shaft which runs at a speed of 2000 rev. per min. The intermediate shaft drives the flexible shaft of the alternator through a De Laval turbine gearing, having a ratio of ten to one. The flexible shaft and inductor thus revolve at a speed of 20,000 rev. per min. Field Coils. The field coils, mounted on the stationary iron frame of the alternator, surround the periphery of the inductor. The magnetic flux produced by these coils passes through the laminated armature and armature coils, the air-gap, and the inductor. This flux is periodically decreased by the non-magnetic sections of phosphor-bronze embedded radially in the inductor at its periphery. Armature Coils. The armatures or stators are ring-shaped and are made of laminated iron. Six hundred slots are cut on the radial face of each; a quadruple silk-covered copper wire, 0.016 in. (0.4 mm.) in diameter, is wound in a continuous wave up and down the successive slots. The peripheries of the armature frames are threaded to screw into the iron frame of the alternator. By means of a graduated scale on the alternator frame the armatures can be readily adjusted for any desired air-gap. Inductor. The inductor or rotor has 300 teeth on each side of its periphery, spaced 0.125 in. (0.491 mm.) between centers. The spaces between the teeth are filled with U shaped phosphor bronze wires, securely anchored, so as to withstand the centrifugal force of 80 lb. (36.2 kg.) exerted by each. Since each tooth of the inductor gives a complete cycle, 100,000 cycles per second are developed at 20,000 revolutions per minute. The diameter of the disk being one foot (0.3 m.), the peripheral speed is 1,047 ft. (219 m.) per sec., or 700 miles per hour, at which rate it would roll from the United States to Europe in four hours. By careful design and selection of material, a factor of safety of 6.7 is obtained in the disk, although the centrifugal force at its periphery is 68,000 times the weight of the metal there. Bearings. The generator has two sets of bearings, as shown in the illustrations, the outer set being the main bearings which support the weight of the revolving parts. These bearings are self-aligning and are fitted with special sleeves, which are ground to coincide with longitudinal corrugations of the shaft, thus taking up the end thrust. A pump maintains a continuous stream of oil through these bearings, thus allowing the machine to be run continuously at full speed without troublesome heating. The middle bearings normally do not touch the shaft, but take up excessive end thrust and prevent excessive radial vibration of the flexible shaft. An auxiliary bearing or guide is placed midway between the gear box and the end bearing. Its function is to limit the vibration of that portion of the shaft. Critical Periods. In starting the machine, severe vibration occurs at two distinct critical speeds, one at about 1,700 and the other at about 9,000 revolutions per minute. The middle bearings prevent this vibration from becoming dangerous. Voltage. With the normal air-gap between the armatures and revolving disk of 0.015 in. (0.059 mm.), the potential developed is 150 volts with the armatures connected in series. It is possible, however, to decrease the air gap to 0.004 in. (0.015 mm.) for short runs, which gives a corresponding increase in voltage up to nearly 300 volts. It is considered inadvisable, however, to run with this small air gap for any considerable length of time. The machine is intended to be used with a condenser, the capacity reactance of which balances the armature inductance reactance which is 5.4 ohms at 100,000 cycles. This would require a capacity of about 0.3 microfarad for resonance at this frequency, but in the experiments conducted at 100,000 cycles it was found necessary to decrease this amount on account of the fixed auxiliary inductance of the leads.

pages 866-868: Having determined the necessary and sufficient conditions for the accomplishment of telegraphy and telephony by means of electric waves guided by wires upon local circuits, the next step was to apply these means and conditions to an actual commercial telephone cable line, the constants of which have been given above. The machine was run at a frequency of 100,000 cycles per second with the circuit arrangements as shown in Fig. 1, where one wire of the telephone cable was connected to one terminal of the secondary of an air-core transformer, the other terminal being connected to earth. At the receiving end of the line, which was the Signal Corps construction laboratory, at 1710 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D. C., this wire was connected directly to earth through a "perikon" crystal detector, such as is well known in wireless telegraphy, and a high resistance telephone receiver of about 8,000 ohms was shunted around the crystal. In this preliminary experiment no attempt was made at tuning, either at the transmitting end or at the receiving end of the line. In the primary circuit of the generator, arrangements were made by which either an interrupter and telegraph key or a telephone transmitter could be inserted by throwing a switch. In the line circuit a hot wire milliammeter was inserted in a convenient position so that the effect of the operation of either the telegraph key or of the human voice upon the transmitter could be observed by watching the fluctuations of the needle of the milliammeter. A loose coupling was employed between the two circuits at the transmitting end, and the line circuit adjusted by varying the coupling until the current in the line was twenty to thirty milliamperes. With this arrangement (1) telegraphic signals were sent and easily received, and (2) speech was transmitted and received successfully over this single wire with ground return. The ammeter showed marked fluctuations from the human voice and enabled the operator at the transmitting station to be certain that modified electric waves were being transmitted over the line.

pages 902-905: SUMMARY Radio-telegraphy has no competitor as a means of transmitting intelligence between ships at sea and between ships and shore stations, and on land it is also unique in its usefulness in reaching isolated districts and otherwise inaccessible points. To what extent it may be also developed to furnish practical intercommunication, according to the high standard now enjoyed in thickly populated districts, it is not attempted to predict. The foregoing experiments indicate that either the existing wire system, or additional wires for the purpose may be utilized for the efficient transmission of telephonic and telegraphic messages, and the former without interfering with the existing telephone traffic on these wires. The fact that each of the circuits created by the use of superimposed high-frequency methods is both a telephone and telegraph circuit interchangeably, makes it possible to offer to the public a new type of service, which it is believed, will offer many advantages to the commercial world. This type of circuit should be particularly applicable to press association service, railroad service, and leased wire service of all kinds. The experiments described should not be interpreted as in any way indicating limitations to radio-telegraphy and telephony in the future, for their present rapid development gives justification for great prospect for the future. It is rather considered that the whole system of intercommunication, including both wire methods and wireless methods, will grow apace, and as each advance is made in either of these it will create new demands and standards for still further development. We need more wireless telegraphy everywhere, and not less do we need more wire telegraphy and telephony everywhere, and, again, more submarine cables. The number of submarine cables connecting Europe with America could be increased many times and all of them kept fully occupied, provided the traffic were properly classified to enable some of the enormous business which is now carried on by mail to be transferred to the quicker and more efficient cablegram letter. That time will surely come when the methods of electrical inter-communication will have been so developed and multiplied that the people of the different countries of the world may become real neighbors. Accustomed to the methods of transmitting energy for power purposes by means of wire, it is a matter of wonder that enough energy can be delivered at a receiving antenna from a transmitting point thousands of miles distant to operate successfully receiving devices. The value of a metallic wire guide for the energy of the electric waves is strikingly shown in the above experiments, and it furnishes an efficient directive wireless system which confines the ether disturbances to closely bounded regions and thus offers a ready solution to the serious problems of interferences between messages which of necessity have to be met in wireless operations through space. The distortion of speech, which is an inherent feature of telephony over wires, should be much less, if not practically absent, when we more and more withdraw the phenomena from the metal of the wire and confine them to a longitudinal strip of the ether which forms the region between the two wires of a metallic circuit. The ohmic resistance of the wire as shown can be made to play a comparatively unimportant part in the transmission of speech and the more the phenomena are of the ether, instead of that of metallic conduction, the more perfectly will the modified electric waves, which are the vehicle for transmitting the speech, be delivered at the receiving point without distortion. It has been shown that the phenomena of resonance, which are met with in so many different branches of physics, exhibit very striking and orderly results when applied to electric waves propagated by means of wires. By utilizing this principle it has been shown that the receiving current at the end of the line may be built up and amplified many times over what it would be with untuned circuits. The tuned electrical circuit at the receiving end readily admits electromagnetic waves of a certain definite frequency, and bars from entrance electromagnetic waves of other frequencies. This permits the possibility of utilizing a single circuit for multiplex telephony and telegraphy. Due to their size, complexity and cost, alternator-transmitters were mostly employed for longrange radiotelegraphy, and rarely used for audio transmissions. But another developing continuous-wave technology also showed promise -- the arc-transmitter, which had been perfected beginning in 1902 by Valdemar Poulsen of Denmark. At the 1904 Saint Louis International Electrical Congress, Poulsen submitted a paper reviewing his discoveries, System for Producing Continuous Electric Oscillations, and expressed the hope that this new transmitting system would soon be used for "syntonic wireless telegraphy and telephony". Another Selective Wireless, which appeared in the July, 1906 Electrician and Mechanic, reported on Poulsen's on-going progress, followed by a more detailed review, The Poulsen Wireless Station at Lyngby, from the June, 1908 issue of Modern Electrics. (In addition to his radio inventions, Poulsen was also well known for developing a wire "Telegraphone" sound recording device, reviewed by E. F. Hearns in A Spool of Wire Speaks from the December, 1906 Technical World Magazine). Meanwhile, Wireless Telephony, in the December 8, 1906 Electrical World, reprinted a report from the November 15, 1906 Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift that German experimenter Ernst Ruhmer had successfully employed Poulsen's invention to transmit speech across a laboratory room, which "makes wireless telephony at once possible".

One person attending the Saint Louis conference, Lee DeForest, was particularly impressed by Poulsen's invention, and would spend many years trying to develop arc-transmitters for audio transmissions, both for point-to-point communication and for broadcasting entertainment and news. Forced out of United Wireless in late 1906, DeForest formed the Radio Telephone Company, to promote "sparkless" arc-based transmission systems. But although DeForest made a number of well publicized experimental and publicity transmissions, he was ultimately unsuccessful in developing a reliable arc system. (A major problem likely was the fact that he never got around to purchasing the rights to use Poulsen's patents, which seems to have led to some hit-or-miss engineering work. In his autobiography, DeForest claimed, not very convincingly, that he had read that another inventor had anticipated Poulsen's development of the hydrogen arc, which meant it was all right for him to use it). According to his autobiography, on December 31, 1906 DeForest was able for the first time to transmit his voice across a room. He then moved rapidly, and prematurely, to develop commercial sales. Reporting Yacht Races by Wireless Telephony from the August 10, 1907 Electrical World boasted that "The first actual application of radio-telephony to practical work anywhere in the world was made at Put-in-Bay, in Lake Erie, during the week of July 15 to 20, in reporting the regatta of the Interlake Association." DeForest next promoted his system to the U.S. Navy, and in the October 12, 1907 issue of The Outlook, Wireless Telephones at Sea reported initial tests being conducted on the Connecticut and Virginia using his equipment. These tests were impressive enough for the Navy to have DeForest supply its "Great White Fleet" with 26 arc radiotelephones for an around-the-world voyage, and this innovation merited articles in two 1908 issues of Telephony magazine: Wireless Telephony in the Navy, by N. J. Quirk, appearing in January, and Wireless Telephony for the Navy, by Herbert T. Wade, which ran in May. However, the transmitters proved impracticable, and were scraped at the end of the voyage. (In The Radiotelephone Failure section of Linwood S. Howeth's 1963 History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, the author writes "One of the first mistakes of the [USN Radio Division head Lt. Comdr. Cleland] Davis regime was that of becoming too quickly convinced of the capabilities and promises of the radiotelephone equipment by De Forest in the summer of 1907. Under ordinary circumstances De Forest equipment was noted for its lack of engineering design and perfection and under such hurried procurement the equipment delivered was far below this normal low quality.") DeForest was one of the first persons to suggest using radio signals to broadcast entertainment to a wide audience, and in the June, 1907 issue of The American Monthly Review of Reviews, Herbert T. Wade's Wireless Telephony by the De Forest System noted the possibilities for "the distribution of music from a central station", and also reported that "the inventor believes that by using four different forms of wave as many classes of music can be sent out as desired by the different subscribers". However, DeForest was also known for being excessively optimistic, as this review also reported, very prematurely, that "Dr. De Forest has reached the conclusion that wireless telephony on a practical and commercial scale has been realized." Wireless Telephony at Last from the June 15, 1907 The Literary Digest further reviewed radio-telephone systems developed by DeForest, and by Adolphus Slaby in Germany. DeForest's later entertainment broadcasting efforts included an opera, direct from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City, reviewed in Grand Opera by Wireless, in the March 5, 1910 issue of Telephony, plus a concert by Mme. Mariette Mazarin, reported by Radio Telephone Experiments in the May, 1910 issue of Modern Electrics. However, the Mazarin concert was the final effort for many years for his broadcasting experiments -- the technology for quality audio transmissions just did not exist yet. It wouldn't be until 1916, following the development of vacuum-tube transmitters, that DeForest would return to exploring radio for news and entertainment broadcasts. In addition, the company's attempt to set up a point-to-point radiotelephone service along the Great Lakes also collapsed at this time, as reported in a short note appearing in the August 6, 1910 issue of Telephony: Great Lakes Wireless Telephone Out of Business. These financial and technical problems, plus legal troubles, caused DeForest to suspend his development of arc-transmitters for audio transmissions.

Numerous companies on both sides of the Atlantic and in Japan tried developing arc-transmitters for audio transmissions, and over the years, Poulsen licenced the rights to his arc-transmitter patents to a variety of firms, some more successfully than others. The November 22, 1906 New York Times carried a short announcement, Backs Wireless Invention, that a Lord Armstrong in Great Britain had purchased the U.S. rights for $500,000. Over the next two years, the Times carried a series of announcements proclaiming important European advances, including Wireless Over Atlantic on July 28, 1907, which foresaw the imminent establishment of a trans-Atlantic radiotelegraph service, followed by December 20, 1907's Poulson Confident of Oversea 'Phone, and Pictures By Wireless from January 1, 1908, which added radiotelephone and facsimile services to the projected trans-Atlantic service -- which would never actually be established -- while Voice Will Carry Across the Sea from January 12, 1908, suggested that Poulsen's success in holding a two-way voice conversation over 250 miles (400 kilometers) would soon be translated into a commercial service. However, none of these promotions actually had the financial stability or technical development needed to succeed. For eighteen months in 1908-1909, equipment designed by a German company, Telefunken, was evaluated by the U.S. Army Signal Corps in New York Harbor -- in Experiences in Wireless Telephoning, from the April, 1912 Electrician and Mechanic, Austin C. Lescarboura reported that "the practicability of the wireless telephone was found to be uncertain".

Finally, in 1909 the U.S. rights to Poulsen's arc-transmitter were purchased by a syndicate backing Australian-born Cyril F. Elwell, who became Chief Engineer of a company set up in San Francisco, California, which soon became the Federal Telegraph Company. The company quietly prospered, and went on to produce progressively more powerful and sophisticated arc-transmitters for radiotelegraph use. (While Federal Telegraph successfully used arc-transmitters for longrange point-to-point radiotelegraph transmissions, it apparently never tried to develop audio transmissions.) An article by Elwell in the April 2, 1910 issue of the Journal of Electricity, Power and Gas, The Poulsen System of Wireless Telephony and Telegraphy, appeared shortly after the new company was founded. (Although the arc-transmitter worked well, the automated high-speed telegraphing equipment reviewed in Elwell's article still needed some work, according to Charles V. Logwood's High Speed Radio Telegraphy, from the June, 1916 issue of The Electrical Experimenter.) Wireless Across the U.S. by E. A. Mayne, from the May, 1911 Modern Electrics, reported the successful introduction of an overland radiotelegraph service, crossing the desert and Rocky Mountains between San Francisco, California and El Paso, Texas. Some Recent Developments of the Poulsen System of Wireless Telegraphy, by "W. C. R." from the July, 1912 Electrician and Mechanic, contrasted the less successful attempts to develop the Poulsen system in Europe and Canada with the recent advances of the Federal Telegraph Company.

During World War One, the U.S. Navy purchased all of the Federal Telegraph stations, only to have the U.S. Congress instruct the Navy to return the stations to their original owners after the war ended. So, to its surprise Federal Telegraph found itself back in the radiotelegraph business, and the company's reorganization and expansion plans were explained by Acting Chief Engineer Haraden Pratt in New Stations of the Federal Tel. Co., from the February, 1921 Pacific Radio News.

In 1912, the U.S. Navy constructed a new station, NAA in Arlington, Virginia, as the first in a chain of high-power international links. This station initially used a 100 kilowatt NESCO rotary-spark transmitter designed by Reginald Fessenden. However, as recounted in The Federal Telegraph Co. of California and the Poulsen Arc Transmitter and The Radio (Arlington), Virginia, Station sections of Linwood S. Howeth's 1963 History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, Elwell convinced the Navy to grudgingly let Federal Telegraph install a 35 kilowatt arc transmitter for comparison trials. The Navy was amazed to find that the compact arc transmitter outperformed the rotary-spark set, even though it was using just 1/3rd the power. At this point the Navy made an abrupt shift in its policies, and made increasingly powerful Federal Telegraph arcs the predominant transmitters in its new installations, as described in the Development of the High-Powered Chain chapter of Howeth's book. (Ironically, in a comprehensive paper on continuous-wave transmitters presented before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1908, Fessenden had dismissed Poulsen's approach as an inefficient step backward from earlier researchers, worth mentioning in passing only "on account of the interest it appears to have excited in Europe"). In 1913, Cyril Elwell left Federal Telegraph, and Leonard Fuller became the company's new Chief Engineer. But Elwell continued to work as an Poulsen arc-transmitter designer on both sides of the Atlantic, and an article which appeared in the September 6, 1919 Electrical Review, Developments of Poulsen Wireless System Shown reviewed Elwell's radiotelegraph station engineering work for the period from 1909 through 1919.

On the west coast, Charles D. Herrold in San Jose, California did extensive experimental work with high-frequency spark and arc systems, and even broadcast entertainment programs on a regular schedule. A short review of his work by Milton E. Hymes, Correspondence, appeared in the November, 1913 The Electrical Experimenter, reported that the transmission of the song "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" had been heard 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) away. In the April, 1914 issue of the same magazine, University of California Doing Good Radio Work reviewed additional radio-telegraph and radio-telephone activities.

Marconi Wireless also did some limited development of arc transmitters in the United States, as the June 1914 issue of The Wireless Age reported on a test transmission from the Wanamaker's store station in New York to Philadelphia by Wireless Telephone. The next year the company, somewhat belatedly, purchased the English rights to use the Poulsen patents, announced in Marconi Absorbs Rival from the September 15, 1915 New York Times. However, although arc-transmitters were a significant advance over spark transmitters, they still were somewhat complicated, generally limited to radiotelegraphy, and would soon be supplanted by the development of vacuum-tube transmitters, which were even more efficient and reliable. (In his 1922 book Amateur Radio, Maurice J. Grainger, writing about the superiority of vacuum-tube transmitters for broadcasting purposes, wrote "Certainly an arc transmitter could be used, but the sounds that would be projected though the air by this means would be so inextricably mixed up with 'clicks, hisses, gurgles and howls' that nobody would have the patience to listen to it.") .

SYSTEM FOR PRODUCING CONTINUOUS ELECTRIC OSCILLATIONS. ______

BY V. POULSEN. ______

It is known that Mr. Duddell, in the year 1900, discovered that a direct-current arc, shunted with a condenser in series with a self-induction, as in Fig. 1, will, under certain conditions, give out a musical note, and transform part of the direct current into alternating current with constant amplitude; the energy dissipated in the condenser circuit in ohmic loss being supplied from the direct current. Duddell found, however, that the arc is only "musical" when the following conditions are satisfied: If d V is a small change in the p.d. between the terminals of the arc, and d I the corresponding change in the current through the arc, then dV / dI must be 1), negative; 2), numerically greater than the resistance of the condenser circuit; and 3), numerically less than the resistance of the direct-current circuit in series with the arc. These conditions are fulfilled if the arc is formed between solid carbons. This simple way of producing alternating currents of even high frequency seemed, justly, to be the nearly ideal principle for the securing of a system for producing continuous electric oscillations -- i. e., alternating currents of very high frequency. When experimenting some years ago with the musical arc, I made an observation which, followed by occasional experiments, led me to the construction of a generator for producing continuous electric oscillations. A short, general description of some of my experiments and arrangements will here be given. Fig. 1 shows the diagram of an ordinary musical arc. D is a choking coil, S is the self-induction, and C the capacity in the shunt circuit. R is a regulating resistance inserted in the direct-current circuit. In view of my first experiment, the carbons were placed horizontally and coaxially, as shown in Fig. 2. In this way an ordinary spirit-lamp could be held under the arc in such a manner that the latter and the adjacent parts of the electrodes were quite surrounded by the spirit-vapor. The ammeter A was placed in the direct-current circuit, and the hot-wire ammeter T, in the condenser circuit. The direct current was taken from an ordinary 220-volt lighting circuit. When the musical arc was placed in spirit-vapor in the above-mentioned manner, then the note abated in pitch, while at the same time T showed a considerable increase in the alternating current, and the direct current dimished. Furthermore, the emission of light of the arc diminished, as is usual with hydrogen and hydrogen compounds. As with the atmospheric arc, the note also increased in pitch in the alcoholic arc when the direct current was increased. A different length of arc was required in spirit-vapor than in air give a maximum current in the condenser circuit. Table I contains the data of two series of experiments; one in which the distance between the electrodes is adapted to spirit-vapor and another in which it is adapted to air.

Resistance of R + D in ohms. Direct-cur- rent p.d. between the electrodes. Direct- current in amperes. Alternating current in amperes. Distance between the electrodes in mm. The arc being in: 54 54 36 36 54 54 36 36 101 47 83 47 31 31 29 29 3.2 3.2 3.8 4.8 3.5 3.5 5.3 5.3 6.9 2.4 9.0 2.4 3.1 5.8 4.6 6.0 Abt. 2.0 " 2.0 " 2.7 " 2.7 " 1.2 " 1.2 " 1.0 " 1.0 Spirit-vapor. Air. Spirit-vapor. Air. Air. Spirit-vapor. Air. Spirit-vapor.

The large choking coil D was without iron and had an inductance of 0.19 henry. The self-induction S without iron was 5.6 X 10-4 henrys and the capacity of the condenser1 was about 2.5 microfarads. In the first series of experiments V/I was greater for the spirit arc than for the atmospheric arc. In the second series the pitch of the note was very nearly the same in air and in spirit-vapor; and the inserted resistances and direct currents being the same, the energy in the condenser circuit is proportional to the square of the current. The inserted resistances, as also S and C, were chosen arbitrarily. The superiority of the spirit-vapor became, with relation to the air, greater than in the above-mentioned experiments, when the ratio S/C was taken greater. The same effect as spirit-vapor was given by hydrogen, ordinary coal-gas, and ammonia-gas. As even water-vapor gave an effect similar to that of the hydrocarbons at low frequencies, the effect seemed be produced by the hydrogen. That the effect was not due to the streaming of the gas became evident through experiments in a closed vessel. When the image of the hydrogenic arc was projected upon a screen, the condenser circuit not being closed, the arc was observed as a greenish-blue spot with a very faint trace of a purple-colored core. As soon as the arc was made "musical" by closing the condenser circuit, it became thick, the purple-colored core becoming then very marked. When there a copper anode and a carbon cathode were used instead of two carbons, the core was particularly beautiful. As I aimed at obtaining frequencies as high as possible, and as the superiority of the hydrogenic arc became more evident when the ratio S/C was made greater, as above mentioned, I laid special stress on dimishing C, which was reduced with good result down to 1 X 10-4 microfarads. The hydrogenic arc gave out "musical" notes, or rather electric "notes," of several hundred thousand oscillations per second, and even though of less intensity, some millions of oscillations per second. The excellent resonance effect that can be obtained by these oscillations indicate their continuity, and in the rotating mirror it is seen that the oscillations actually are continuous. At high frequency, alcohol did not prove to be as good as hydrogen, coal-gas, or ether. Furthermore, it was shown to be necessary to draw out the arc to a certain length in starting the oscillations. When the oscillations are started, the length, as a rule, can be lessened a little, without the oscillations ceasing. If the length of the arc is increased, then the oscillations continue, and cease only when the distance between the electrodes has become so great that the arc is extinguished. When the arc oscillates in a gas flame, this latter assumes a special form. If the ratio S/C is small, the appearance of the flame and arc is very curious, the gas, or particles in the gas, being projected from the arc with a blowing sound. If the ratio S/C is very small or very great, the arc cannot oscillate. On some few occasions I got, when S/C was great, a momentary p.d. between the coatings of the Leyden jar which represented C so great that the edge became luminous and the odor of ozone was present. As this was not repeated later on, I placed my oscillating arc in a transverse magnetic field, under otherwise the same conditions, in order to see whether this would be of avail. The increase in the effect was very striking. From the Leyden jar was heard and seen a splendid luminous ring of small discharges from the edge of the inner coating. The heat caused thereby became so great that the tinfoil melted at the edge and the Leyden jar cracked in a circle. When, instead of a permanent magnet, I used an electromagnet, inserted in the direct-current circuit (see Fig. 3), then the arc became more stable and showed, with the electrodes suitably formed, and with even a magnetic field of 1 X 104 to 1:5 X 104 gausses, no tendency to extinguishment. In the magnetic field the resistance of the arc, or rather the ratio V/I, is very great, and the more so the greater is S/C. When the electrodes are drawn back from each other in the magnetic field, the direct current decreases until that length of the arc is attained at which the oscillations begin; the direct current then increases again somewhat, that is, the oscillations lessen the resistance of the arc. When the hydrogenic arc is placed in a magnetic field as mentioned, S/C can be chosen much greater than otherwise. On the other hand, the magnetic field will do more harm than good when S/C is small. The atmospheric musical arc cannot be established with a value of S/C that makes the magnetic field applicable to the hydrogenic arc, and the magnetic field is, moreover, quite inapplicable to the atmospheric musical arc. A magnetic field parallel to the hydrogenic arc shows about the same effect as a transverse field. As electrodes I have used, besides carbon to carbon, different metals, for example, with good effect + copper cooled by running water, to - carbon. Some forms of water-cooled electrodes are shown in Fig. 4. The wear is surprisingly small. Silver, copper, and mercury are about equally good anode metals for the oscillating arc. + copper to - copper proved on some occasions to be of very great effect; but this combination in general gives rise to discontinuities in the oscillations. Where there is wanted an arrangement that can stand and take care of itself for a longer time, it is necessary to remove the carbon deposit from the electrodes in order to keep the length of the arc and the shape of the electrodes unaltered. This can be done by scraping the rotating electrodes with knives of hard and fireproof material, such as talc or self-hardening steel. If the electrodes are placed horizontally in a transverse magnetic field, then the arrangement ought to be such that the arc is forced upward, at any rate, not downward. An arrangement sufficiently good for many experiments is that shown in Fig. 5. Here a cooled copper anode is fixed opposite to a rotating carbon cathode (speed at the periphery 2 to 5 mm.p.s.) in an ether or gas flame (not a Bunsen burner). The magnetizing coils can replace the choking coil. In order to avoid soot deposits, one may inclose the arc in a case, preferably cooled by water, and let the gas stream out from it, for instance, to a Bunsen burner; if the gas has no outlet, then the effect is lessened gradually, especially, when a strong current is used, the composition of the gas being altered at the same time. If an ordinary Leyden jar is used instead of an air or oil condenser, the jar becomes very warm, if the tinfoil does not closely adhere to the glass. In case the coatings closely adhere to the glass everywhere, then the jar can be used, if vaseline or a similar insulating substance is spread over the coatings on the inside and on the outside, so that their edges are well covered by the oil. In some recent experiments I obtained, with a frequency of about 5 X 104 in the condenser circuit, about 1560 watts, the arc at the same time taking from the direct-current circuit about 3170 watts; the efficiency was thus about 50 per cent. With 1140 watts in the condenser circuit, the direct watts were 2700, the efficiency thus being 42 per cent. With 464 watts in the condenser circuit, the direct watts were 1070 and the efficiency thus 43 per cent. The frequency being about 1.6 X 105 I had in the condenser circuit 800 watts, the direct watts being 2800; the efficiency thus only proved to be 29 per cent. The supply voltage during all these experiments was 440 volts. The supply voltage being 220 volts, I obtained with a frequency of about 5 X 104 in the condenser circuit, 358 watts, the direct watts being 718; this gives an efficiency of 50 per cent. With a frequency of only 3000 to 4000 periods, I had in the condenser circuit 282 watts, the direct watts being 656 and the efficiency thus 43 per cent. In regard to all the above-mentioned experiments no preparations were made to obtain the greatest efficiency or effect. For instance, the arc was placed in a water-cooled vessel, without outlet for the gas, this being necessary to determine the energy; this lessened the intensity of the oscillations, as mentioned above, while at the same time the composition of the gas was altered. At a low frequency the alteration of the gas does not impair the intensity so much, on the other hand, the insulation was very bad in the condenser used for the frequencies of 3000 to 4000. That my system for producing continuous electric oscillations admits of handling a good deal of energy at even very high frequency has been proved by different experiments in connection with the ordinary lighting circuit of 220 volts. A resonating coil gave, when it was connected by the Seibt arrangement to an oscillating circuit with the ratio henrys 1 microfarads == 4.8, a noiseless, very warm flame of a length of 12 cm. The frequency was 1.2 X105. If the flame is made short, it can distinctly be seen in the rotating mirror to be continuously oscillating. A large Röntgen tube was placed between the terminals of a coil inductively coupled with an oscillation circuit with a frequency of about 2 X105, and in a short time the cathode and the anti-cathode melted. An ordinary 200-volt incandescent lamp glowed when placed in series with two persons, one of whom was connected with an oscillating circuit, the ratio S/C being about 1. A Seibt resonating coil with the frequency 8.4 X105 gave a flame of a length of about 1 cm; an inductively coupled coil with the frequency 1.1 X106 gave the same length. If one surrounds the secondary coil of an ordinary spark coil with windings of thick-copper wire and places these windings in series with a capacity of some microfarads shunting a hydrogenic arc, a very loudly singing flame of a length of 10 to 12 cm or more is obtained. A Röntgen tube with this arrangement gives a very strong radiation. When the ratio S/C is great -- about 15 -- there is a considerable p.d. directly between the condenser plates. With a frequency of 50,000 to 150,000 there are thick sparks of 2 to 5 cm long when the self-induction is shunted with a spark-gap. Fig. 6 shows a diagram with two oscillating circuits of the same frequency; by means of such an arrangement oscillating flames of about the double voltage can be obtained. I noticed that the musical arc placed in nitrogen gave rise to larger alternating currents than in air; at the same time I noticed that the atmospheric arc gave a larger alternating current before the carbons become quite hot. From this I conclude that the musical arc, considered as an electric transformer, is handicapped by the oxygen and that this circumstance is connected with the combustion. I could not obtain with the nitrogenic arc as high frequencies, combined with high currents, as with the hydrogen arc. Since the oxydation of the electrode material seems to reduce the alternating currents, as above mentioned, it is natural to conclude that the superiority of the hydrogen is partly due to its great affinity for oxygen, which, even in small quantities, must be supposed to affect the oscillations adversely. Without going into a more detailed explanation of the influence of the hydrogen on the musical arc, I will only mention the peculiar position of hydrogen among the elements with respect to velocity of the ions. On the basis of the experiments I have made with the "oscillating arc," I believe that it can in future be used as an electric generator for syntonic wireless telegraphy and telephony. Without mentioning other technical uses for which, I believe, it is fitted, I may, finally, express the hope that it will be of a value to physicists and electricians comparable to that of the Rühmkorff coil in the past.

WIRELESS TELEPHONY BY THE DE FOREST SYSTEM.

BY HERBERT T. WADE. THE question of wireless telephony is by no means new and such experimenters as Preece, Ruhmer, and Arco in Europe, as well as several scientists in this country, have been at work on this problem for several years. The differences between wireless telegraphy and wireless telephony are in the main as fundamental as in the two familiar systems employing wires. While the telegraph transmits an electric current so interrupted as to correspond to signals arranged by a given code, the telephone depends upon the rapidity of interruption or variation in the intensity produced by the sound vibration. There have been several methods proposed for telephony without wires, the earliest, perhaps, being the radiophone of Prof. Alexander Graham Bell, where a selenium cell was placed in the focus of a silvered parabolic reflector and was connected with a battery and a telephone receiver. The variation in the electric resistance of selenium with the amount of light should be a valuable principle in wireless telephony, but it was found that the radiophone of Professor Bell could be used only over short distances. The effect of telephone currents upon an arc lamp was later investigated, and it was discovered that this device could he used for the transmission of sound. Accordingly, Ernest Ruhmer, of Berlin, combined the "speaking arc" with the selenium cell, and by use of a searchlight for his transmitting apparatus and a selenium cell in a parabolic reflector for a receiver, was able to transmit sound effectively up to seven miles, but his experiments do not seem to have come to any very practical outcome. The reason for this will be apparent when it is realized that the difficulty of directing the beam of light to the distant reflector and the ease with which it could he obstructed or intercepted, not only by solid materials, but by fog, must be taken into consideration. Wireless telephony has also been attempted through ground circuits, and by induction over short distances, but for a really practical system we have to consider such modifications as have come from the development of wireless telegraphy. Count Arco, in Germany, has carried on important telephonic communication with modifications of his wireless telegraph system, while in a demonstration recently made with the Fessenden system, wireless telephony was carried on from a tall mast at Brant Rock across Duxbury Bay to Plymouth, a distance of about twelve miles. The most systematic and important experiments, however, are those recently carried on by Dr. Lee De Forest, who, for a number of years, has been working in wireless telegraphy, and has devised methods and apparatus that have proved most successful. After almost a year of constant experiment on radio-telephony Dr. De Forest has reached the conclusion that wireless telephony on a practical and commercial scale has been realized. The practical development of this invention now has progressed so far that sounds produced in Dr. De Forest's laboratory in New York City have been heard not only at other laboratories, several miles distant, but distinctly at Quarantine, twelve miles, on board the steamer Bermudian. In fact, Dr. De Forest has been informed by numerous amateurs in New York City and Brooklyn that their apparatus has frequently responded to the waves corresponding to music sent out from his transmitter. It might be said here by way of explanation that modern wireless telegraph systems employ almost exclusively for long distance work a telephone to receive the signals. This instrument is one of the most sensitive means of detecting the presence of an electric current or any variation in its intensity or frequency. Consequently, if an experimenter is listening for the click, click, corresponding to the wireless signals sent out at some transmitter station, and hears instead music or the human voice, he must know that his apparatus is responding not to the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet, but to waves in unison with the original sound waves appropriate to the sound. Now, in wireless telegraphy we do not change the frequency of electric waves, but we produce and interrupt them at such frequency as we desire in order to form our dots and dashes. In wireless telephony we have a similar condition, and while we cannot vary the frequency of the waves yet we can vary their amplitude or intensity as we please. Our ability to do this very rapidly, in fact as rapidly as the vibrations of the human voice or other sound, makes wireless telephony possible, as receivers have been devised sufficiently sensitive to respond to these waves and to translate them into varying electric currents which produce corresponding vibrations in the diaphragm of a telephone receiver and thus produce sound that is audible to the human ear. Passing from general considerations it may aid the reader to recapitulate the fundamental principles involved in wireless or wave telegraphy. Reduced to its simplest elements, there is an alternating current of high voltage surging or oscillating in a vertical wire, one end of which is earthed while the other is elevated. The current is transformed by means of a suitable oscillator or induction coil and transformer, so that the current flowing in the vertical or aerial wire or antenna is of high voltage. From this wire electric waves are sent out in all directions with a velocity equaling that of light, some 186,400 miles per second. Corresponding to the antenna at the transmitting station there is a similar one placed at the receiving station in the path of the waves, so that in the circuit of the receiving apparatus corresponding oscillating impulses may be established. These oscillations can take place directly in the antenna, or an induction coil or transformer may be employed. To detect these oscillations we can use any one of several devices that will respond to small differences of electric potential. Thus we have the coherer, where a number of fine metallic fragments group themselves differently for the passage of the waves and enable a current to pass. Then there is the electro-magnetic receiver, such as is used in the Marconi system, where the antenna is connected with the primary coil of an induction coil, and a telephone is in the circuit of the secondary, there being an iron wire which moves through the coils. The electrolytic receiver is also employed, as it is more sensitive than either of those just mentioned. When the current passes through the electrolytic cell of this instrument there is a change in its resistance to which the telephone immediately responds. Finally there is a receiver, known as the audion, invented by Dr. De Forest, and which is available for both telegraphy and telephony. It consists of a small incandescent lamp having a tantalum or other filament supplied with two small plates of platinum within the bulb, and connected with the outside by platinum leading wires. This lamp is lighted by current from the small storage battery shown in the illustration. The antenna is connected with the two platinum wings, or in the most recent forms of the device, with a grid and a wing. Now the interior of the bulb is highly exhausted, and when a current passes there is ionization, or the separation of the rarefied gas into minute particles or ions. When the waves fall on this receiver the resistance of the interior is changed and the telephone which is in the circuit will respond immediately. The audion has been found well adapted for telephonic work and has been used by Dr. De Forest in his experiments on sound transmission. The experimental apparatus for wireless telephony, as arranged in Dr. De Forest's laboratory, is shown in the illustration. In its commercial form the transmitting apparatus is reduced in size and is of much the same character as the receiver shown in the second photograph. The primary current used can be obtained from the lighting mains or a storage battery, and after passing through inductance coils to prevent any undue variations in the circuit, goes to an oscillator, shown at the extreme left of the picture. This may be any form of high frequency interrupter, though in the apparatus, as now arranged, there is an arc which supplies an alternating current of sufficient frequency. In connection with this is a condenser and the primary of a transformer. The former is under the two large coils of the transformer, shown in the center of the picture. The secondary is connected with the antenna or aerial wire, which in Dr. De Forest's laboratory is mounted on the roof of the building. The secondary is also connected with an ordinary carbon microphone transmitter and then to the earth. Just as in the ordinary telephone transmitter the resistance of the carbon changes with the vibration of the diaphragm, so here the change in resistance affects not the frequency of the waves but their amplitude or intensity. This is in essence the transmitting apparatus, disregarding, of course, such questions as the power hat must be used, the nature of the waves (i. e., their length and frequency), and the height of the antenna, all of which affect the distance of transmission. At the receiving station we have the antenna and transformer coil connected to the earth as before, and the audion and telephone arranged in circuit, as shown in the diagram. An ordinary telephone is used, and the audion and telephone battery are contained in a single wooden case, which, with the storage cells used to light the lamps, is shown on the table by which Dr. De Forest is standing. Wireless telephony will do away with the trained operators on vessels, so that a larger number as well as smaller steamships can be in communication with the shore or with each other during a voyage. Not only can reports be made by coastwise vessels and steamers on the Great Lakes, but the exact position or the dangerous proximity of other vessels or light-houses can be determined. This immediately suggests the use of wireless telephony in naval operations, especially with a fleet, or where a torpedo boat or other vessel is employed on a detached service. Wireless telephony between sea and land does not stop at the receiving station on the shore, since it is possible to connect the instruments so that conversations can be immediately and directly transmitted to the wire circuit of the land system. Furthermore, experiments have already been undertaken which have demonstrated the feasibility of communicating between moving trains and central offices or signal stations, and even establishing direct connection with public lines. In fact, the readiness with which farmers' telephone lines,--often using fence wires,--have been constructed in the West leads to the belief that a suitable wireless telephone system would find widespread appreciation in rural communities and mountainous districts. The great and universal appreciation of music reproduced by graphophone, telharmonium, or other device has suggested to Dr. De Forest that radio-telephony has also a field in the distribution of music from a central station, such as an opera house. By installing a wireless telephone transmission station on the roof, the music of singers and orchestra could be supplied to all subscribers who would have aerial wires on or near their homes. The transmission stations for such music would be tuned for an entirely different wave length from that used for any other form of wave telegraph or telephone transmission, and the inventor believes that by using four different forms of wave as many classes of music can be sent out as desired by the different subscribers. At the present time, then, it would seem that there is a distinct commercial future for wireless telephony, but a conservative judgment would indicate that its use would be supplemental to existing wire circuit systems, and that the latter are not likely to be supplanted for many years to come by any form of radio-telephonic apparatus. It will occupy a new and large field for marine work, for military lines especially during war or manoeuvers, for communication between islands, and for mountainous and sparsely settled districts, especially where temporary installations are desired, which can be installed on the shortest notice and maintained without specially trained operators.

WIRELESS TELEPHONY AT LAST IT is now definitely stated that wireless telephones are to be placed experimentally in some of the North-River ferry-boats in New York, and the reports of successful trials of the apparatus on shore make it certain that it is now possible to telephone without connecting wires, altho much remains to be done before the perfection of a practical commercial system. A contributor to Energy (Leipsic, Germany, April) tells us that during a recent lecture by Professor Slaby, in the Technical School at Charlottenburg, messages were exchanged between the school and the buildings of the Wireless Telegraphy Company at Berlin, with complete success. Says this writer: "Just as in wireless telegraphy, ether-waves are used for the transmission of communications by wireless telephony. The present form of wireless telegraphy is that of vibrations arising from a spark flashing across the air, which open and close a circuit in the receiver, and thereby print the signs of the Morse alphabet on a slip of paper. "However, the spark is not available for the transmission of waves caused by the voice and converted into an electric current by the microphone, because of the excessively fine modulations of the vibrations. The duration of the vibration of a spark is about one hundred-thousandth of a second, and, therefore, is not sufficient for reproducing the vibration of a voice, as, for instance, that of a soprano, which lasts one-thousandth of a second. For the transmission of the voice, a medium is necessary that continues to vibrate without interruption. "Poulsen found this medium in the electric luminous arc. If a wire be conducted from the lower carbon of a burning arc-lamp down to the ground, and another wire be extended from the upper carbon into the air, as employed in wireless telegraphy, the wire in the air emits uniform ether vibrations. Their action is not manifested in jerks, as in the discharge, of sparks, but is uniform and constant. If a microphone, such as is in the speaking-apparatus of an ordinary telephone, be attached to the air-wire, and one speak into it, the vibrations emanating from the luminous arc of the air-wire are influenced in their intensity by the vibrations of the voice." To receive the vibrations, an electrolytic cell devised by Schlömilch is used. Two very thin platinum wires in a vessel of dilute sulfuric acid are traversed by a very weak current which at the same time passes through a common telephone-receiver. The intensity of the current is affected whenever the electric vibrations strike one of the receiving wires, which extends upward from the cell. Variation of the vibrations takes place exactly as in the transmitter; consequently, the same sounds can be perceived in the receiver as were spoken into the microphone. The writer concludes: "Altho wireless telephony represents a valuable addition to wireless telegraphy, nevertheless, when compared with the wire telephone generally in use to-day, it suffers a serious disadvantage. It does not allow of a rapid change from hearing to speaking. If one is listening to a wireless conversation, one must patiently wait until the man at the other end has finished, and then the system must be switched in order to reply. Therefore, for urgent cases, wireless telephones can not be regarded as serviceable media for the transmission of messages. It is hoped that in a short time these drawbacks will be alleviated."

Radio Telephone Experiments A VERY interesting experiment was held on the afternoon of February 24th, by Dr. Lee DeForest in the transmission of music and operatic selections by wireless. The operatic selections were sung by Mme. Mariette Mazarin, the new star of the Manhattan Opera Company, whose first American interpretation of "Elektra" occasioned much comment by the music loving world. This demonstration holds particular interest as it is the first successful one of its kind ever held and is one more step forward to prove that in the near future we will have "Wireless Music." The transmitting station was located at the DeForest laboratory, near the Grand Central Station, N. Y. The operatic selections and music were clearly heard at the Metropolitan Life Building over a mile away and at the inventor's Newark, N. J. station, as well as by some hundred or more amateurs within a 20 mile range. Among those present at the Metropolitan Life Building were the well known inventor Prof. Hudson Maxim, John T. Murphy, the New York Tenement House Commissioner, and a number of singers of the Manhattan Opera Company. The first song Mme. Mazarin sang was the Aria from "Carmen." The listeners at the Metropolitan Life Building station, not being familiar with the notes as received from the wireless telephone, expressed great surprise at the clearness of the articulation. As is well known, an operatic selection is particularly hard to transmit by other medium than the natural sound striking distance, due to the extreme high and low notes reached by the singer's voice. This point, however, was not noticeable over the wireless telephone. Every intonation of the singer's voice was brought out clearly. The writers noticed the difference between the wire and wireless by first listening over the wire telephone and then over the wireless. Over the wire line the received notes were louder but the wireless brought out the vowel sounds with a "velvety" tone. For the benefit of those interested on the technical side it will be of interest to state that this difference is due to the distorting effect the wire line has to the telephonic voice current; the other, being the natural conducting medium, has no distorting effect on the wave, consequently we get the received tone in all its beauty. The Prima-donna, when informed by the Metropolitan Station, the Newark Station, and a number of outlying ships, of the success of her first song responded with selections from "Elektra" to the great enjoyment of the distant listeners. After the exhibition Mme. Mazarin and the audience became the guests of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and were shown the wonders of the building and allowed to view Manhattan from the tower, some 600 feet above Madison Square. Through the fog and distance could be seen the tower of the station from which the music was transmitted. The new muffled spark system was explained to the audience by Mr. C. C. Heselton, the tower operator. He demonstrated the actual working utility by getting into immediate communication with Chicago, Washington, and Key West.

Although the name of the German firm which provided the arc-transmitter is not mentioned in this review, other reports by the author stated that it was Telefunken equipment.

Electrician and Mechanic, April, 1912, pages 277-280:

EXPERIENCES IN WIRELESS TELEPHONING

AUSTIN C. LESCARBOURA

During the latter part of 1908 and the beginning of the succeeding year, a number of wireless telephone experiments were conducted by several wireless companies, in view of proving the practicability of their respective sets and receive an order for equipment from the United States Signal Corps. The tests were between Fort Hancock, Sandy Hook, N.J., and Fort Wood located on Bedloes Island in New York Bay, the latter being on the same island as the Statue of Liberty. The total distance between the stations was 18 miles, with the high hills of Staten Island separating both. The writer at the time was in the employ of one of the competing concerns, and aided in the operating of the transmitting wireless telephone set at Fort Hancock. The experience, both from a technical and humorous point of view is interesting, and in the following paragraphs, a few incidents and descriptions are faithfully given. Fort Hancock, as stated before, is located at Sandy Hook, a long and narrow stretch of sandy waste extending into the Atlantic Ocean and forming the lower portion of New York Bay and entrance. In summer the heat is extreme, for the sun heats the sand to a tropical heat, while in winter, the cold wind blows in from the open sea with Arctic vigor. The temperature is usually in one extreme or another, but during several months in the spring and autumn, the weather may be fair at intervals. On a morning in the latter part of October, 1908, another man and the writer started for Sandy Hook from New York in the U.S.S. Ordnance. This "steamer" in reality is an overgrown and comfortable tug boat, equipped for carrying freight and passengers to the many forts in New York Harbor. After a rough trip, we arrived at 9 o'clock and immediately walked to the wireless station. This station consisted of a two-story concrete structure, with a wooden mast in the rear supporting an umbrella aerial. The wireless apparatus consisted of a 1 k.w. transformer mounted in a cabinet with the spark gap and condensers. A large desk contained the receiving apparatus consisting of a large tuning coil with silicon and electrolytic detectors. The key was mounted on a rubber base, with a long lever passing through a slot and into a tank of oil in the desk, where the contacts were located. Our telephone set was mounted on a large table with a back board. The transmitting set consisted of ten arc units in series, each unit comprising of a copper cylinder which was filled with water and mounted on a wooden frame; and a large carbon rod held on a long spring. The carbon rods could be adjusted by a thumb screw located at one end, which also contained a large handle, so that all the springs could be pressed down and thus start the arcs if desired. Two sets of five arc lights each were placed at both sides of the table, while the oil condenser was located in the center, in back of a switch for connecting the receiver or transmitter to the aerial and ground. On the backboard, two hot-wire ammeters were mounted, one of these indicating the high-frequency in the aerial circuit, while the other indicated the energy in the oscillation circuit. The third ammeter was of the standard magnetic type, and indicated the amperage consumed by the arcs. The current was furnished by a 500 to 600 volt C.&W. generator, directly connected to a 110-volt, 7 h.p. motor. Suitable field control, enabled us to obtain voltages from 400 to 600 volts. The microphone, which is one of the "missing links" in all wireless telephone sets, consisted of a round enclosed case with a diaphragm in front and an insulated contact in the rear. Having a number of these microphone units, we were able to slip a new one into place whenever necessary, by merely giving the mouthpiece a slight turn, and replacing the old microphone with a new one. The first morning we arrived, the apparatus had already been delivered and was unpacked in the operating room, only the temporary wiring being necessary. We connected the motor-generator and the regular operator of the station called the power house on the telephone with orders to start up another generator for the peak load to follow. One wire from the generator was then attached to the tin side of a can, and the other wire attached to a voltmeter and then allowed to dip in the can of water. The meter then indicated whether the connections were correct, so that the positive pole could be identified. The meter did not read higher than 125 volts, and for this reason the water resistance had to be inserted. The positive and negative wires were then connected to their proper terminals on the transmitting apparatus. The water having been placed in all the copper cylinders, the arcs were started, and the condenser adjusted. This condenser consisted of 24 stationary and 23 rotary plates, the glass containing jar being filled with paraffin oil. After an hour or more of adjustment and changes, the ammeter in the oscillation circuit indicated that the current was steady. The aerial circuit was then connected to the aerial, and immediately the needles on both ammeters began to flicker again, finally coming to rest after another period of adjustment. The microphone then being slipped into place, the words were shouted into the mouth-piece. At every sound the needles on both ammeters fluctuated, the variation being more pronounced the higher the pitch, and phonograph conversation or music producing the greatest results. After a few minutes of phonograph concert, the needles of the ammeters would become inactive, which signified that the microphone had become "baked" or useless. A wooden stick or other article was then used to hit the microphone case, but having little effect on the ruined carbon grains, another microphone was inserted. From time to time the microphone had to be knocked in order to keep it from "baking," and the best results were noticed when the microphone was continually being turned; which would suggest that a carbon microphone being slowly revolved by a mechanical device would be more suitable to withstand the high amperage, since it is continually moving the carbon grains. At one time a large dog was brought into the operating room and placed on a large box with his head near the mouth-piece. He was finally coaxed into barking, which, judging from the deflection of the ammeters, must have been heard by the stations within our range. This is the first record of a dog "speaking" over a wireless telephone! On a cold November morning we again set out for Sandy Hook on the same boat as before. On nearing the fort, the writer became worried in failing to see the wires of the aerial. A gale had swept the coast the night before, and it was not impossible that the wires had been blown down. The pole was plainly visible, but no wires could be noticed. Both of us became excited, for we knew that without the aerial, we would have a whole day wasted with nothing to do but to walk around the reservation. However, on reaching a few hundred feet from the fort, we noticed that the wires were still there and that these happened to be of a very small gauge. In fact, we believed at the time that our failure to cover a greater range was due to the inefficient aerial, which was composed of small wire and had but a single wire lead to the aerial from the station. On making the necessary connections, the starting-box lever was moved, but the motor did not start. An instant later the 60-ampere fuse in the cut-out went off, and indicated something wrong. On trying to turn the armature by hand, it was found to be firmly held by the bearings so that it could not turn. This was probably due to the extreme cold, but any way, the application of the blow-torch on the bearings for a few minutes seems to have freed the shaft so that it turned at the moving of the starting-box lever. There was still more delay in another direction, when we found that the glass jar of the variable condenser had been broken with the extreme cold and that the oil had covered the floor. The plates were thickly coated with dust and the condenser would be unfit for use until thoroughly cleaned and placed in another jar. We substituted another condenser of the same type and started the arcs. After the customary adjusting and dickering, the meters finally came to a reasonable rest, and the phonograph started. After a short while, in which the phonograph was continually playing and only the occasional knocking or replacing of the microphone was found necessary, there suddenly came a slight noise similar to that caused by escaping steam, but just for an instant, and immediately the arcs and ammeters went wrong. It proved to be the short-circuiting of the variable condenser, a spark having jumped between two plates, and a little black dirt appeared between the plates. This dirt is a compound of carbon from the paraffin oil, and conducts the current from one plate to another, thus rendering the condenser useless for high voltage currents. Happily, we still had a large condenser belonging to the Donitz wavemeter, which was inserted in place. It might be stated here, that this condenser, though it had the plates separated only 1/16 in. apart, withstood the potential without breaking down, while condensers with plates spaced 1/8 in. and built in this country were continually breaking down. This illustrates the accuracy of German mechanics, for the plates of the German condensers were perfectly true, which cannot be said of the others. During the course of the afternoon, a battleship, which was passing Sandy Hook on its journey to the Hudson River where it was to anchor; called the operator and asked him the name of the set being used. On being told, he telegraphed back: "The music is fine, give us some more." We heard later that all the officers on the battleship had been called by the operator to hear the music in the telephone receivers. In all our tests, between times when the phonograph was not working, the conversation usually ran: "Hello, Hello, Hello Fort Wood, how do you get me now? One, Two, Three, Four, Five," and so on, most of the words being shouted very slowly and drawn out. It is rather a peculiar feeling to be talking into the mouth-piece of a wireless telephone, and not knowing whether the speech is being heard or whether it is not being heard. The phonograph is used the greater portion of the time, for it carries better than the human voice. That afternoon our concert was heard at 20 miles, the Brooklyn Navy Yard operator having listened the greater part of the morning and afternoon. At four o'clock we returned to the boat for New York. The third and last test of this series, if the writer correctly recollects, occurred in January of 1909. After all the preliminaries, such as the wiring, adjusting, substituting, and swearing, the phonograph was started, and for upwards of an hour we did not think of changing the record. The one playing happened to be, "The Anvil Chorus," from the opera. "Il Trovatore." This selection was played by a band with a number of persons whistling, and proved to be a very effective record for fluctuating the ammeters, which was a desired feature. After an hour had passed with the continual playing of the same record, we shut down the generator and arcs, while the operator listened in to hear whether Fort Wood would call us. Upon calling Fort Wood, he received no reply from that station, but Manhattan Beach (DF) immediately called, and upon being told to go ahead, telegraphed: "For ------ sake change the tune." When asked whether he had received all we had spoken and played, he said that he could get all of it without trouble, but was disgusted with the same record continuously. We did change, and for the rest of the morning played different records. At 12 o'clock, a telegram arrived via the Postal Telegraph station telling us to abandon the tests as the interference was too powerful in the upper bay and while we had been heard clearly at times, the extreme proximity of the other stations completely overcame our signals. We had to wait until 4 o'clock for the boat, so devoted the time to visiting the buildings and looking over the various interesting features of the reservation. A humorous incident, the writer recalls, is the reporting of steamers sighted at Sandy Hook. The two telegraph companies, Postal and Western Union, are located at the end of the Hook, and both have tall buildings resembling lighthouses. The one we visited was maintained by an old time operator who had six wires to handle beside the reporting of the steamships sighted. There is great rivalry between the two companies as to which one reports a steamer first. The old-time operator had erected a few wires from a pole to his telegraph station, and with the aid of the wireless station operator and other local talent had succeeded in constructing a simple receiving set. He would then listen with the telephones placed on his head, and hear the different steamers report to Fire Island, about 40 miles away. Upon the first sign of smoke over the horizon about an hour and a half later, he would immediately telegraph to New York that the steamer was sighted. Meanwhile, the other operator in the other building was straining his eyes through a 5 ft. telescope to get a glimpse at the funnels of the boat. For sometime the competing operator was at a loss to understand how the veteran operator could report the ships before they could even be seen, and on asking him was informed that the operator recognized them by the smoke only! The news finally leaked out, and the wireless was abandoned for the purpose, only the long telescopes being used. Through these tests the practicability of the wireless telephone was found to be uncertain. Though these tests were performed over three years ago, no definite advancement has been made in the art. The greatest difficulties are in the arc, condenser, and microphone. The arcs will never become practical as they exist at present, for there are periods when the oscillations are perfectly steady, but in the middle of an important conversation, the arcs will suddenly sputter and the words are lost. The condensers are a continual source of worry, and, unless accurately constructed, will break down rapidly. The microphone, likewise, is unreliable, and continually requiring attention. These weak points cause the wireless telephone to be uncertain. The points to be learned from these tests are: to employ an aerial having a large capacity and many leads to and from the aerial; that a microphone of the carbon grain type with a continuous rotating device will overcome the "baking" to a great extent; that the condenser should be made with rotary plates in oil, and that these plates may be larger and separated by a larger gap to overcome the breaking down as experienced with smaller gaps; that many arcs give greater results than a single arc; and, finally, that hot-wire ammeters are necessary in both the aerial and oscillation circuit to determine whether the set is actually transmitting high-frequency waves and whether these are smooth so that the conversation and music will be heard at the receiving end.

THE POULSEN SYSTEM OF WIRELESS TELEPHONY AND TELEGRAPHY1

BY C. F. ELWELL.

As soon as the methods of signaling through space first given to the world by Marconi were well understood, scientists throughout the world recognized the shortcomings of both the transmitting and receiving apparatus. Transmission was first effected by means of strongly damped oscillations generated by means of powerful sparks from condensers charged by means of large induction coils, in the primary circuit of which a suitable telegraph key was inserted. Many improvements have been made in this type of transmitting circuit. Commercial transformers working at a frequency which would give the maximum sensitiveness to the telephone receivers at the receiving station have been substituted for inefficient spark coils. Many attempts have been made to suppress the noise of the sparks, which with the increased use of large amounts of power became distressing to the operator besides betraying the message to unauthorized parties. Apparatus doing this successfully also decreases the efficiency of the apparatus. Keys had to be devised to break the necessarily large primary currents and quite an array of electromagnetic and oil immersed keys are now in use. For heavy power working the speed is limited by such apparatus. Sending condensers have been improved both as to bulk, durability and cost. Signals were received by means of the Branly coherer on which much time and money were fruitlessly spent. Then came the magnetic, electrolytic and thermo detectors with increased sensitiveness and automatic decohering features. But these detectors have not the well defined resistance which is necessary for accurate resonance tuning effects. The Danish inventor, Valdemar Poulsen, took up the study of the wireless transmission of signals and recognized the fact that further advance depended on decrease of the damping of the oscillations and increase of sensitiveness of detectors. He determined to follow up the generation of undamped waves as being the line on which more selective telegraphy would be obtained and telephony also be made possible. After a profound study of the "singing arc" following in the footsteps of Elihu Thomson and Duddell, he evolved his present type of arc generator. This generator, with suitable capacity and inductance in shunt to the arc, sets up trains of practically undamped waves of frequencies from two hundred thousand to one million per second according to the values of capacity and inductance in the shunt circuit. Not only this, but he has been able to transform as much as 30 kw. of d. c. to high frequency current in the shunt circuit. With this generator the solution of the problem of telephoning through space was immediately solved. Applied to telegraphy, it gives improved selectivity of the instruments to an extent never reached by spark methods, permits of duplex working, gives great range with small amounts of power, better results over land, better daylight working and, last but not least, a great increase in speed. For the purposes of telegraphy he had to invent a new type of detector which is now known as the "ticker" and which has been shown to be much more sensitive than any other detector. This detector was necessary in order to render the telegraph signals audible because the alternations take place at a speed much above the limits of audibility. I will take up the pieces of apparatus, which show the mark of Poulsen's genius, in detail and then give you a short indication of the results obtained with them, together with a short note on the theory of action of the generator and ticker.

Arc Generator.

In Fig. 1 is shown a Poulsen generator. The arc takes place between a water-cooled copper anode and a revolving carbon cathode. The anode and cathode project through two opposite sides of a water-cooled chamber. The arc takes place in the presence of a powerful magnetic field at right angles to the flow of current. The coils can be plainly seen and the poles project through the other sides of the chamber. The small motor revolves the cathode very slowly and prevents a deposit of carbon taking place and so shortening the arc gap, which is maintained at from 3 to 5 mm. in length. The chamber is equipped with inlet and outlet for supplying the arc with a hydrogen-containing gas. On the generator shown there is a sight feed oil cup in which alcohol is placed. Drops of alcohol on being introduced into the chamber are immediately vaporized and this method of gas supply is in use on ship board. The mechanism seen to the front of the generator is for striking and adjusting the length of the arc by hand. In the chamber there is a yoke which is attracted by the magnetic field when the current is switched on and a small copper tip serves to strike the arc. This automatic arc striking feature was devised for wireless telephoning, so that talking and listening could be carried on with ease. A large amount of heat is produced in the water-cooled chamber which is removed by means of the cooling water. A certain amount of power is absorbed in the regulating resistance in series with the arc. Of the power which is converted into high frequency oscillations, part is dissipated as heat in the capacity and inductance and part is radiated by the antenna. A wattmeter may be used to measure this radiated energy by using a direct coupled antenna and measuring the watts at some point in the condenser circuit with and without the antenna. The difference will be the watts radiated. Fleming has shown that if W represents the energy in ergs radiated per second, when the oscillations are persistent, W = 128 A2, where A is the current read on a hot wire ammeter. Thus a current of 2 amperes would give a radiation of 512 watts, showing that when working with persistent oscillations and open antennae, we can use very small antenna currents, and obtain powerful radiation effects. The generation of high frequency alternations in a shunt circuit to a continuous current arc is somewhat as follows: If the arc is steady and is then shunted by a condenser, the current rushes into the condenser and momentarily robs the arc of current, causing the potential difference in the carbons to rise and continue charging the condenser. When the condenser is full the arc current returns to its former value, the potential difference falls, and the condenser discharges from the arc, and the cycle repeats itself. A part of the energy of the continuous current arc is thus changed into the energy of electric alternations in the condenser circuit. The characteristic curve of the arc is, as is well known, a falling characteristic, i. e., the voltage decreases as the current increases, and for a carbon-arc is comparatively flat. It has besides a persistency which renders it irresponsive to rapid variations of current. Hence only slow alternations can be obtained from a large current carbon-arc. With the Poulsen arc, with its carbon negative and cooled copper positive, immersed in hydrogen, a very steep characteristic is obtained and one which responds to exceedingly rapid variations of current through it. A condenser of small capacity may be employed in the shunt circuit and yet convey to it a considerable amount of energy because of the large variation of the difference of potential at the arc caused by small arc current variations. So alternations of high frequency can be produced. This theory is confirmed by the study of small current carbon-carbon and carbon-aluminum arcs in air. For they have steep characteristics and can produce alternations of high frequency. The theory of the part played by the hydrogen on large current carbon and metal arcs is not yet well understood. It appears to be partly due to its greater conductivity compared to air, thus helping to cool the arc electrodes. Poulsen also considers that hydrogen increases the conductivity of the arc.

Ticker.

Practically, the ticker consists of nothing but two fine crossed gold wires, which are vibrated at the rate of 100 vibrations per second, by means of an electromagnet or clockwork. This may be connected to a secondary circuit which is coupled electromagnetically with the primary circuit as in Fig. 2, or in many other ways. The theory of action is about as follows: A indicates a receiving antenna or aerial circuit from which alternations are induced in the coil B, which, together with the condensers C and D, constitutes a closed resonant circuit; R may be any form of detector but an ordinary telephone receiver is usually used; I is the interrupter mentioned above and is connected to connect condenser E in parallel with condenser D. When the contact at I is open and assuming that the resonant circuit B C D is tuned to resonance under these circumstances, intense alternations will appear in this resonant circuit B C D, without passing through the telephone receiver R, because of its enormous reactance to high frequency alternations. If now the interrupter I closes the circuit and throws in this condenser E the accumulated energy in the resonant circuit B C D will discharge itself suddenly through the telephone receiver R. The reason for this action is approximately as follows: While the coil A and B are in resonance the condenser C is charged and discharged at a rate corresponding to the frequency of the alternations. B therefore offers no opposition to this charge and discharge but assists it and maintains the intensity of the alternations. If, however, the condenser has a charge when B is thrown out of resonance with A because of the closing of I and the insertion of more capacity E the discharge of the charge in C will be opposed by B and the charge will have to find another path which it does through R. This discharge takes place in a minute fraction of a second, thus producing a sharp tap in the receiver.

Rapid Telegraph Transmitter.

Fig. 3 shows the rapid telegraph transmitter which is operated by means of a punched tape. The tape has a series of small holes down the center. The holes on each side of this central line are punched by hand and those on one side represent the dots, while those on the other represent the dashes of the Continental code. The central line of holes engages the teeth of a sprocket wheel which serves to feed the tape forward at a regular rate. The tape gear wheel has a number of very small and light radial pins, which tend to fly out except when they are held in position by the tape. Wherever a hole occurs a pin is allowed to spring outwards. These pins are mechanically connected to larger pins on a further attachment of the spindle which fly out when the smaller pins are actuated by the tape. Spring contacts are in series with a set of brushes which press on the segments of three rotating commutators, one of which has a comparatively large number of alternate conducting and insulating segments, and is reserved for the dots, while the other two have longer spacings of commutator segments, which are kept for the dashes. In this way all the actual making and breaking of the current is carried on on these larger segments, while the tape controls the whole apparatus by means of the lighest possible form of mechanical construction. This reduces the effect of inertia to the lowest limit. There are 72 pins, each representing a dot and a space. An average word has five letters, so it is possible to transmit three words for one turn of the transmitting combination and the speed of the machine, which is driven by a direct current motor, can be varied between the limits of ordinary hand speed to a transmission of 300 words or more per minute. The practical limit at present being in the receiver and not in the sender.

Rapid Telegraph Receiver.

A complete rapid receiver is shown in Fig. 4. It consists essentially of an Einthoven "string" galvanometer in which a gold string is used in connection with a thermocouple. The absence of inertia permits the string to follow the rapid impulses sent out by the rapid sender. A coating of soot is placed on the wire and the wire itself is mounted in the beam of a Nernst or arc lamp. A suitable optical condenser throws the light on a narrow slit behind which moves a band of photographically sensitized paper. The shadow of a small portion of the wire as it vibrates to and fro in response to the signals from the sending station is thus imprinted on the band, which is then drawn, first through a developing bath, then through a fixing bath, and then through water to wash it. The message may be read on the developed band as soon as it emerges from the light tight box and may be kept as a permanent record. The signals are read above the zero line which is traced by the shadow of the wire when no impulse is present. A short impulse makes a dot and a long impulse a dash.

Wireless Telephony.

The problem of wireless telephony involves essentially three things: 1. The production of undamped or persistent waves in a transmitting antenna. 2. Means for modulating these waves in accordance with the wave form of the spoken voice. 3. Means for detecting the waves at the receiving end and their reproduction into articulate speech. The Poulsen generator offered a means of supplying the undamped waves in the transmitting antenna and it was only necessary to connect a microphone at or near a node of current in the antenna to supply a means of modulating these waves in accordance with the wave form of human speech. At the receiving end almost any self-decohering detector will do, but the production of good clear articulation depends quite a little on the degree of coupling of the primary circuit with the secondary circuit. This also applies to the sending circuits in which quite loose coupling is employed. Poulsen has transmitted good, clear, articulate speech over the 180 miles between Esbjerg and Lyngby, Denmark. Majorana claims to have done 312 miles over water with a specially constructed microphone of his own devising. More recently I have carried on successfully two way working between Stockton and Sacramento, California, a distance of 50 miles over land, and while working between these two stations was heard by St. Helena and Palo Alto, distances of 75 and 85 miles respectively. There is no doubt that wireless working gives telephony of a higher grade than wire working. There is absolutely no noise in the receiver until spoken words are heard. To one who has talked over long distance wire lines with considerable induction this feature readily appeals. Low resistance receivers are used and expensive high resistance receivers are not necessary.

Wireless Telegraphy.

With the Poulsen generator of continuous waves it is possible to telegraph at hand speed, i. e., 25 words per minute in many ways. For example, it is possible to signal by: (a) Short circuiting a resistance in the generator circuit. (b) Short circuiting a resistance in the antenna circuit. (c) Making and breaking the arc. (d) Altering the length of the arc. (e) Altering the strength of the transverse magnetic field. (f) Altering the flow of gas through the arc. In practice Poulsen short circuits a turn or two of the sending inductance by means of an ordinary Morse sending key. The absence of the spark permits of the use of an ordinary key when telegraphing 2000 miles, for the current is even then quite small. For receiving, Poulsen uses the ticker which has the great advantage of not being receptive to ordinary damped wave signals. The tuning possible with the Poulsen arrangement for telegraphy is extremely close. One-half to one per cent change in the capacity of the resonant circuit is readily noticed on the received signals. Duplex working has been carried out with 3.9 per cent change in wave length. The rapid wireless telegraph transmitter and receiver have already been described. In practice the transmitter is connected in, just where the Morse key would be for hand speed telegraphy. Good, clear, readable records have been received over 180 miles, mostly land, at the rate of 300 words per minute. Over 600 miles good records have been received up to 150 words per minute. As a means for handling large quantities of business and with a record at both transmitting and receiving stations the rapid system has a good future. Poulsen estimates that he can handle 100 words per minute across the Atlantic with a 60 kw. generator and suitable antenna.

Advantages and Future Possibilities.

In the first place the absence of all noise is brought home forcibly in a Poulsen station. It seems hard to believe that anything is being done at all. The key may be of the ordinary Morse type, for the currents handled are quite small even for large distances. There are no insulation difficulties, for the voltage at the top of the antenna is not estimated to be over 3000 volts. The sending helix may be handled quite without shock, even though the voltage be over 1000. Very small capacities are used with heavy power working, eliminating a source of expense and a very bulky part of large "spark" stations. The capacity in connection with a 12 kw. set is about .0017 microfarad. At the Cullercoats, England, station the condenser takes up less than a tenth of the space occupied by the condensers for a "spark" system of the same power installed in the same stations. Undamped waves of small amplitude are less obstructed by atmospheric conditions and suffer less absorption over land than damped wave trains. For example, in coming around the north of Scotland the undamped wave signals are picked up long before the damped wave signals of equal power. The form of the resonance curve of the receiver circuit depends on the decrement of the transmitter and receiver. If the transmitter is undamped, a very small change in the period of the receiver will put it out of tune, hence, a receiver circuit can be employed which is sensitive to undamped waves of some exact period, but which is exceedingly nonresponsive to waves differing by a very small fraction of one per cent in wave length from the syntonic value. In the matter of energy, good signals have been transmitted over 500 miles with 1 kw., and over 2000 miles with 6 kw., and a limited antenna. The efforts of Marconi and others to reduce the damping of their wave trains is evidence that undamped wave trains will be the means of communication of the future. In telephony at the present time better articulation is obtainable than with wires and it is quite probable that a method of obtaining secrecy will soon be devised. In telegraphy there is no doubt that the Poulsen system has great range for little power and that it works readily over land and in daylight. I look to see the present records of distance now held by spark methods broken by stations using the continuous waves. The present speed of the rapid telegraph sender is dependent on the receiver, but a newer type of rapid telegraph detector is coming out which will no doubt result in the handling of greater speed than 300 words per minute. Great advances can be expected in the next five years in wireless working, but they will be along the lines of work with continuous wave trains ______ 1Paper read before San Francisco Section A. I. E. E. March 25, 1910.

Electrician and Mechanic, July, 1912, pages 57-58:

SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS OF THE POULSEN SYSTEM OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

W. C. R.

So much has been heard recently of the benefits which the existence of wireless has conferred upon mankind, that it will not be without interest to say a few words relating to the recent progress which Valdemar Poulsen's system of undamped oscillations has made. As long ago as 1907 the fact was mentioned, says The Model Engineer and Electrician, that quite a number of wireless stations using the Poulsen system were established in England, Denmark and Germany, and although even in those days the system worked admirably the period which has since elapsed must have been one of continuous progress and development, judging by the state of affairs as outlined by Mr. Carl Philip to Politiken recently. It is interesting at this point to recall the manner in which Sir William Preece introduced Mr. Valdemar Poulsen to his audience of distinguished scientists at Queen's Hall, London, when, in 1907, he gave a demonstration of his system. Sir William said that the demonstration his audience was about to witness was to sound the death-knell of spark telegraphy. The significance of that statement may be judged by the developments now in progress. At the present time there are three companies making use of Poulsen's system. One is a Continental syndicate, which is working the European Continent. Another combination consists of English and Canadian interests, which was formed some time ago, and upon which great hopes were placed. It failed for a time, however, to do all that has been expected, on account of financial troubles. Hampered in this way for some time, the concern has now been placed on a more solid basis, and the interests of the principal shareholder have been acquired by Danish capital. The youngest of the three Poulsen companies is the Federal Telegraph Co., which uses the system all over the United States. Not more than about two years ago Mr. Elwell traveled from San Francisco to Denmark to study the real possibilities of the Poulsen system first hand, and the result was the formation of this company, San Francisco being the headquarters. The Federal Telegraph Co. has at present nearly thirty stations working in the western part of the States, situated in relation to each other in such a way that they make a complete whole from the British Columbia frontier down to Mexico in the south, and from San Francisco to Chicago in the east. Besides San Francisco and Chicago there are stations in Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, Stockton, Los Angeles, Kansas City, etc.,--in all, as we said before, thirty towns, and, moreover, the network is steadfastly being enlarged by the addition of new stations. At the present time one is being erected on Honolulu (Sandwich Islands). The monthly costs of working are said to be at present $35,000. So far extraordinary success has attended this Company's endeavors, and that it will be more than maintained there is little doubt. The secret of its success lies in the fact that its charges for the transmission of messages can be kept very low--much lower, we believe, than the Western Union Co.'s, which has hitherto had the field in the West, and in which Morgan has enormous interests. The Federal Company sends fifteen words for the same charge as the Western Union sends ten, which is accounted for by the fact that the Poulsen stations are in first cost and maintenance considerably less than the older company's stations, and it is found that even at the low rate which the Federal Company charges the profits are proportionately larger. But, it may be asked, could not the older and perhaps larger company institute a system of undercutting, and so, by sheer weight of capital resource, eventually ruin the Federal Company? Fortunately, there is no reason to fear any such thing, for here the American law steps in and says, in effect, that when you have once fixed a certain charge for transmission you must not increase that charge. It may be reduced as much as you choose, but it must never be raised again at your own convenience. Here, then, is an effective method of stopping a ruinous system of competition, which is fair and ingenious. A few instances of what the Federal Company is doing with the Poulsen system are also worth recording. The other day 350 telegrams were sent from San Francisco, and 200 of these were to Los Angeles. But what is even more to the point lies in the fact that several large banks and many business men of standing in both San Francisco and other towns, have declared that the quickness, precision and certainty with which the Federal Company works is perfectly satisfactory. The main object in view now is to amalgamate the English-Canadian and the American Company and run them under one management. If this project is successfully accomplished, the next step will be to erect a couple of big stations on either side of the Atlantic. As regards the application of Poulsen's system outside America, it is interesting to note that Germany has equipped her fleet with it throughout, at a cost of between three and four million marks. Australia has also manifested a great practical interest in its possibilities, and has installed it in many of her fortresses. Austrian officers have visited Poulsen's station at Lyngbye, not far from Copenhagen, taking part on these occasions in certain experiments, and also have communicated at various times with the Poulsen station on the west coast of Ireland. That there are certain undoubtedly important inherent advantages in the Poulsen system seems slowly to be becoming recognized--but in England, very slowly. True, there is a station at Portsmouth, and also one at Newcastle with which our naval authorities are experimenting, and it would be interesting to learn with what success. In view, then, of the brief outline of recent events which the writer has endeavored to present clearly to those of his readers who are interested in wireless progress as a whole, and not merely with the Marconi system, it is not altogether surprising that Valdemar Poulsen did not jump at the invitation extended to him recently to erect a station at Trinidad. In such a situation he would be practically surrounded by the Marconi system, and the possibilities of convenient extension would be an indefinite factor. No, his and the American Company's plans for the development of his system are much more far reaching.

Lee DeForest invented a three-element vacuum-tube detector which he called an Audion, but initially it was so crude and unreliable that it was little more than a curiosity. After a lull of a few years, more capable scientists and engineers, led by AT&T's Dr. Harold Arnold, improved vacuum-tubes into robust and powerful amplifiers, which would revolutionize radio reception.

In 1906 Lee DeForest announced the development of the first three-element vacuum-tube detector in The Audion: A New Receiver for Wireless Telegraphy, from the Scientific American Supplement. The original Audion was capable of slightly amplifying received signals, but at this stage could not be used for more advanced applications, such as radio transmitters. The inefficient design of the original Audion meant it was initially of little value to radio, and due to its high cost and short life it was rarely used. In fact, in the 1909 edition of Operator's Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Hand-book, Victor H. Laughter's review of the Audion, while noting how sensitive the device was as a receiver, also stated "it is doubtful if it will ever come into wide use, owing to the difficulty in manufacture and short life". The Audion did have a strong allure for teenage experimenters, however. Its imperfect evacuation meant that, like a neon tube, it often glowed an enchanting blue or violet when in use, with the shade varying in response changes in signal strength. And then the filament would burn out. Years later, in the September, 1926 issue of Radio Broadcast magazine, Carl Dreher reminisced in Memoirs of a Radio Engineer about the enticing but frustrating early devices -- "Flung into deepest despair by the demise of a beloved tube, or the failure of a new one which never worked at all, the audion speculator would save up his pennies and plunge again."

Eventually vacuum-tube design was improved enough to make them more than novelties. Beginning in 1912, various researchers discovered that, properly constructed according to scientific and engineering principles, vacuum tubes could be employed in electrical circuits that made radio receivers and amplifiers thousands of times more powerful, and could also be used to make compact and efficient radio transmitters, which for the first time made radio broadcasting practical. Device for Receiving Wireless Time Signals from March 27, 1915 Electrical World magazine, announced that the DeForest Radio Telephone & Telegraph Company in New York City was now selling a vacuum-tube receiver designed to receive time signals from the navy's station, NAA, located at Arlington, Virginia. But as late as 1916 the Audion vacuum-tubes produced by the DeForest company were still plagued by quality control problems, and the company supplied usage tips, such as the March, 1916 QST magazine's Practical Pointers on the Audion by A. B. Cole, which actually revealed how little they understood about the operation of the device.

In 1914, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company purchased the U.S. commercial radio patent rights for the Audion from DeForest. However, the DeForest company retained the right to make sales for non-commercial use, although initially the procedures for purchasing Audions were restricted in an attempt to increase profits. Persons were supposed to first buy a unit which included an Audion vacuum tube -- perhaps a Type RJ9 DeForest Audion Detector "Licensed for amateur or private use only", as offered through the 1916 Manhattan Electrical Supply Company (MESCO) wireless catalog. And even after this initial, and expensive, purchase, replacement Audion tubes could only be obtained by exchanging the remnants of a burned-out Audion, as explained in the Renewal Audion Bulbs section of the catalog. Eventually this restrictive policy was relaxed somewhat, after the Elmer T. Cunningham's AudioTron Sales Company in Oakland, California began selling a cheaper bootleg vacuum tube, and the DeForest company responded with the Type "T" Tubular Audion Tube, recently added to the MESCO catalog, for experimenters "who do not wish to buy complete Audion Detectors with the necessary accessories, and for those whose limited means will not permit the complete instruments to be purchased". PRACTICAL POINTERS ON THE AUDION

By A. B. Cole, E. E. Sales Manager -- De Forest Radio Tel. & Tel. Co.

THE purpose of the present article is not to sell Audions, but to assist those who use the justly famous Audion to obtain the best results, with a view to promoting the best interests of the amateur experimenter. So much has been written without authority of the patentees which is partially incorrect or serves to cause the experimenter to aspire to fields which cannot be achieved in a practical fashion by him and so many false directions have been given for making apparatus from the regular Audion Detector for which it is not adapted, that it seems only right to set the experimenter on the proper track, showing what can be done and how to do it, pointing out the fallacies in statements made by unauthorized parties. Be it known, first of all, that the writer is one of the pioneer amateurs, whose experimenting in wireless matters dates from 1904, and although engaged in commercial as well as amateur work, is still an amateur at heart and thoroughly in sympathy with amateur work, not as some whose first training was commercial and who look down on the amateurs as a small detail from whom revenues must be extracted because their superiors wish it, but strictly as an amateur of many years' experience, and, therefore, qualified to assist those working in this field in an intelligent way. In 1908, I used one of the very early types of Audion, so that it is not very new to me. As Sales Manager for the manufacturers, I have investigated and corrected probably every kind of trouble which can be had with the Audion. Yet, I am frank to admit that I do not know it all, being thereby different from outsiders who can write books on it from their limited experience with a few bulbs. Now, you should know that very seldom are two Audion bulbs exactly alike in their characteristics, but not much variation is permitted because too much in the way of instructions would have to be furnished the user, and so those not coming within the limits are discarded or furnished only to those of considerable experience. The Audion is a peculiar instrument in many ways. If used in connection with the proper circuits and accessories, it is the most sensitive and reliable detector ever invented, which fact cannot be denied. If, for example, the "grid condenser" is of the wrong capacity or inefficient, or the wiring of the circuits is not correct or the insulation of the wires of these circuits poor, or if they are placed too close together, trouble is very likely to occur which is difficult to locate and is invariably charged to the "bulb." It is remarkable how easy it is to have trouble if the circuits and parts of the detector as a whole are not correct, and this is one of the main reasons why the bulbs are not furnished separately and why all guarantees are immediately dissolved if an Audion bulb is used otherwise than in the Audion Detector made for it. One of the best amateurs in the country who has used the Audion for some time sent in his bulb on request, as he could not obtain good results. Investigation showed that he had taken the detector apart and assembled it in a complete receiving cabinet and after much loss of time, it was discovered that the "grid condenser" did not suit his taste and so he built another which consumed internally in losses nearly all of the incoming energy. The bulb, used in a regular Audion Detector, was excellent. This is only one representative case of many.

AUDION BULBS

It has often been asked, "How is an X grade Audion Bulb made, and what makes it different from the S grade?" Also, "How are the bulbs tested?" These are questions of interest to all users, and rightfully so. The process of testing Audion Bulbs is one of the most careful and expensive tests in the entire electrical industry. A bulb used in the proper detector may give extremely loud signals from stations twenty or thirty miles away, and yet not be really sensitive to weak signals from great distances, or it may give much weaker response to nearby stations than a crystal detector and still be extremely sensitive to weak signals over long distances. Theoretical methods of testing are, therefore, of no value. The only practical method is to compare with a standard, under actual working conditions, receiving weak signals. The standard is set by comparison with the best crystal detector. The unknown bulb is connected in circuit on a double detector, and the oscillations are tuned from one bulb to the other, reducing coupling and making the necessary changes in capacity to counterbalance change of mutual inductance, until the signals can be heard on one bulb and not on the other. Testing by throwing the circuits out of tune is not satisfactory because the Audion is a potentially operated detector. If the unknown bulb is equal to or better than the standard, it is passed, but otherwise discarded. If it is sufficiently more sensitive, it is passed as the "X" or extra sensitive grade. There may be one X grade bulb in 100 or there may be twenty--no one can tell. There may be ten S grade bulbs in 100 or there may be fifty. The Audion bulb looks simple, but is one of the most difficult instruments to make ever invented. The testing is done by expert, commercially licensed operators, of years of experience, and thoroughly familiar with the Audion. The employment of a beginner, or one only experienced in operating, for the work, would be fatal. The tuning apparatus is regular amateur equipment, not the specially designed and necessarily more efficient apparatus made for the Audion.

AUDION TROUBLES AND HOW TO CORRECT THEM

(1) The most common cause of trouble is due to exhaustion of one or more of the "B" high voltage dry flashlight batteries. These batteries are at best unreliable, from their very nature. If only one becomes exhausted until it registers 3½ volts or less on a voltmeter, the efficiency of the entire receiving set is remarkably decreased. The great difficulty is to convince the operator of the necessity of testing every battery often with a voltmeter. As soon as one or more shows 3½ volts or less, it must be replaced, and all connections must be soldered. If not replaced at once, the operator always brings up the intensity of the filament, and, of course, burns it out before long--then says the bulb was defective. (2) The next most common cause of trouble occurs when the operator replaces one or more cells, and connects them backwards with respect to the others, connecting the carbon to the carbon of the next battery. Then again, when the operator replaces the entire set of batteries, he often connects the carbon to the filament of the bulb. The detector cannot operate unless the negative or zinc is connected to the filament. And again, the bulb was all right, but now has lost its sensitive qualities! (3) The third cause of complaint, due entirely to the operator, is the fact that, "The old bulb was very good, and the new one cannot compare with it." This is because of either of the above causes, or he does not try reversing the connections from the "A" or lighting battery. Some bulbs will not operate at all unless this is done to find which way is best. (4) Then, some operators use the Audion in a cold place. Consider the surface of glass of the bulb, and realize that the very small quantity of gas in it must necessarily be affected by change of temperature. The Audion works best when, the temperature of the room is 60 degrees or higher. (5) Then comes the complaint from a beginner who says, "The Audion brings in 600 meters and amateur stations better than any other detector I have ever tried, but Arlington on his 2500 meter wave is much stronger with a crystal detector." This is easy to explain. The Audion is selective to some extent as to spark frequency, but positively is not selective as to wave length. It is exactly as sensitive at 3000 meters as at 200. If you will consider the proportions of an amateur tuner, you will realize that it is most efficient from 200 to 1500 meters. They are all built in this way. When a loading coil is used in the primary circuit, the efficiency of the primary is decreased, although its period is increased. The secondary, if one is used, is seldom loaded. A variable condenser will help to some extent but unless the tuner can receive with high efficiency the long waves, it is impossible to operate the Audion to full efficiency. A crystal operates whether exactly in tune or not, but the Audion, being potentially operated, must have efficient tuning equipment if its advantages can be realized to the fullest extent. (6) Do not try to use a fixed condenser in series with an Audion Detector. Every one of these instruments has a special mica condenser within it, properly connected and built, and I do not believe it can be improved upon. Unauthorized parties give all kinds of advice, but it seems only reasonable that the manufacturers should know and install what is right. A variable condenser across the tuner posts is of great value in obtaining the exact point of resonance, but nothing in the way of a condenser should be used in series to reduce efficiency. (7) Then there is the operator who turns off his lighting battery and neglects to cut in more resistance by means of the rheostat. The battery recuperates while standing and when turned on again, often burns out the filament or seriously injures it. Remember that a sensitive and delicate instrument requires a little thought and care. (8) The use of a magnet near an Audion Bulb sometimes increases the intensity of signals, but we have seen filaments literally bent out of place due to this, and a common result is short life of the bulb. (Note below under Fallacies (3). (9) Remember that all regular Audion Bulbs have 3½ volt filaments and never connect more than 6 volts to it. The rheostat will handle effectively 6 volts, but no more should be employed.

ADJUSTMENT OF THE AUDION

(1) Nearly every Audion bulb has two critical points. One is found when the "A" and "B" batteries are adjusted to certain points. The other is found, generally with the "B" battery adjusted to a higher voltage than above and the filament operating at less brilliancy with the lighting battery connections reversed. Some bulbs have only one critical point, within the limits of the usual "B" battery voltage, and so it is important to TRY REVERSING THE LIGHTING BATTERY connections to the detector. An Audion should always be operated with the higher "B" voltage and lower filament intensity to obtain greatest life. (2) The "critical point" is reached at certain adjustments of both the "A" and "B" batteries. At this point, a hissing sound is generally heard in the receivers. If this is present, the filament brilliancy should be decreased until the sound is just audible or is just below the audible point. When strong signals are received, they may be much increased in intensity by increasing both the "B" battery voltage and the filament brilliancy, but while greater volume of sound is obtained, the bulb is not in its most sensitive condition at this adjustment. With some excellent bulbs, no hissing sound can be heard at any adjustment, or it may appear, but be very weak. (3) The "Blue Glow" appearing at certain adjustments of the "B" battery in the old style tantalum filament bulbs is often not found at all in the tungsten and Hudson filament types, and is not necessarily an indication of sensitive qualities.

FALLACIES

(1) Making an Amplifier from a Detector. There are several reasons why this cannot be done with even fair efficiency. If the necessary three winding transformer is not exactly made and balanced, the results are poor. The Audion Amplifier Bulb is entirely different from the Audion Detector Bulb in construction and vacuum. The result of trying to make an amplifier from a detector is only a makeshift in which the efficiency is so low as to make it an expense out of proportion to the benefits obtained. The Detector bulbs cannot last long enough to make it worth while, and the efficiency is very low. (2) Receiving Continuous or Undamped Waves. Regular Audion Detector Bulbs are not adapted for the reception of continuous waves, because the vacuum is not correct for the purpose and because the filaments must be operated at such a high intensity that they give very short service, making them unnecessarily expensive. Then, their use in this way causes the vacuum to gradually increase until 75 to 150 volts are required for the "B" circuit. (3) "Amplifying" Circuits. This is the same old story, begun with the creation of the world, of obtaining something for nothing. If you will think, you will realize that if you pass through an Audion Bulb or any other apparatus, two or three times as much energy as it is designed to carry, the result will be a short life. This appears in "amplifying" circuits in operation of the filament at excessive brilliancy and in rapid, deterioration of the filament from carrying abnormal power. The vacuum increases to an extremely high value in most cases. The final result is expense for renewal bulbs far out of proportion to results obtained and general dissatisfaction--not due to any fault of the manufacturer, because the instruments and bulbs are sold and licensed for only one purpose, but because the operator is looking for "something for nothing," which is impossible in the long run. There are many operators of experience with the Audion who know of all the above points, and many more who do not, and these suggestions, the result of long and active experience of one who has corrected more Audion troubles than perhaps any other one individual, should be given that close attention and careful consideration which they deserve, that the very best of results may be obtained and the longest possible ranges covered.

BLUE DISCHARGE OF GLOW

This appears in some Audion Bulbs and not in others. If allowed to persist, the vacuum automatically increases. For this reason the glow should not be allowed to appear and certainly not to continue, as the vacuum may rise to a very high value, requiring very high voltage in the "B" battery. Many amateurs cannot seem to comprehend the value of instructions of this kind, and if they ruin bulbs in this way, always claim that the bulb "was defective," although it is their own negligence which caused the condition. A super-sensitive detector like the Audion should be handled and used with reasonable care and intelligence. It is not "fool-proof."

ADJUSTMENT

One of the most essential points very seldom appreciated or even known by most operators is the fact that a very fine regulation of the "B" or high voltage battery potential is extremely important in securing utmost efficiency with the Audion. A difference of one volt may make a difference in range of as much as 25 per cent. The amateur types of Audion Detector manufactured until 1916 have a switch adjustment for this high voltage, providing at each step a difference of three to four volts. The Audion Bulbs were, of course, and still are tested on this type of instrument, so that they may operate properly with same. One kind of "trouble" is due to the fact that after an Audion Bulb has been used for a time, the vacuum changes slightly, so that the correct voltage required becomes slightly different in value. Now, it can be readily understood that the operator will have difficulty in obtaining best results when this occurs, because with the switch on one point, the voltage is too low, and on the next higher point, it is too high, and the hissing sound in the telephone receivers may drown out the incoming signals. The purpose of replacing the "step by step" switch by a potentiometer, which has been done in the new instruments, is to overcome this difficulty and provide any desired voltage within the limits of the battery. For the benefit of the large number of operators whose Audion Detectors are provided with "step by step" high voltage control switches, the following is recommended on account of the difficulties certain to be encountered, even if the potentiometers were furnished them, in installing same in their instruments. If a small box is made, large enough to hold one 3 cell flashlight battery, and a switch is mounted on the box, and arranged to cut in one cell at a time, and this device is connected in series with the telephone receivers, and the receiver binding posts on the detector, a very satisfactory adjustment will be provided, enabling the operator to accomplish excellent results with bulbs otherwise considered less sensitive than standard. Of course, this extra battery must be connected in circuit in the proper direction, so that it acts with and not against the regular high voltage batteries of the detector. The proper direction can be readily determined by trial. This arrangement is thoroughly recommended to every user of an Audion instrument. It is certain to produce results far superior to any ever previously obtained.

Radio captured the imagination of thousands of ordinary persons who wanted to experiment with this amazing new technology. Until late 1912 there was no licencing or regulation of radio transmitters in the United States, so amateurs -- known informally as "hams" -- were free to set up stations wherever they wished. But with the adoption of licencing, amateur operators faced a crisis, as most were now restricted to transmitting on a wavelength of 200 meters (1500 kilohertz), which had a limited sending range. They successfully organized to overcome this limitation, only to face a second hurdle in April, 1917, when the U.S. government shut down all amateur stations, as the country entered World War One.

Beginning in the late 1880s, Heinrich Hertz conducted a series of experiments in Germany which proved the existence of radio waves. Moreover, the devices used in early radio demonstrations could readily be constructed by self-trained individuals -- in the July 6, 1894 The Electrician (London), Oliver Lodge, reviewing "The Work of Hertz", noted that "Many of the experiments lend themselves to easy repetition, since they require nothing novel in the way of apparatus except what is easily constructed; many of them can be performed with the ordinary stock apparatus of an amateur's laboratory." A few months later, 21-year-old Guglielmo Marconi began his historic experiments on his father's Italian estate.

Prior to late 1912, there were no laws or regulations restricting amateur radio transmitters in the United States. The industrialized northeast quickly became congested with a mixture of competing amateur and commercial stations, and it was the amateur operators who sometimes dominated the airwaves, as recounted in Irving Vermilya's Amateur Number One, from the February and March, 1917 issues of QST magazine. (Vermilya came from the ranks of a group which provided a number of the earliest radio enthusiasts -- amateurs operating private telegraph lines, who wanted to expand their range without the bother of having to ask the "Mr. Taylors" of the world for permission to string their wires. Amateur Telegraphers, from the August 6, 1892 Electrical Review, reviewed a plan in Cranford, New Jersey to interconnect 30 locations by telegraph lines.) Although most amateur enthusiasts were male, in 1911 a young woman, who worked as a landline telegrapher but hoped to someday become a shipboard radio operator, joined the New York City-area airwaves. Her personal review of early radio, The Autobiography of a Girl Amateur, appeared anonymously in the March, 1920 Radio Amateur News. The Feminine Wireless Amateur, from the October, 1916 The Electrical Experimenter reviewed female amateur and professional radio operators.

It was difficult at first for amateur experimenters to find technical information about radio. In Hertzian Waves, the November, 1901 issue of a mechanical and electrical hobbyist magazine, Amateur Work, included construction information for a simple transmitter and receiver, similar to what Heinrich Hertz had used. Another early resource was How to Construct An Efficient Wireless Telegraph Apparatus at Small Cost, by A. Frederick Collins, from the February 15, 1902 Scientific American Supplement -- in 1917, Donald McNicol reported that within the United States "this article did more to introduce the art of amateur radio than anything else that had appeared". Many early amateurs were young, and most built their own spark-transmitters and receivers. In Amateur Work's June, 1904 issue, "Wireless" Telegraph Plant By Amateur Work Readers showcased the efforts of two Boston, Massachusetts 8th graders, who had built a set capable of covering eight miles (12.8 kilometers). And the September, 1906 Technical World Magazine included an article by M. W. Hall, Wireless Station in Henhouse, which featured the activities of two Rhode Island teenagers. Over time radio technology became more refined, and an eight-part series beginning in the September, 1916 Popular Science Monthly, How to Become a Wireless Operator by T. M. Lewis, provided detailed plans for constructing a tuned spark transmitter and crystal detector receiver.

One of the first companies to sell affordable radio equipment to experimenters and amateurs was the Electro Importing Company of New York City, set up in 1904 by Hugo Gernsback, an 18-year-old immigrant from Luxembourg. Beginning in 1905, this company sold what may have been the first complete radio system -- including both a simple transmitter and receiver -- offered to hobbyists on a national scale, under the name of Telimco Wireless Telegraph Outfits. The first national advertisement for Telimco outfits -- possibly the first-ever advertisement by a company offering an inexpensive complete radio system to non-professionals -- appeared in the November 25, 1905 issue of Scientific American. The Electro Importing offerings were later expanded, and in a 1910 catalog, which featured "Everything for the Experimenter", the company claimed it was "the largest makers of experimental Wireless Material in the world". The basic Telimco systems, plus other radio transmitting and receiving equipment, are included in a 1910 extract from Electro Importing Company: Catalogue No. 7.

Hugo Gernsback would continue to be one of amateur radio's strongest proponents during its first years. In addition to the radio equipment sold through his Electro Importing Company, Gernsback started three magazines with large amateur followings -- Modern Electrics in 1908, The Electrical Experimenter in 1913, and Radio Amateur News in 1919. He also claimed credit for coming up with the idea of assigning amateurs to 200 meters, dating to an Editorial which appeared in the February, 1912 issue of Modern Electrics. Gernsback's other accomplishments were recounted in a rousing review which closes with "Long live the Wireless! Long live the Amateur!!": Wireless and the Amateur: A Retrospect, from the February, 1913 Modern Electrics. And the 1914 Electro Importing catalog included A Sermon To Parents, written by Gernsback, which predicted that "Electricity and Wireless are the coming, undreamed of, world-moving forces" and were also the perfect hobby, because "It Keeps Your Boy At Home".

The number of amateur radio enthusiasts started to expand, especially in the industrial northeast. The October, 1908 issue of Electrician and Mechanic reported on this growing "mania" in Wireless Telegraph Stations in Baltimore, meanwhile, Night Air Full of Wireless, from the April, 1909 Modern Electrics, noted that hundreds of amateur experimenters were now active in the New York City area. In the Amateur Stations and Selective Tuning chapter of H. LaVerne Twining's 1909 Wireless Telegraphy and High Frequency Electricity, the author reviewed the emergence of amateur radio stations around Los Angeles, California, noting that "The solution of interference is not to be found by driving the amateurs out of the field" because "The amateur is then only bringing to the front, more forcibly, the necessity for selective tuning." The "Wireless" Devotees of Chicago, which appeared in the July 21, 1910 issue of Electrical World, reported that "There are estimated to be not less than 800 amateur stations in Chicago" who were practicing a form of self-regulation -- one rule being "Don't interfere with commercial stations, or one day you will miss your antennae." At this point national magazines began to help amateurs to organize. In mid-1908, Modern Electrics notified its readers that it was preparing a "Wireless Registry" of amateurs, and was planning to publish an annual national "Blue Book" listing -- its July, 1908 review of the Wireless Registry listed the first ten members. A few months later, the January, 1909 issue of Modern Electrics announced its formation of a free "Wireless Association of America" -- by January, 1910 the W.A.O.A., now claiming 3,000 members, was rallying its membership to fight the proposed Roberts bill, warning that "Congress threatens to pass a law licensing all amateurs". Meanwhile, in its September, 1908 issue, Electrician and Mechanic reviewed the 114 charter members of its own free organization in The Wireless Club, which promoted both national and local groups of amateurs. The magazine's first locally affiliated group, "Wireless Club 1", was formed in Chicago, Illinois, and beginning with its October, 1908 issue, a new monthly Wireless Club column featured news of interest to amateurs and experimenters.

Eventually, interference being caused by amateur antics, again especially in the northeast, began to get national attention. Regulation of Wireless, from the March 3, 1906 Electrical World, commented on the trouble being caused by local amateurs to the Navy's station at Newport, Rhode Island, and suggested that "the time has now come when in wireless telegraphy it is either regulation or chaos". A short report in the May 25, 1907 Electrical World, Wireless and Lawless, documented the inability of authorities to legally prevent an amateur from maliciously interfering with the operation of the government station at the Washington, D.C. Navy Yard. In response, a letter from Lee DeForest, Interference With Wireless Messages, published in the June 22nd issue, stated that this incident "brings up strikingly the necessity for early legal protection of legitimate workers from such vandals", declaring that "the ubiquitious amateur with his high-school Ruhmkorf coil, the operator of the 'brute force and ignorance' wireless school, must be eliminated", with the use of crude spark-transmitters replaced by more refined continuous-wave transmitters. In its January, 1909 issue, Editorials in Electrician and Mechanic reported that the magazine would not be releasing an updated list of commercial stations, because the companies were upset about the disruption being caused by amateur stations trying to contact them. The magazine also cautioned its readers not to interfere with commercial and Navy operations, noting: "Don't get the idea that the ether is free, for Uncle Sam has police powers even over the ether, if he cares to exercise them". The U.S. Navy in particular had problems, partly due to the use of primitive and inefficient equipment. In the February 27, 1909 The Outlook, Wireless Interlopers commented on the amateur interference which had blocked the Navy's attempt to contact the "Great White Fleet" as it returned from an around-the-world voyage. Wireless Interference, by Robert A. Morton, which appeared in the April, 1909 Electrician and Mechanic, reported that although some amateur stations had helped out by handling Navy traffic when the naval stations were out of commission, others had responded to interference complaints from the Boston naval station with comments along the lines of "Who ever heard of the navy, anyway? Beat it, you, beat it". Morton later covered many of the same topics in a general circulation publication with The Amateur Wireless Operator, in the January 15, 1910 The Outlook. In the early days of radio, many U.S. amateurs operated with skill and efficiency, but a few others did not, and in this unregulated era they were a nuisance to both commercial stations and fellow amateurs. (The 1912 edition of the Electo Importing Company's "Wireless Course" cautioned that "many otherwise well grounded students of wireless, who think they can operate, succeed in charging the ether with a nondescript series of spasmodic signals intended for the code, which are enough to make good old S. F. B. Morse himself turn over in anguish".) An extract from Irving Vermilya'a 1917 "Amateur Number One" recounts the adventures of one struggling New York City-area amateur, circa 1910, who proved so incompetent that an exasperated commercial operator eventually christened him the Queen of the Glue Factory.

By 1912 it was clear that some sort of national radio legislation was going to be enacted soon, if only to conform with the regulations from the upcoming London Radiotelegraph Convention. Navy to War on Wireless Novices, reprinted from the The Aerogram in the April, 1912 Electrician and Mechanic, reported that due to amateur interference which disrupted emergency communication with the torpedo boat destroyer Terry, the U.S. Navy, while it did "not wish to be represented as discouraging young men who are ambitious in carrying on experiments in wireless operation", did support "enactment of a federal law requiring all operators to obtain a license". In the March 29, 1912 New York Times, a letter from Hugo Gernsback, 400,000 Wireless Amateurs, promoted the rights of amateur operators against the threat of excessive restrictions. However, in a strong response printed two days later, Amateurs in Wireless from American Marconi employee Alfred Goldsmith compared the interference caused by amateurs using untuned spark transmitters to the racket made by careless children banging tin pans. The sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912 added momentum to the process, as reported by the New York Herald on April 17, 1912 in President Moves to Stop Mob Rule of Wireless.

A key question was what to do about the amateur radio operators. Some of the proposed bills were very restrictive, eliminating amateur transmitters altogether. But when "An Act to Regulate Radio Communication" was adopted August 13, 1912, instead of banning amateur stations, it merely limited most of them to using a wavelength of 200 meters. (The new law also provided that selected amateurs could receive special licences for better wavelengths.) The licencing requirements became effective December 13, 1912, and in its January, 1913 issue, Electrician and Mechanic reported that "Since the first of the month the office of the electrical school at the Brooklyn Navy Yard has daily been crowded with veteran, neophytic and embryonic wireless operators, all panting to write down what they know about radio communication, its uses and abuses, and so get a license from the Department of Commerce and Labor", from Wireless Operators Rush to Get Licenses. And with the passage of the new law, many of Irving Vermilya's early adventures were now illegal for amateurs, and could result in fines and criminal prosecution, as the American Radio Relay League warned its membership with notices such as Arrest Radio Operator in San Antonio, which appeared in its December, 1916 issue of QST. Another individual inadvertently got the attention of legal officials because his test transmissions were being more widely heard than he thought, which resulted in his being Arrested for his SOS, according to the February 17, 1917 New York Times. But although the new regulations restricted amateur activities, it also forced them to become more disciplined and proficient.

By the early 1920s, it was widely believed that the 1912 restriction of most amateurs to 200 meters had been part of a plot to eliminate amateur transmissions altogether -- described in Jack Binns' 1922 foreword to The Radio Boys at the Sending Station as a "sardonic proposal" by Washington officials to "Put 'em down below 200 meters, and they'll soon die out". However, in light of the support for the 200 meter standard by such amateur advocates as Hugo Gernsback, this appears to be somewhat melodramatic. Amateur radio grew steadily after licencing began, and from the beginning selected amateurs received "Special Amateur" licences which allowed them to operate on wavelengths greater than 200 meters. Although government regulators at the Commerce Department did prosecute amateurs who caused interference by operating in violation of the rules, the department also actively promoted the hobby. In the April 1, 1916 issue of its Radio Service Bulletin, the Commerce Department published a letter from Francis F. Merriam, president of the Atlanta Radio Club, and applauded its "spirit of cooperation", even though the letter noted that many of the amateurs at this inland location were actually using wavelengths greater than 200 meters, in technical violation of the rules, although the amateurs took care to insure they weren't interfering with commercial or government operations. Meanwhile, amateurs participated in some of the precursors of broadcasting, as the January, 1917 issue of QST announced in Radio Lessons By Wireless that 9YA, the Technical and Training school station of the State University of Iowa, was transmitting short radio lessons and university news three nights a week. (These transmissions were most likely in Morse code.)

Because of the lingering concern that the government might someday eliminate their stations altogether, amateurs did make a conscious effort to improve their reputation with the general public. Setting up emergency communications became one of the most important amateur services -- The Wireless Amateur in Times of Disaster, from the April, 1913 issue of Modern Electrics, reported how amateurs provided assistance during a flood in the midwest. Two years later a second, smaller, flood affected the same area, and afterward The Ohio Flood from the Commerce Department's March, 1915 Radio Service Bulletin announced the government's plan to issue Special Amateur licences to prominent amateur stations in the region, in order to provide emergency communication. This plan was reviewed in Floods and Wireless by Hanby Carver from the August, 1915 Technical World Magazine, as the author proclaimed that "Thus has the 'ham' come into his own. At first ignored, he kept plugging away at simple experiments with his crude apparatus. Then as his feeble signals became perceptible to the powerful commercial stations he was made the butt of ridicule... Now he is a necessity--an auxiliary to the forces of national public welfare--and the Government feels the need." Other examples of public service were covered in articles such as News Out of the Air from the May, 1914 issue of Electrical Experimenter, which announced that the Central Kansas Radio Club was planning to "furnish the smaller papers of the state with the news from neighboring towns" for free, while in Iowa a farmer posted weather reports and other news for his neighbors, as reviewed in How Radio Brought the News to the Farm, from The Electrical Experimenter for July, 1917. In 1922, Charles William Taussig reported in The Story of Radio (Airplane extract) how amateurs once notified a local airport about a lost mail pilot, helping to bring him in safely.

In 1915, Hugo Gernsback chartered a new amateur organization affiliated with The Electrical Experimenter, its birth announced with great fanfare by The Radio League of America in the magazine's December, 1915 issue. As part of its efforts, the RLA began organizing "relays", in which Morse code messages were transmitted along chains of stations. A December 31, 1915 "rotary" message, originated by William H. Kirwan, operator of experimental station 9XE in Davenport, Iowa, was successfully distributed throughout much of the central United States. The RLA's next relay goal, scheduled for the Washington's Birthday holiday on February 22, 1916, was to distribute a message nationwide. And this first nationwide effort was a success -- starting in Iowa, the Washington's Birthday message was relayed from coast to coast, and eventually delivered to the President and 37 state governors, as reported by Kirwan in The Washington's Birthday Amateur Radio Relay in the May, 1916 The Electrical Experimenter.

The RLA wasn't the only group that had expressed interest in setting up amateur relays. A letter, from a correspondent identified only by the initials "A.L.", appeared in the "Wireless Club" section of the January, 1909 Electrician and Mechanic, which suggested that amateur operators might organize within regional clubs, so that "a message might be relayed from one to another for a good distance". A short notice in the August, 1912 issue of Modern Electrics announced that the United Amateur Relay Club in Passaic, New Jersey, was looking for members from "all over [the] United States". And in April, 1914 the Radio Club of Hartford, Connecticut accepted Hiram Percy Maxim's idea to develop a new organization, the American Radio Relay League, to promote national amateur cooperation. A letter from by Maxim, For a Chain of Amateur Wireless Stations, appearing in the May 9, 1914 Electrical World, announced the new organization, noting that although the current configuration only provided for a relaying between Maxim's home in Hartford, Connecticut and Buffalo, New York, there were plans to expand "throughout the country", and "It may be that we have in this idea a great organization in the making." In February, 1915 the ARRL became independent of the Hartford club, and in December of that year began publishing a magazine, QST. Although the RLA and ARRL initially cooperated, a bitter rivalry between the two organizations quickly broke out. (In the July, 1916 issue of QST, the ARRL published a series of letters in QST and the American Radio Relay League which reviewed the refusal by The Electrical Experimenter, because of its association with the RLA, to accept advertisements for the ARRL.) As the ARRL expanded from its northeast base, its relays covered larger areas, and by late 1916 it was planning a nationwide relay of its own. By now Hiram Percy Maxim appears to have "forgotten" the RLA's successful national relay of the previous February, as Maxim's report about the upcoming ARRL relay plans, The First Trans-continental Relay, which appeared in the December, 1916 QST, noted vaguely that "We have heard rumors that some one tried it last year, or intended to try it, or came near accomplishing it, but no positive evidence is at hand that it has yet been done"--an interesting assertion, given that Maxim had personally participated in the RLA's Washington's Birthday relay, and QST had printed a detailed review. In any event, on January 4th and 5th, 1917 the ARRL made a first try at a national relay, but this initial attempt, reported on in the February, 1917 QST--First Trans-continental Relay Fails -- proved unsuccessful. A second attempt was made on February 6, 1917, this one successful, as reported by The Trans-continental Record, from the April, 1917 QST.

Meanwhile, William H. Kirwan and the Radio League of America were preparing for the RLA's second Washington's Birthday nationwide relay, as reported in The Washington's Birthday Relay, February 24, 1917, from the March, 1917 Electrical Experimenter. And by now the rift between the RLA and the ARRL was becoming very visible. An article in the February, 1917 QST, THE DANGER SIGNAL UP, warned the ARRL membership about the supposed dangers of cooperating with other relay organizations, claiming this could lead to chaos and the eventual elimination of all amateur licences. Kirwan and the RLA were unfazed by the ARRL's dubious concerns, and continued to work toward the Washington's Birthday relay. Kirwan's article in the April, 1917 Electrical Experimenter, The Washington Birthday Relay and the Q.R.M. League of America, directed a few return salvos at the ARRL and QST, complaining that "A certain magazine in the East, which surely cannot have the real interests of the amateurs at heart claims that there is a danger signal up and that if you do not join its crowd, all of our licenses will be taken away" while threatening to teach these "struggling nonentities" a lesson by creating a competing amateur organization. The RLA's second Washington's Birthday relay was more ambitious than the first, but only partially successful -- Kirwan's review, The Washington Birthday Relay Prize Winners, appeared in the May, 1917 The Electrical Experimenter. And the increasingly contentious battle between the RLA and ARRL for amateur radio hegemony ended a few weeks later, dwarfed by a much bigger conflict, as all U.S. amateur stations were shut down by the government, because of the entry of the United States into the war with Germany. (The RLA briefly reappeared after World War One, then quietly disappeared when Hugo Gernsback became more interested in the huge consumer market created by the broadcasting boom of 1922. And William H. Kirwan eventually made peace with the ARRL -- his 1921 Washington Birthday relay effort was promoted by QST magazine as being conducted "with the co-operation of the A.R.R.L. operating department").

Following the start of World War One in Europe in August, 1914, U.S. radio amateurs had watched with special interest whether the United States would be drawn into the conflict, due to the fact that the 1912 Radio Act gave the President permission to shut down radio stations "in time of war". (Canada silenced its amateur stations from August, 1914 to May 1, 1919). During the first two-and-one-half years of the war the U.S. was officially neutral, and President Wilson assigned the U.S. Navy the task of insuring that U.S. radio stations respected this neutrality. Acting under this authority, for a few months the Navy banned all amateur sending and receiving in the west, as reported in Amateur Wireless Plants Closed By Government in the May, 1915 The Electrical Experimenter, although under the circumstances these restrictions appear to have been somewhat premature and excessive. (In his 1915 annual report, Victor Blue, Chief of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation, noted that "in one naval district all amateur stations were closed... for a time sufficient to impress upon their owners the necessity for keeping the transmission of messages to a minimum.") J. Keeley's 20,000 American "Watchdogs" in the January 30, 1916 San Francisco Chronicle reviewed the role of amateurs in protecting the nation, highlighting the efforts of the Radio League of America in promoting preparedness amongst the nation's amateurs. While Keeley's article declared that "our boy operators are forming a great army of defense", the June, 1917 Popular Science Monthly noted that "Preparedness" Includes Women Wireless Operators, as it reviewed training classes at Hunter College in New York City. In the March, 1917 QST, the ARRL suggested in WAR? that, if the United States formally entered the conflict, amateurs should at least be allowed to keep their receivers operational, acting as "a thousand pairs of listening ears", monitoring for illegal transmissions. However, on April 6, 1917, when a declaration of war against Germany was signed by President Wilson, an Executive Order was also issued closing most radio stations not needed by the U.S. Government. And the Navy further announced that all private radio listening was also banned, although there was some questioning whether the government really had the legal authority to do this. An article in the May, 1917 QST, WAR!, reviewed the suspension of amateur sending and receiving for the foreseeable future, and suggested that now was the time for all patriotic amateurs to join the military, where their radio skills were in great demand.

Each month Amateur Work magazine reviewed various mechanical and electrical projects for the home experimenter. In its debut issue, the Electrical section included a review of how to construct a radio transmitter and receiver similar to what Heinrich Hertz had used in his famous experiments. Because it didn't include any of the refinements which Guglielmo Marconi had recently developed -- other than a ground wire on the receiver -- this particular setup would have been mainly useful for demonstration purposes, as it was only capable of transmitting a few hundred meters at best.

Amateur Work, November, 1901, pages 4-5: HERTZIAN WAVES.

IF a stone be thrown into a pool of still water, the motion of the stone causes a disturbance on the surface of the water. Circular waves radiate from the point at which the water was struck, diminishing in height until no longer visible. The movement of these waves is slow; the eye can easily follow them and count the number of waves per minute. Other waves in a more elastic medium than water are found to be much more rapid in movement. The striking of a bell causes it to vibrate, which vibration imparts wave motion to the surrounding air. Our ears are so constructed that this wave motion, if the rate be not less than 16 nor more than 44,000 per second, is transmitted through the tympanum and nerves of the ear, and we become sensible of it as Sound. Certain bodies are responsive to a particular rate of vibration. If a violin be played close to a wine-glass in exactly the same tone as the vibration rate of the wine-glass, the wave motion from the violin will set up a vibration in the glass, sometimes so violent as to cause the glass to break in pieces. Many interesting instances of this harmony of vibrating rate are recorded in the various textbooks on Physics. Sound waves, while much more rapid than the water waves, are still comparatively slow when we consider the rapid vibrating motion of heat waves. The rapidity of these waves is beyond the ability of the mind to comprehend except by comparison. That degree of heat termed "bright red" requires the atoms of the body giving out this heat to vibrate at the rate of 400 billion times per second. It has been discovered that, under certain conditions, electrical waves radiate through space and have the power to influence suitable objects prepared for that purpose. The particular form of electrical wave under consideration is that known as Hertzian waves, so termed from the comprehensive discoveries of Dr. Heinrich Hertz, of Carlsruhe and Bonn. By means of a series of masterly experiments based upon certain phenomena previously discovered by other scientists, Dr. Hertz, between the years 1886 and 1891, added greatly to the knowledge of these electric waves and their effects on adjacent bodies, enabling them to be put to practical use in wireless telegraphy. These Hertz waves do not have the extremely rapid vibratory rate of heat waves, though, as compared with sound waves, they are still very rapid, their vibrations being, as near as has yet been discovered, approximately 230 millions per second. These waves are set up by any sudden electric discharge, such as lightning flash, or in a less degree by a spark from a sparking, or induction coil or Leyden jar. They are made evident to our senses by suitable apparatus that, being adjusted to the same rate of vibration, receives the wave impulses and acts in unison with them. We may soon be able to learn of the approach of electric storms by means of instruments that will receive the electrical waves set up by the distant lightning flash. The apparatus for demonstrating electric-wave action is simple and may easily be constructed at small cost. Procure two sheets of heavy zinc 16" square, and mount them in a light wooden frame. Small picture-frame moulding makes a neat-looking frame. At the center of one edge of each plate ( Z ) solder an L-shaped strip of zinc, the projecting piece being about ½" long, and having a 1/8" hole through it. To one end of two pieces of brass wire 4" long and 1/8" in diameter, fit brass balls ( C ) 1" in diameter. The other ends of the wire are then put through the holes in the zinc angle-piece, and when the plates are placed in line, the two balls will face each other. The plates should also be fitted with ebonite or glass feet, raising them 2½" or 3" from the level. At the outside of one plate and in the lower outside corner of the other, bore small holes, and connect, by soldering, two pieces of insulated copper wire, size 16 or 18, which are to connect with the Leyden jar. This Oscillator, as Dr. Hertz named it, if placed on a stand with the plates in line and the balls from ¼" to 1" apart, according to conditions, will, when connected to the outer and inner coatings of the charged Leyden jar ( L ), set up powerful electrical or Hertz waves in the surrounding medium at the instant the discharge takes place between the balls of the "oscillator" plates. These waves are taken up and made evident by a simple form of receiver known as Hertz's Resonator. This consists of ¼" brass rod 5 feet long bent into the shape of a nearly complete circle 18" in diameter. The unconnected ends are fitted with two 1" brass balls; the distance between them is adjusted by bending the rod. Wings of thin sheet copper 6" wide and 10" long are fastened to each side of the rod by twisting around the rod extension strips that were left on the wings when they were cut out. In place of the brass balls the ends of the rod may be turned into two small circles, and soldered to make a perfect joint. The brass balls are the best, and should be polished with emery-cloth before trying experiments. The circular brass rod ( D ) is held suspended by two round pieces of wood 8" long and 1" thick, the lower ends of which rest in holes bored in the base ( B ). Two round-headed brass screws on each upright hold the brass rod in place, one screw on each side of the rod. It will add materially to the success of the experiment if one wing is connected by a piece of covered copper wire to a "ground." The nearest gas or water pipe will answer. The base is a heavy block of wood with wooden uprights, upon which to fasten the circular rod.

Scientific American Supplement, February 15, 1902, pages 21,849-21,850: HOW TO CONSTRUCT AN EFFICIENT WIRELESS TELEGRAPH APPARATUS AT A SMALL COST.

BY A. FREDERICK COLLINS.

SINCE the practical introduction of wireless telegraphy in 1896, great progress has been made, not only in spanning great distances, but in syntonizing or tuning a certain receiver to respond to a given transmitter. To follow up the intricacies of wireless telegraphy there can be no better method than to build an apparatus and make the additions from time to time as they are published in the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. To telegraph a mile or so without wires by what is known as the etheric wave or Hertzian wave system is not difficult; indeed, the apparatus required is but little more complicated than the ordinary Morse telegraph, and is so simple that the reader need have no difficulty in comprehending every detail; if, on the other hand, one wishes to work out the theory involved, it becomes such a difficult task that the master physicists have yet to solve it. It is the practical and not the theoretical side of wireless telegraphy we have to deal with here. The instrument that sends out the waves through space is termed the transmitter, and this I shall first describe. It consists of an ordinary induction or Ruhmkorff coil (see Fig. 1) giving a half-inch spark between the secondary terminals or brass balls. Such a coil can be purchased from dealers in electrical supplies for about $6. A larger-sized coil may, of course, be used, and to better advantage, but the cost increases very rapidly as the size of the spark increases; a half-inch spark coil will give very good results for a fourth to half a mile over water, and the writer has transmitted messages a mile over this sized coil. Having purchased the coil, it will be found necessary to supply the oscillators, as the brass balls are termed, since coils of the smaller size do not include them. The brass balls should be half an inch in diameter and solid; they may be adjusted to the binding posts of the secondary terminals by brass wires, as shown in the diagrammatic view, Fig. 2. It will require two cells of Bunsen battery to operate the coil, or three cells of Grenet or bichromate of potash battery will operate it nicely. An ordinary Morse telegraphic key is connected in series with the battery and induction coil, as shown in the diagram. Now when the key, 4, is pressed down, the circuit will be opened and closed alternately--like an electric bell--by the interrupter, 2, and a miniature flash of lightning breaks through the insulating air-gap between the balls or oscillators, 5, and this spark or disruptive discharge sends out the etheric waves into space in every direction to a very great distance. The oscillators should be finally adjusted so that not more than an eighth of an inch air-gap separates them. The reason the distance between them is cut down from a half to an eighth of an inch is because in wireless telegraphy it has been found that a "fat" spark emits waves of greater intensity than a long, attenuated one. The balls are termed oscillators, since, when the electric pressure at the balls becomes great enough to break down the air between them, the electric wave oscillates or vibrates very much as a string of a musical instrument oscillates when struck; in other words, it vibrates back and forth, very strongly at first, growing lesser until it ceases altogether. The coil and key may be mounted on a base of wood 8 inches wide by 17 inches long and ¾ inch thick (Fig. 1). This, with the battery, constitutes the wireless transmitter complete, with the exception of an aerial wire leading upward to a mast 30 or 40 feet high, or the wire may be suspended outside a building. At the upper end of the wire a copper plate 12 inches square should be soldered; this is the radiator, and sends out the waves into space; another wire, 8, leading from the instrument is connected with a second copper plate, 9, buried in the earth. The wires are then connected to the oscillators--one on either side, as shown in Fig. 2, 6,6. The aerial and earth wires may be soldered to a bit of spiral spring, as this forms a good connection and one that can be readily removed if necessary. The transmitter may be set on a table or other stationary place, but for convenience it is well to have the coil and key mounted on a separate base. To the receiving device there are more parts than to the transmitter, and to simply gaze upon the cut, Fig. 3, it would be almost impossible to obtain a correct idea of the connections. To the layman the most mysterious part of the whole system of wireless telegraphy is the most simple and the easiest understood. I refer to the coherer. Fig. 4 is a diagrammatic view of an experimental coherer, one that is suitable for the set in hand, for it is inexpensive, easy of adjustment and quite sensitive. A coherer, reduced to its simplest parts, consists of two pieces of wire, brass or German silver, 1-16th inch in diameter, forced into a piece of glass tubing, with some silver and nickel filings between the ends of the wire at the point, 7. The brass standards shown, 1, in Fig. 4, together with the set screws and springs, are merely adjuncts attached to the coherer wires to obtain the proper adjustment and to then retain it. The filings may be made from a nickel five-cent piece and a silver dime, using a coarse file. The amount of filings to be used in the coherer can be roughly estimated by having the bore of the tube 1-16th of an inch in diameter, and after one wire plug has been inserted, pour in enough of the filings to have a length of 1-16th inch. Before describing the function of the coherer, it will be well to illustrate the connection of the relay, tapper, sounder and coherer, and batteries. As shown in Fig. 3 the tapper--the central instrument back of the coherer--is improvised from an old electric bell, the gong being discarded. The relay, on the right, should be wound to high resistance, about 100 ohms. It is listed as a "pony relay," and, like all other parts of the apparatus except the coherer, it may be purchased of any dealer in electrical supplies. The sounder, on the left, is an ordinary Morse sounder of 4 ohms resistance. The tapper magnets should be wound to 4 ohms. All should now be mounted on a base 10 by 16 inches and connected up as the diagram, Fig. 5, illustrates; that is, the terminals of the coherer are connected in series with two dry cells, 2, and the relay, 3. From the relay a second circuit, also in series, leads to the tapper, 6, thence to a battery of three dry cells, 5, and on to the sounder, 4, and finally back to the relay, 3. This much for the two electric circuits. The puzzling part to the novice in wireless telegraphy lies in the wires, 7 and 8, branching from the coherer. These have nothing to do with the local battery circuits, but lead respectively up a mast equal in height to the one at the transmitting end and down in the ground, as before described. These are likewise provided with copper plates. As shown in the engraving, Fig. 3, the connections are all made directly between the relay, coherer, sender, tapper, and batteries for the very sensible reason that they are connected together with a deal less trouble than by the somewhat neater method of wiring under the baseboard. This, however, is a matter of time, taste and skill. Now let us see what the functions of each of the appliances constituting the receiver are, their relation to each other, and finally, as a whole, to the transmitter a mile away. To properly adjust the receiver to the transmitter it is well to have both in the same room--though not connected--and then test them out. The relation of the coherer to the relay and battery circuit may be likened to that of a push-button, the bell and its battery. Coherer and push-button normally represent the circuit open. When one pushes the button, the circuit is closed and the bell rings; when the Hertzian waves sent out by the distant transmitting coil reach the coherer, the particles of metal filings cohere--draw closer together--thus closing the circuit, and the relay draws its armature to its magnets, which closes the second circuit, and then the tapper and sounder become operative. The purpose of the tapper is to decohere the filings after they are affected by the etheric waves each time, otherwise no new waves would manifest themselves. The relay is necessary, since the maximum and minimum conductivity of the coherer, when normal and when subjected to the action of the waves, is not widely divergent, and therefore an appliance far more sensitive than an ordinary telegraphic sounder is needed; this is provided by a relay, which, while being much more sensitive, has the added advantage of operating a delicately-poised lever or armature instead of the heavy one used on the sounder. Signals can be read from the tapper alone, but to produce dots and dashes--the regular Morse code--a sounder is essential. The adjustment of the coherer and its relation to the relay is not as difficult as the final adjustment of the sounder and tapper, but if the following rules are adhered to carefully, the result will be a successful receiver. First arrange the adjusting screws of the relay armature so that it will have a free play of only 1-32d of an inch, when the armature is drawn into contact with the second circuit connection, just clearing the polar projections of the magnets; have the tension of the spring so that it will have only "pull" enough to draw back the armature when there is no current flowing through the relay coils. Now connect the two dry cells in series with the coherer, Fig. 5. Unscrew one of the top set-screws, 2, Fig. 4, and then screw up the inner screw, 3, until the current begins to flow through the circuit and pulls the armature of the relay to the magnets. Tap the coherer with a pencil while turning the screw of the coherer to prevent premature cohesion, which is apt to occur by pressure. When absolute balance is secured between the coherer and the relay, connect in the battery of the second circuit, which includes the tapper and the sounder. When the relay armature is drawn into contact, closing the second circuit, both the tapper and the sounder should operate, the former tapping the coherer and the latter sounding the stroke. The adjustment of the sounder requires the most patience, for it is by the most delicate testing alone that the proper tension is obtained. This is done by the screw regulating the spring attached to the sounder lever. When all has been arranged and the local circuit of the transmitter is closed, the spark passes between the oscillators, waves are sent invisibly through space by the aerial and earth plates, and radiating in every direction, a minor portion must come into contact with the receiving aerial and ground plates, where they are carried by conducting wires to the coherer, and, under the action of the waves, the filings cohere, the relay circuit is closed, drawing the armature into contact, closing the second circuit when the tapper operates, striking the coherer tube and de-cohering the filings; at the same time the lever of the sounder is pulled down, and, by the law of inertia, it will continue to remain down, if a succession of waves are being sent by the transmitter, assuming the key is being held down, producing a dash, notwithstanding the tapper keeps busily at work decohering in response to the continuously closing circuit caused by the waves; but the sounder--sluggish in its action--when once drawn down, will remain so until the last wave is received and the tapper decoheres for the last time, finally breaking the second circuit for a sufficient length of time to permit the heavy lever to regain its normal position. All these various actions require a specific time in which to operate, and so the transmitting key must be operated very slowly, each dot and dash being given a sufficient length of time for the passage of a good spark. With the Marconi, Slaby, Guarini and all other systems of wireless telegraphy now in use, only twelve to fifteen words per minute can be sent. It is also well to remember that the higher the wires leading up the mast are, the further the messages will carry. Wireless transmission over water can be carried to about ten times as great a distance as over land. Wireless telegraphy is very much like photography and everything else worth knowing. To know it well requires care, patience and practice, and the more one keeps everlastingly at it, the greater the results will be. PUBLIC--NO. 264.] [S. 6412.]

An Act To regulate radio communication, approved August 13, 1912.

Radio act.

License.

Penalty. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That a person, company, or corporation within the jurisdiction of the United States shall not use or operate any apparatus for radio communication as a means of commercial intercourse among the several States, or with foreign nations, or upon any vessel of the United States engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, or for the transmission of radiograms or signals the effect of which extends beyond the jurisdiction of the State or Territory in which the same are made, or where interference would be caused thereby with the receipt of messages or signals from beyond the jurisdiction of the said State or Territory, except under and in accordance with a license, revocable for cause, in that behalf granted by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor upon application therefor; but nothing in this Act shall be construed to apply to the transmission and exchange of radiograms or signals between points situated in the same State: Provided, That the effect thereof shall not extend beyond the jurisdiction of the said State or interfere with the reception of radiograms or signals from beyond said jurisdiction; and a license shall not be required for the transmission or exchange of radiograms or signals by or on behalf of the Government of the United States, but every Government station on land or sea shall have special call letters designated and published in the list of radio stations of the United States by the Department of Commerce and Labor. Any person, company, or corporation that shall use or operate any apparatus for radio communication in violation of this section, or knowingly aid or abet another person, company, or corporation in so doing, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and the apparatus or device so unlawfully used and operated may be adjudged forfeited to the United States. License form. SEC. 2. That every such license shall be in such form as the Secretary of Commerce and Labor shall determine and shall contain the restrictions, pursuant to this Act, on and subject to which the license is granted; that every such license shall be issued only to citizens of the United States or Porto Rico or to a company incorporated under the laws of some State or Territory or of the United States or Porto Rico, and shall specify the ownership and location of the station in which said apparatus shall be used and other particulars for its identification and to enable its range to be estimated; shall state the purpose of the station, and in case of a station in actual operation at the date of passage of this Act, shall contain the statement that satisfactory proof has been furnished that it was actually operating on the above-mentioned date; shall state the wave length or the wave lengths authorized for use by the station for the prevention of interference and the hours for which the station is licensed for work; and shall not be construed to authorize the use of any apparatus for radio communication in any other station than that specified. Every such license shall be subject to the regulations contained herein, and such regulations as may be established from time to time by authority of this Act or subsequent Acts and treaties of the United States. Every such license shall provide that the President of the United States in time of war or public peril or disaster may cause the closing of any station for radio communication and the removal therefrom of all radio apparatus, or may authorize the use or control of any such station or apparatus by any department of the Government, upon just compensation to the owners. Operators.

Suspension of license.

Penalty.

Temporary permit. SEC. 3. That every such apparatus shall at all times while in use and operation as aforesaid be in charge or under the supervision of a person or persons licensed for that purpose by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor. Every person so licensed who in the operation of any radio apparatus shall fail to observe and obey regulations contained in or made pursuant to this Act or subsequent Acts or treaties of the United States, or any one of them, or who shall fail to enforce obedience thereto by an unlicensed person while serving under his supervision, in addition to the punishments and penalties herein prescribed, may suffer the suspension of the said license for a period to be fixed by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor not exceeding one year. It shall be unlawful to employ any unlicensed person or for any unlicensed person to serve in charge or in supervision of the use and operation of such apparatus, and any person violating this provision shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars or imprisonment for not more than two months; or both, in the discretion of the court, for each and every such offense: Provided, That in case of emergency the Secretary of Commerce and Labor may authorize a collector of customs to issue a temporary permit, in lieu of a license, to the operator on a vessel subject to the radio ship Act of June twenty-fourth, nineteen hundred and ten.

Regulations. SEC. 4. That for the purpose of preventing or minimizing interference with communication between stations in which such apparatus is operated, to facilitate radio communication, and to further the prompt receipt of distress signals, said private and commercial stations shall be subject to the regulations of this section. These regulations shall be enforced by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor through the collectors of customs and other officers of the Government as other regulations herein provided for. The Secretary of Commerce and Labor may, in his discretion, waive the provisions of any or all of these regulations when no interference of the character above mentioned can ensue. Experimental stations. The Secretary of Commerce and Labor may grant special temporary licenses to stations actually engaged in conducting experiments for the development of the science of radio communication, or the apparatus pertaining thereto, to carry on special tests, using any amount of power or any wave lengths, at such hours and under such conditions as will insure the least interference with the sending or receipt of commercial or Government radiograms, of distress signals and radiograms, or with the work of other stations. In these regulations the naval and military stations shall be understood to be stations on land.

REGULATIONS.

NORMAL WAVE LENGTH.

First. Every station shall be required to designate a certain definite wave length as the normal sending and receiving wave length of the station. This wave length shall not exceed six hundred meters or it shall exceed one thousand six hundred meters. Every coastal station open to general public service shall at all times be ready to receive messages of such wave lengths as are required by the Berlin convention. Every ship station, except as hereinafter provided, and every coast station open to general public service shall be prepared to use two sending wave lengths, one of three hundred meters and one of six hundred meters, as required by the international convention in force: Provided, That the Secretary of Commerce and Labor may, in his discretion, change the limit of wave length reservation made by regulations first and second to accord with any international agreement to which the United States is a party.

OTHER WAVE LENGTHS.

Second. In addition to the normal sending wave length all stations, except as provided hereinafter in these regulations, may use other sending wave lengths: Provided, That they do not exceed six hundred meters or that they do exceed one thousand six hundred meters: Provided further, That the character of the waves emitted conforms to the requirements of regulations third and fourth following.

USE OF A "PURE WAVE."

Third. At all stations if the sending apparatus, to be referred to hereinafter as the "transmitter," is of such a character that the energy is radiated in two or more wave lengths, more or less sharply defined, as indicated by a sensitive wave meter, the energy in no one of the lesser waves shall exceed ten per centum of that in the greatest.

USE OF A "SHARP WAVE."

Fourth. At all stations the logarithmic decrement per complete oscillation in the wave trains emitted by the transmitter shall not exceed two-tenths, except when sending distress signals or signals and messages relating thereto.

USE OF "STANDARD DISTRESS WAVE."

Fifth. Every station on shipboard shall be prepared to send distress calls on the normal wave length designated by the international convention in force, except on vessels of small tonnage unable to have plants insuring that wave length.

SIGNAL OF DISTRESS.

Sixth. The distress call used shall be the international signal of distress ...---...

USE OF "BROAD INTERFERING WAVE" FOR DISTRESS SIGNALS.

Seventh. When sending distress signals, the transmitter of a station on shipboard may be tuned in such a manner as to create a maximum of interference with a maximum of radiation.

DISTANCE REQUIREMENT FOR DISTRESS SIGNALS.

Eighth. Every station on shipboard, wherever practicable, shall be prepared to send distress signals of the character specified in regulations fifth and sixth with sufficient power to enable them to be received by day over sea a distance of one hundred nautical miles by a shipboard station equipped with apparatus for both sending and receiving equal in all essential particulars to that of the station first mentioned.

"RIGHT OF WAY" FOR DISTRESS SIGNALS.

Ninth. All stations are required to give absolute priority to signals and radiograms relating to ships in distress; to cease all sending on hearing a distress signal; and, except when engaged in answering or aiding the ship in distress, to refrain from sending until all signals and radiograms relating thereto are completed.

REDUCED POWER FOR SHIPS NEAR A GOVERNMENT STATION.

Tenth. No station on shipboard, when within fifteen nautical miles of a naval or military station, shall use a transformer input exceeding one kilowatt, nor, when within five nautical miles of such a station, a transformer input exceeding one-half kilowatt, except for sending signals of distress, or signals or radiograms relating thereto.

INTERCOMMUNICATION.

Eleventh. Each shore station open to general public service between the coast and vessels at sea shall be bound to exchange radiograms with any similar shore station and with any ship station without distinction of the radio system adopted by such stations, respectively, and each station on shipboard shall be bound to exchange radiograms with any other station on shipboard without distinction of the radio systems adopted by each station, respectively. It shall be the duty of each such shore station, during the hours it is in operation, to listen in at intervals of not less than fifteen minutes and for a period not less than two minutes, with the receiver tuned to receive messages of three hundred meter wave lengths.

DIVISION OF TIME.

Twelfth. At important seaports and at all other places where naval or military and private or commercial shore stations operate in such close proximity that interference with the work of naval and military stations can not be avoided by the enforcement of the regulations contained in the foregoing regulations concerning wave lengths and character of signals emitted, such private or commercial shore stations as do interfere with the reception of signals by the naval and military stations concerned shall not use their transmitters during the first fifteen minutes of each hour, local standard time. The Secretary of Commerce and Labor may, on the recommendation of the department concerned, designate the station or stations which may be required to observe this division of time.

GOVERNMENT STATIONS TO OBSERVE DIVISION OF TIME.

Thirteenth. The naval or military stations for which the above-mentioned division of time may be established shall transmit signals or radiograms only during the first fifteen minutes of each hour, local standard time, except in case of signals or radiograms relating to vessels in distress, as hereinbefore provided.

USE OF UNNECESSARY POWER.

Fourteenth. In all circumstances, except in case of signals or radiograms relating to vessels in distress, all stations shall use the minimum amount of energy necessary to carry out any communication desired.

GENERAL RESTRICTIONS ON PRIVATE STATIONS.

Fifteenth. No private or commercial station not engaged in the transaction of bona fide commercial business by radio communication or in experimentation in connection with the development and manufacture of radio apparatus for commercial purposes shall use a transmitting wave length exceeding two hundred meters, or a transformer input exceeding one kilowatt, except by special authority of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor contained in the license of that station: Provided, That the owner or operator of a station of the character mentioned in this regulation shall not be liable for a violation of the requirements of the third or fourth regulations to the penalties of one hundred dollars or twenty-five dollars, respectively, provided in this section unless the person maintaining or operating such station shall have been notified in writing that the said transmitter has been found, upon tests conducted by the Government, to be so adjusted as to violate the said third and fourth regulations, and opportunity has been given to said owner or operator to adjust said transmitter in conformity with said regulations.

SPECIAL RESTRICTIONS IN THE VICINITIES OF GOVERNMENT STATIONS.

Sixteenth. No station of the character mentioned in regulation fifteenth situated within five nautical miles of a naval or military station shall use a transmitting wave length exceeding two hundred meters or a transformer input exceeding one-half kilowatt.

SHIP STATIONS TO COMMUNICATE WITH NEAREST SHORE STATIONS.

Seventeenth. In general, the shipboard stations shall transmit their radiograms to the nearest shore station. A sender on board a vessel shall, however, have the right to designate the shore station through which he desires to have his radiograms transmitted. If this can not be done, the wishes of the sender are to be complied with only if the transmission can be effected without interfering with the service of other stations.

LIMITATIONS FOR FUTURE INSTALLATIONS IN VICINITIES OF GOVERNMENT STATIONS.

Eighteenth. No station on shore not in actual operation at the date of the passage of this Act shall be licensed for the transaction of commercial business by radio communication within fifteen nautical miles of the following naval or military stations, to wit: Arlington, Virginia; Key West, Florida; San Juan, Porto Rico; North Head and Tatoosh Island, Washington; San Diego, California; and those established or which may be established in Alaska and in the Canal Zone; and the head of the department having control of such Government stations shall, so far as is consistent with the transaction of governmental business, arrange for the transmission and receipt of commercial radiograms under the provisions of the Berlin convention of nineteen hundred and six and future international conventions or treaties to which the United States may be a party, at each of the stations above referred to, and shall fix the rates therefor, subject to control of such rates by Congress. At such stations and wherever and whenever shore stations open for general public business between the coast and vessels at sea under the provisions of the Berlin convention of nineteen hundred and six and future international conventions and treaties to which the United States may be a party shall not be so established as to insure a constant service day and night without interruption, and in all localities wherever or whenever such service shall not be maintained by a commercial shore station within one hundred nautical miles of a naval radio station, the Secretary of the Navy shall, so far as is consistent with the transaction of Government business, open naval radio stations to the general public business described above, and shall fix rates for such service, subject to control of such rates by Congress. The receipts from such radiograms shall be covered into the Treasury as miscellaneous receipts.

SECRECY OF MESSAGES.

Nineteenth. No person or persons engaged in or having knowledge of the operation of any station or stations, shall divulge or publish the contents of any messages transmitted or received by such station, except to the person or persons to whom the same may be directed, or their authorized agent, or to another station employed to forward such message to its destination, unless legally required so to do by the court of competent jurisdiction or other competent authority. Any person guilty of divulging or publishing any message, except as herein provided, shall, on conviction thereof, be punishable by a fine of not more than two hundred and fifty dollars or imprisonment for a period of not exceeding three months, or both fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of the court.

PENALTIES.

For violation of any of these regulations, subject to which a license under sections one and two of this Act may be issued, the owner of the apparatus shall be liable to a penalty of one hundred dollars, which may be reduced or remitted by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and for repeated violations of any of such regulations, the license may be revoked. For violation of any of these regulations, except as provided in regulation nineteenth, subject to which a license under section three of this Act may be issued, the operator shall be subject to a penalty of twenty-five dollars, which may be reduced or remitted by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and for repeated violations of any such regulations, the license shall be suspended or revoked. Interference. SEC. 5. That every license granted under the provisions of this Act for the operation or use or apparatus for radio communication shall prescribe that the operator thereof shall not willfully or maliciously interfere with any other radio communication. Such interference shall be deemed a misdemeanor, and upon conviction thereof the owner or operator, or both, shall be punishable by a fine of not to exceed five hundred dollars or imprisonment for not to exceed one year, or both. SEC. 6. That the expression "radio communication" as used in this Act means any system of electrical communication by telegraphy or telephony without the aid of any wire connecting the points from and at which the radiograms, signals, or other communications are sent or received. False signals. SEC. 7. That a person, company, or corporation within the jurisdiction of the United States shall not knowingly utter or transmit, or cause to be uttered or transmitted, any false or fraudulent distress signal or call or false or fraudulent signal, call, or other radiogram of any kind. The penalty for so uttering or transmitting a false or fraudulent distress signal or call shall be a fine of not more than two thousand five hundred dollars or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both, in the discretion of the court, for each and every such offense, and the penalty for so uttering or transmitting, or causing to be uttered or transmitted, any other false or fraudulent signal, call, or other radiogram shall be a fine of not more than one thousand dollars or imprisonment for not more than two years, or both, in the discretion of the court, for each and every such offense. Foreign vessels. SEC. 8. That a person, company, or corporation shall not use or operate any apparatus for radio communication on a foreign ship in territorial waters of the United States otherwise than in accordance with the provisions of sections four and seven of this Act and so much of section five as imposes a penalty for interference. Save as aforesaid, nothing in this Act shall apply to apparatus for radio communication on any foreign ship. SEC. 9. That the trial of any offense under this Act shall be in the district in which it is committed, or if the offense is committed upon the high seas or out of the jurisdiction of any particular State or district the trial shall be in the district where the offender may be found or into which he shall be first brought. SEC. 10. That this Act shall not apply to the Philippine Islands. SEC. 11. That this Act shall take effect and be in force on and after four months from its passage. Approved, August 13, 1912.

Electrician and Mechanic, January, 1913, page 58:

WIRELESS OPERATORS RUSH TO GET LICENSES

Veterans and Amateurs Must Comply with Federal Law by December 13

Since the first of the month the office of the electrical school at the Brooklyn Navy Yard has daily been crowded with veteran, neophytic and embryonic wireless operators, all panting to write down what they know about radio communication, its uses and abuses, and so get a license from the Department of Commerce and Labor. All this rush is due to the fact that on December 13 there goes into effect an act for the regulation of radio communication, whereby all wireless operators and all apparatus which work across State lines or can communicate with ships at sea are required to be licensed. This act is one of the by-products of the Berlin international treaty, ratified in April by the Senate. Examinations are being held at United States navy yards and army posts all over the country during this month, and according to reports thousands of operators are availing themselves of the opportunity of getting themselves registered as regular flashers before December 13. The fact that there are some 10,000 wireless stations, most of them amateur ones, around New York accounts in the minds of the examiners at the Brooklyn navy yard for the daily crush in their office. The amateurs know that the act doesn't pass them by entirely. The veriest beginner amusing himself on a housetop in Flatbush by sending burning messages to his up-to-date friend in South Brooklyn is aware of the fact that he must get a second grade license right away if he wants to practise radio communication, or run the risk of having his precious paraphernalia pulled down by a stealthy inspector. Anybody who wants a license must first go to the Custom House or to the electrical school at the navy yard and present an application, telling whether he knows anything about the Berlin International Radiotelegraphic Convention and regulations, the Continental and Morse telegraph codes, how much experience he has had and a dozen other things. Then he must let the examiner at the electrical school fire a lot of questions at him. His answers must be written ones, and they are corrected by the examiners under the supervision of the Department of Commerce and Labor. One of the questions which is likely to hit a trembling beginner in the face is: "How can you tell if your antenna is radiating?" The applicants for commercial licenses of which there are now five grades, may be asked to "describe in detail the adjustment of a transmitter for a certain wave-length (as 600 meters) so that only a single hump would be present." Applicants for third grade licenses, which is the technical class for experiment and instruction, also have a little leeway in the matter of questions. Everybody, regardless of class or grade, swears to keep secret any messages he may pluck out of the air, unless ordered to divulge those messages by a court of competent jurisdiction. This stipulation was embodied in one of the most important amendments made by the House when the administration bill for Federal control of wireless operations passed through its hands. Furthermore, the beardless dabbler in sparks solemnly vows to cease troubling the air with his machinations when there are important messages flaring around the sky. Apparently the amateurs about New York are right up to the scratch when it comes to swearing or knowing their business, for 90 per cent. of all the applicants examined at the navy yard during the first three weeks passed, according to one of the examining officers. One fact the officers have noticed with surprise during the kaleidoscopic comings and goings of applicants; that is, that there have been no women in the line. One recalled yesterday, however, that when the wireless division of the Commercial Telegraphers Union of America was fighting the regulation bill last July, one of the chief objections mentioned was that the bill placed no bar upon the employment of women operators. The wartime consolidation of the radio industry under government control led to important advances in radio equipment engineering and manufacturing, especially vacuum-tube technology. Still, some would look toward the day when vacuum-tubes would be supplanted by something more efficient and compact, although this was another development which would take decades to be realized.

During World War One the military took over control of the entire U.S. radio industry, and in conjunction with the major electrical firms made great strides in radio engineering using vacuum-tubes. In addition, wartime work exposed thousands in military service to the changes which were taking place, especially with respect to vacuum-tube equipment. The Vacuum Tubes entry by Major General George O. Squier, in the Signal Corps section of the 1919 edition of War Department Annual Reports, reviewed the advances made in vacuum-tube manufacturing and engineering from 1917 to 1919, with the prediction "That vacuum tubes in various forms and sizes will, within a few years, become widely used in every field of electrical development and application is not to be denied." And shortly after the war ended articles started to appear that showed a comprehensive scientific understanding and explanation of the design and operation of vacuum-tubes, for example L. M. Clement's The Vacuum Tube as a Detector and Amplifier (extract), from the April, 1920 issue of QST. H. Winfield Secor's The Versatile Audion, which appeared in the February, 1920 Electrical Experimenter, reviewed the advances taking place in thirteen areas of vacuum-tube engineering. In April, 1919 AT&T, employing vacuum-tube versatility from six of Secor's categories, transmitted speeches and entertainment by phone lines and radio to a Victory Liberty Loan drive, as reported by Speeches Through Radiotelephone Inspire New York Crowds, from the May 31, 1919 Electrical Review.

In spite of their impressive versatility, vacuum tubes still had significant drawbacks -- they were expensive, had to be replaced when they burned out, and required heavy batteries for the relatively strong electrical currents they needed in order to operate. So some looked for a simpler, more compact device that would perform the same functions, for example, Hugo Gernsback, who, in Developing the Radiophone, from the December, 1919 Radio Amateur News, suggested that experimenters "should look for substitutes of vacuum tubes" which would be worth "a king's ransom for the patent".

One promising line of investigation was the "oscillating crystal". Since 1906, crystals had been used as rectifiers for simple detectors, although even in this basic role they were often temperamental and prone to getting out of adjustment when jarred. And to fully replace vacuum tubes, oscillating crystals would have to work in circuits that produced steady electrical oscillations, for amplifying signals and producing continuous-wave transmissions. There were tantalizing hints that some day this might be possible. In March, 1920, QST magazine included a short note in the Strays column about a simple, low-power oscillating crystal circuit designed by Greenleaf W. Pickard. (Pickard later noted that the basic idea dated back to work done by Dr. W. H. Eccles in 1910). Then, in late 1924, there was a brief flurry of excitement, as Hugo Gernsback announced A Sensational Radio Invention in the September, 1924 Radio News, proclaiming that Russian O. V. Lossev's work on oscillating crystal circuits meant that "The crystal now actually replaces the vacuum tube". The same issue of the magazine included an article with simple construction projects, to provide hobbyists a chance to experiment with The Crystodyne Principle. Gernsback predicted that, although development was admittedly still in the experimental stages, within three-to-five years receivers using oscillating crystals in place of tubes would go on sale to the general public. However, it turned out that for the next few decades radio enthusiasts would have to make do with incremental improvements in vacuum tube design -- tubes that required less current, lasted longer, and could run on household electrical current instead of storage batteries. It was only when a deeper knowledge of solid state physics made it possible to refine oscillating crystals into much more practical and reliable "transfer resistors" (transistors) that, beginning in the mid-1950s, the lightweight radios running on flashlight batteries envisioned by Gernsback finally became available to the general public. (In its October, 1948 issue, QST magazine reviewed the development of the transistor by Bell Laboratories, which included the construction of a simple superheterodyne receiver, in The "Transistor"--an Amplifying Crystal, noting that "These clever little devices are well worth keeping an eye on.")

Electrical Experimenter, February, 1920, pages 1000-1001, 1080-1083: The Versatile Audion By H. WINFIELD SECOR

Some of the Many Practical Uses to Which the Audion Has Been Adapted MANY world-startling experiments in Radio Science have been either directly or indirectly based on the remarkable performance of the Audion, the little evacuated glass bulb which greatly resembles the ordinary incandescent lamp, but which contains, besides the filament, two other elements,--a wire grid and a flat metal plate. Some of the most remarkable phenomena in the realm of pure and applied science are due to the as yet not fully understood electronic action taking place within this bulb. The action in the audion is based on the fact that a heated body, such as a heated filament, radiates millions of tiny electric charges of a negative character or electrons, as they are called by the scientist. The wire grid in the audion is placed between the heated filament, which is constantly shooting off the electrons, and the cold plate. When a battery or other source of electric current is connected to the filament and plate, a positive current flows from the cold plate to the heated filament, and this is due to the fact that the electronic flow in any case is opposite in direction to the positive current flow. Thus, the hotter the filament, other things being equal, the more electrons there are radiated, and the stronger the current which can be transferred across the space between the plate and the filament, up to the point of saturation. Now, if we can manage to vary the electron flow between the heated filament and the plate or wing, in some delicate manner, we would have, it would seem, a very sensitive wireless detector, and this is just what Dr. de Forest thought when he first started to develop the audion idea. Suiting his action to the thought, he produced after years of experiment a bulb made in this fashion with three electrodes, one at least of which must be heated. The first grid audion gave results far beyond all expectations. We may say that today it would really be very difficult to conceive of a single radio or electrical device which is more versatile or universal in its applications than the audion. Some of the more prominent and practical applications of this device are illustrated and described herewith, but it has apparently only just started on its mission of usefulness.

RECEIVING RADIO MESSAGES.

First and foremost in many ways is the application of the audion, or vacuum valve, as it is sometimes miscalled, to the reception of radio messages. The audion will receive and amplify under proper conditions, both radiotelegraphic and radiotelephonic messages. It has the advantage over the crystal and other forms of detectors that, whereas these depend upon the finding of a sensitive spot, often microscopical in size, where the metal wire (cat whisker) touching it proves most responsive; the audion, once the battery currents are properly adjusted to it, keeps right on receiving hour in and hour out. The action of the audion in this case is along the lines cited in the introduction; that is, one of the antenna circuit wires carrying the incoming signal currents is connected to the grid or intermediate member of the audion. Thus, any variations of electric charge or current on the grid, as would be occasioned by the dots and dashes or short and long signal currents, or else the fluctuations of the radiotelephonic current, causes a corresponding and exactly similar variation in the electron stream passing from the heated filament to the cold plate. It is at once evident, therefore, that as these variations are occasioned by the increasing and decreasing volumes of electric charge on the grid, the current flow from the high-voltage or "B" battery connected in the telephone receiving circuit to the plate, will be varied in correspondence to the grid charge variations. This action is very delicate, positive and accurate, and where more than one bulb is used is of enormously high amplifying character. The audion, with slight circuit modifications, can be used for receiving both damped and undamped radio signals and therein lies one of the most tremendous advantages of this device. By the mere turn of a switch or readjustment of the circuit the audion can be made to oscillate and receive either damped or undamped radio signals equally well. This was of inestimable service to the Allied armies and navies during the war, as may be readily imagined, and audion sets were built by the thousands, and the consumption of bulbs by the Allied armies and naval fleets was at the rate of 1,000,000 per year during the last months of the war. See figure 1.

AUDION CAN TRANSMIT MESSAGES.

At Fig. 2 the audion is shown in use for transmitting wireless messages. It can and has been very successfully used for sending radiotelegraphic and radiotelephonic messages. Usually, but not in this case, the audion for this apparatus is made of a somewhat larger size; the average audion such as that used for receiving apparatus is about the size of a 30 watt tungsten lamp, but the bulb is tubular in form and not pear-shaped. The French audions, however, resemble the average Tungsten lamp shape, while the German types are tubular. It was found in various experiments that the vacuum tube of the audion type; that is, under certain circuit conditions, and where a sufficiently high voltage direct current (such as that produced by a 500 to 800 volt, D.C. dynamo) was applied to the plate, that the bulb action took on an oscillating nature and caused a radio-frequency alternating or oscillating current of an undamped form to be produced. By simply connecting up a microphone in one of the circuits, for which there are now several different schemes available, it thereupon became readily possible to easily and perfectly modulate this converted radiofrequency oscillating current produced by the audion into speech currents, which can be radiated from the antenna in the form of Hertzian waves and picked up at any wireless receiving station. Several years ago the first trans-Atlantic wireless telephone speech was transmitted successfully, thanks to several hundred large oscillating audions, which were connected up in a common bank in the government high-power station at Arlington, Va. Just to show how easy it is to control 50 or 100 K.W. of energy as produced by a bank of audions such as this, it may be mentioned that an ordinary microphone, such as we have in this case, can readily modulate or control telephonically the entire bank of bulbs, totaling 15 K.W. During World War One, beginning in April, 1917, the United States government assumed control of most of the U. S. radio industry, in addition to the telegraph and telephone lines. It also gained access to all radio patents, which meant the military could use the best equipment that had been developed by the various competing companies. The two year period of military control also saw numerous advances in radio engineering, the most important being the perfection of vacuum-tube based radio equipment, particularly transmitters. Also, extensive improvements were made on the production line, so that thousands of identical vacuum tubes could now be mass produced, without having to test and grade each and every tube, as the DeForest Company had needed to do.

Annual Reports of the War Department for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1919

Report of George O. Squier, Major General, Chief Signal Officer of the Army, October 15, 1919 Pages 1145-1148: VACUUM TUBES.

The application to the radio intercommunication of the vacuum tube--perhaps more properly called the thermionic tube or bulb--is one of the most interesting developments in the whole field of applied science. For not only has it made possible what has been justly heralded as one of the most spectacular achievements of the whole war--the airplane radiophone--but the confidence growing out of the extensive experience with the vacuum tube in warfare, coupled with its extreme adaptability, have resulted in a rapidly increasing amount of radio development involving its use. Prewar history.--The vacuum tube was known in various forms before the war. Following extensive experiments with the so-called Edison effect, Fleming some years ago produced the well-known Fleming valve--a current rectifying device, capable therefore of being used as a detector of radio signals. This device contains two elements, an incandescent filament emitting electrons and a plate upon which an alternating voltage is impressed, both placed within an evacuated bulb. Later Dr. Lee De Forest introduced an important modification by placing a wire mesh or "grid" between the filament and the plate. A small voltage variation on this grid produces the same current change through the tube as would a much larger voltage variation on the plate, thus adding amplifying properties to the detector characteristics of the Fleming valve. De Forest called his device the "audion." Later, with superior facilities for evacuation available and with a more intimate knowledge of the laws of thermionic emission from hot bodies, improvements and modifications were made in the audion or vacuum tube by both the General Electric Co. and the Western Electric Co., the latter designating their product as "vacuum tube," and the former the "pliotron." In addition to acting as detectors and amplifiers, as mentioned above, vacuum tubes can function in two other important ways: 1. As oscillators. In properly designed circuits containing inductance and capacity they will act as radio frequency generators for use in transmitting or receiving radio signals. 2. As modulators. By suitable connection to an oscillator circuit or antenna they can be made to vary the power radiated so that the envelopes of the waves transmitted shall have any desired wave form, as, for example, the speech waves from an ordinary telephone transmitter. The most striking use made of vacuum tubes prior to the time we entered the war was the transmission of speech by radio from Washington to Paris and Honolulu during the experiments carried out by the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. and the Navy Department. Vacuum tubes were used as the radio frequency generator for transmitting and for detector and amplifier in receiving. When the United States entered the war, vacuum tubes already were in use by the allied forces for various signaling purposes. The French particularly had been quick to recognize the military value of vacuum tubes and had, previous to June, 1917, developed very creditable tubes and apparatus. In America tubes were in limited use as "repeaters" on telephone lines, and as detectors and amplifiers in laboratories and radio stations. The total production, however, in this country did not exceed 300 or 400 a week. Early in our participation in the war it became evident that vacuum tubes would be required in very large quantities in order to meet the growing demands for radio communication and signaling. It was equally evident that service conditions not hitherto anticipated would require great mechanical strength, freedom from disturbance under extreme vibration, and uniformity of product sufficient to make possible absolute interchangeability of the tubes in sets, without the necessity of readjusting when changing tubes. To these conditions must be added that of minimum size consistent with dependable operation. To make such a device, with its complicated yet accurately constructed metallic system within a practically perfect vacuum, is no small problem even when made in the laboratory on the individual unit basis by a skilled operator who appreciates the delicacy of the job. To turn out tubes by the thousands by factory methods involves almost infinitely greater difficulties. How well certain companies, in collaboration with the Signal Corps, have succeeded in solving these difficulties is indicated by the fact that recently the total rate of production in the United States of high-quality standardized tubes was considerably in excess of 1,000,000 a year. This rate of production could be made many times greater on short notice. As an example of the difficulties which this quantity production has involved may be mentioned that of evacuation. The degree of vacuum required is such that unusual methods of exhaust are necessary. The heating of the tubes in electric ovens is supplemented by heating of the elements of the tube by excessive filament and plate electrical power input. Molecular pumps are employed, necessitating an extremely large number of pumps to handle quantity production. Special treatment of metal arts prior to assembly is employed to reduce the gas given off by them during the exhaust process. Another problem is that of making the complicated metallic structure of all tubes exactly alike in order to insure identical electrical properties. As an indication of progress in this direction it may be stated that one company is prepared to manufacture in quantity a certain tube in which the clearance between filament and grid is only three-hundredths of an inch, the allowable variation being of course only a small percentage of this. Manufacturing in quantity involves careful inspection. The problem of specifying definitely the required performance of tubes the development of adequate testing specifications, the placing of standardized testing and inspection methods, personnel, and equipment in the various factories so that tubes manufactured at different times and places would after passing inspection be uniform and interchangeable--these questions were entirely new and have been solved almost entirely by the Signal Corps engineers. Tubes developed by the Signal Corps may be divided into two general classes--the tungsten-filament types as developed and manufactured by the General Electric Co. and the De Forest Radio Telephone & Telegraph Co., and the coated-filament or Wehnelt cathode types as developed and manufactured by the Western Electric Co. The coated-filament tubes so far have proven superior to the tungsten-filament tubes for Signal Corps use. Both classes have been standardized as regards base, exterior dimensions, filament current and voltage, and, in addition, plate voltage and output for transmitting tubes; and amplifying power and detecting power for receiving tubes. Except in certain special cases, the Signal Corps uses two types of tubes, one for transmitting and another for receiving. The French and the British have been using one type for both transmitting and receiving, but present tendencies of the British are toward different tubes for different duties. Vacuum tubes are now employed for electric-wave detection, radio-frequency, and audio-frequency amplification, radiotelephony, particularly in the airplane radiophone, continuous-wave radiotelegraphy, voltage and current regulators on generators, and for other miscellaneous purposes. However, varied as are the applications at present, the uses, actual and potential, growing out of war-development work have proved that the art of vacuum-tube engineering and the application of its products to radio engineering, telephone and telegraph engineering, and particularly to electrical engineering in general, are still in their early infancy. That vacuum tubes in various forms and sizes will, within a few years, become widely used in every field of electrical development and application is not to be denied. The engineering advancement accomplished in less than two years represents at least a decade under the normal conditions of peace, and our profession will, it is hoped, profit by this particular salvage of war, which offers perhaps the most striking example extant of a minimum "time-lag" between the advanced "firing line" of so-called pure physics and applied engineering. The Chief Signal Officer considers that the work of standardization and quality production of vacuum tubes, accomplished during the last 18 months under the pressure of military necessity, represents an advance in the art of electrical engineering which will prove of inestimable industrial and scientific value to this country and to the engineering world at large. The vacuum-tube development, in common with other radio-development activities of the Signal Corps, has been controlled and directed entirely by the radio-development organization. Vacuum-tube work was carried on by the Research Section and its successor, the technical department of the radio laboratories, both in charge of Capt. Ralph Bown. Other personnel engaged in this work is as follows: Lieut. Brunson, Mr. Keller, Lieut. R. E. Bitner, Lieut. S. S. Mackeown, Lieut. Weeks, Lieut. Stacey, Capt. Webb, Lieut. Batsel, Capt. Gray, and Dr. Richtmyer.

The references to "undampt" waves used Hugo Gernsback's phonetic spelling for "undamped". And what were originally known as "undamped waves" are now generally known as "continuous waves", or "CW".

Radio Amateur News, December, 1919, page 260:

Developing the Radiophone O NE of the most fruitful branches of development in the Radio Art, no doubt lies at present in the radio telephone. The R. T. is nearer to the heart of every radio amateur than any other single thing in wireless, and rightfully so. As I have often pointed out in the past, R. T. will be the amateur's salvation; it is the one great thing that will put American Radio Amateurism in a safe and respected position. The R. T. will lift the now--in many quarters despised--art into the great position it deserves. Up to now Radio has been more or less a plaything, a sport, a sort of diversion for young boys from sixteen to seventy years old. Due to the always present irresponsible element within our midst, radio has often fallen into disrepute, and for this reason new radio bills just now are thicker than flies in the summer. Already radio inspectors are issuing warnings to those amateurs who are again hogging the ether, just as before the war--see this issue for details. What then will happen to us three or five years from now when fifty thousand more of us insist in tapping the key. Simply this: Amateur Radio will be closed down tight by legislation. And there will be no comeback this time, either. If it happens, we will only have to thank ourselves for it. Now, I do not wish to appear as an alarmist, but you will grant that, having had to do more with radio amateurism and radio legislation, than perhaps anyone else in this country since 1904, I ought to see clear and know whereof I speak. As the situation now looks to me, our only salvation lies in the R. T. Once we get this firmly implanted into our minds we will have gone a long way towards the ultimate goal. I need not recite here all the advantages of the R. T. As far as the amateur is concerned--three are sufficient: First, no code need be learned or used; second, a radio phone message takes but a fraction of the time to send compared to a radio telegraph message; third, and most important, the R. T. does away with most of the now dreaded interference. We must therefore devote all our energies in developing the R. T. We must leave no stone untouched to secure results. We must experiment every day till the goal is achieved. And, in passing, the amateur who invents a workable, practical, R. T. outfit that works on six dry cells, will have a fabulous gold mine. Some of our big electric companies will pay a king's ransom for the patent, this very minute. Using the audion as a generator for undampt waves and as a R. T. transmitter is of course a great accomplishment in itself. And the device works well,--better than anything else, so far. But it is not the ultimate goal. Vacuum tubes of the audion type are tricky as yet, and not too practical. Unless you use special tubes--and you can't just now, due to a complicated patent situation--the speech is not always clear, and far from satisfactory. At the critical period, the tubes often "go bluey" and refuse to "talk." Amateurs therefore should look for substitutes of vacuum tubes, or devise other tubes, employing entirely different principles. The writer years ago, experimented with a sort of quenched gap, in a vacuum, also gaps enclosed in different gases. The results, however, were not too encouraging. Trials should be made with plate gaps in various solutions, and effects noted. As a test the microphone can be connected in series with the primary and battery of a spark coil, or transformer. Many vacuum tubes, not necessarily using the Edison effect, could be tried. Tubes with mercury vapor--affording a "sparkless" discharge across an enclosed gap, should be worth while experimenting with. Quenched gaps made of unusual and untried metals or other materials, might unearth unknown and surprising qualities. Has anyone ever tried a spark gap made with ceric iron--the stuff that is used to make cigar lighters? Then, if you do not wish to experiment with any of these, you can fall back upon the arc as a source of undampt waves. Perhaps you can find some materials other than carbon that give a satisfactory arc at a low voltage. Did you know that you can maintain a microscopic arc at about 8 volts with two carbons as thin as pencil-leads. I tried this stunt years ago and it works well. Now if you can impress the voice currents on such an arc and step up your voltage to about 10,000 in order to radiate from your aerial, you will have a fine radio telephone. It should not be impossible to do this. There are a thousand other fascinating stunts that you may try out. Each one may prove to be the "missing link." H. GERNSBACK

Radio News, September, 1924, page 291:

A Sensational Radio Invention By HUGO GERNSBACK REAL radio inventions are very scarce these days. As a rule the latest radio sensation proves to be an adaptation of something that existed before, worked into a novel form. When we, therefore, speak of a sensational radio invention we are aware of the fact that we are using a pretty strong term. Nevertheless, we mean just that. We refer this month to the epoch-making invention of Mr. O. V. Lossev of the Government Radio Electrical Laboratory of Russia. Stated in a few words, the invention encompasses an oscillating crystal. A special form of crystal in a special arrangement is now made to oscillate just exactly as does a vacuum tube. It is now not only possible by means of this invention to receive radio impulses, but to generate and transmit radio waves as well, all by means of the little ubiquitous crystal. In other words, THE CRYSTAL NOW ACTUALLY REPLACES THE VACUUM TUBE. That this is a revolutionary radio invention need be emphasized no further. Dr. Pickard, in this country, we believe, was the first to produce a crystal circuit that actually oscillated. RADIO NEWS in December, 1923, published an account of this exploit. Mr. Pickard, however, was never able, to the best of our knowledge, to obtain worthwhile results from his arrangement. Mr. Lossev, on the other hand, has gone quite deeply into the problem and has solved all the difficulties that lay in his path, in a very brilliant manner. Two of the greatest German authorities, Count Arco and Dr. Meisner, recently visited Mr. Lossev's laboratory. They not only marveled at Mr. Lossev's invention, which is as novel as it is simple, but they were also greatly astonished by the youth and talent of the inventor. From what has been said it will be understood now that he oscillating crystal which RADIO NEWS has termed the Crystodyne Principle can be used in exactly the same manner as any existing vacuum tube. We can not only detect with the crystal, but we can also amplify with it. We may use any number of them in various circuits in order to bring in great distance or to obtain greater power, the same as we do now with the multiple tube sets. In a short time we may speak of three or six crystal sets, the same as we speak now of a three or six tube set. Just as we can transmit radio impulses by means of continuous waves using the vacuum tube, we can now also transmit with the Crystodyne, and, as a matter of fact, a number of students in Russia have actually sent messages with such sets over distances of more than three-quarters of a mile during the past few months. As a side-light of all this, it should be noted that the Editor has always featured the crystal wherever it was possible. He knew that sooner or later just this thing would come about. His many past editorials on the crystal bear witness to this. The oscillating crystal also explains now how some radio experimenters have been able to obtain such remarkable long distance records with crystal outfits. It would seem that wherever these records were made, the crystal actually oscillated in one way or another without the user being aware of it. A curious fact about the new Crystodyne Principle is that it operates exactly as an arc transmitter. While at present only the crystal zincite in connection with a steel point gives the real results, there is no question but that other combinations will be found that will work even better. The thousands of friends of the crystal, when they get busy, will in time no doubt, find the correct measures to produce oscillations from other combinations. That the radio industry is due for an entire revolution through this invention there seems to be no question. But like other revolutionary inventions, the revolution, as a rule, does not come over night. It will take many years for the Crystodyne Principle to be adopted in our radio sets. Three to five years may be necessary before that is brought about. Right here we must sound a note of caution. It must be understood that, for the present, the invention is practically confined to the laboratory and the up-to-date experimenter. It has not become perfected sufficiently to enter into the commercial stage. This lies in the future. As wonderful as the invention is, it still has all the troubles and weaknesses of the crystal. There is the usual cat-whisker contact and the usual elusive sensitive spot. Once the contact is adjusted the Crystodyne works well, but a knock or jar may put the circuit out of commission. If you had a Super-Heterodyne using the Crystodyne Principle incorporating from six to eight crystals, the job of keeping all of them in operation would be a rather difficult one. Of course, vacuum tubes have not this weakness, although they have others. But for surety of operation the vacuum tube today is supreme. It may take many years for the oscillating crystal to be perfected in such a manner that it will supercede the vacuum tube, but we predict that such a time will come. Future improvements of the Crystodyne will probably be along the following lines: perhaps in some form of a synthetic crystal or perhaps some crystal arrangement in a vacuum that is just as fixed as is the present day vacuum tube. There will then of course be no necessity for cat-whiskers and adjusting means. The future Crystodyne receiving set will therefore be rather small, there being no "A" battery required, all the "B" battery voltage being taken from small flashlight batteries which fit right into the set. Such an outfit would require a good deal less room than the present day outfits. In the meanwhile, the Seventh Heaven has been opened up to all dyed-in-the-wool radio experimenters. RADIO NEWS hereby makes it its business to bring to its readers, from month to month, all the new developments of the Crystodyne Principle.

Although there was concern that amateur radio stations would not be allowed to return to the airwaves after the war, in 1919 the wartime restrictions were ended. And the next few years would see tremendous strides, as amateurs adopted vacuum-tube technology and began to explore transmitting on shortwave frequencies, which resulted in significant increases in range and reliability.

Although the transmitting ban on amateur stations wasn't lifted until October 1, 1919, restrictions on private and amateur listening ended on April 15th of that year. Probably no one was happier than Hugo Gernsback, editor of Electrical Experimenter, who celebrated the end of wartime restrictions in his magazine's June, 1919 issue, telling readers in Amateur Radio Restored to expect exciting advances, because "the war has changed everything, for now the radio telephone has come into its own". With the restoration of their hobby, amateur radio operators worked to reestablish themselves. Meeting of the N. E. Wireless Association, from the July, 1919 Radio Amateur News, told how a government District Radio Inspector spelled out the standards to be followed in order to get back on the airwaves. However, some amateurs were guilty of bending these rules. In the April, 1920 Radio Amateur News, Pierre H. Boucheron warned in Two Hundred Meters and What it Means about the need for amateurs to adhere to government requirements, and in particular to "Keep your transmitter on the lawful side of 200 meters". A later article by Boucheron, from the May, 1922 Radio Broadcast magazine, told how an Ohio amateur's sister was Found by Radio after her brother transmitted requests for information about her whereabouts.

Immediately following World War One, the Navy Department attempted to gain a complete government monopoly over all radio communication. That effort failed, so the Navy began to develop ideas for promoting interest in radio, since amateurs were a ready reserve of operators. To that end, on October 5, 1919, a Navy station in New York City inaugurated a nightly broadcast of "various items of interest to the amateur", in order to "maintain the interest of radio amateurs and to train them in receiving code", as reported in Navy to Broadcast News for Benefit of Amateurs, from the December, 1919 Popular Science Monthly. In 1922, Radio News began to print monthly summaries of these transmissions as filler -- the Daily Amateur Radio Broadcast messages for April appeared in the July, 1922 issue. The Wireless Don'ts section of the 1922 edition of A. Frederick Collins' The Radio Amateur's Handbook contained 95 cautions and words of advice, such as "Don't throw your receiving set out of the window if it howls", and, reflecting the superiority of the new vacuum-tube transmitters, "Don't think you have an up-to-date transmitting station unless you are using C.W.", before closing with, "Don't think you are the only one who doesn't know all about wireless. Wireless is a very complex art and there are many things that those experienced have still to learn."

Before broadcasting became popular in the early 1920s, the term "amateurs" referred to all non-professionals interested in radio, including those who merely listened to radio transmissions, which were still mostly in Morse Code. It was only after broadcasting to the general public became common that "amateur" would generally come to have a narrower meaning, of persons who held amateur radio transmitting licences. In 1920 the DeForest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company issued a promotional pamphlet titled "How To Set Up An Amateur Radio Receiving Station". Company president Lee DeForest authored a section, The Fascination of Radio Telegraphy, which noted that because "the Government has removed all war restrictions on the use of wireless by Amateurs, there are thousands more who are already 'listening in' on Radio news, or preparing their apparatus and getting ready for the biggest wave of popularity that Radio Telegraphy has ever experienced". Persons learning about "the coming science" could set up a radio receiver to overhear "Messages that can be picked up by anyone long before they reach the general public through the newspapers." DeForest also extolled "If you haven't a hobby--get one. Ride it. Wireless is of all hobbies the most interesting. It offers the widest limits, the keenest fascination, either for intense competition with others, near and far, or for quiet study and pure enjoyment in the still night hours as you welcome friendly visitors from the whole wide world." (However, some might have warned that DeForest's advice to "ride" the amateur radio hobby could lead to obsessiveness. In his 1911 The Library of Work and Play: Electricity, John F. Woodhull cautioned "How to have compelling interests without riding hobbies is the great problem for both boys and men. As both prevention and cure of the wireless telegraph mania, my method was to encourage my boy to have several hobbies which he might ride with enthusiasm, but to make it a rigorous rule to exchange his 'mount' occasionally.")

The development of vacuum-tube equipment helped to greatly advance amateur radio -- a March, 1921 QST article, Progress, reviewed how over the previous nine years the transmitting range covered by amateur Ralph H. G. Mathews in Chicago, Illinois had increased from only 4 to nearly 3,000 miles (from 6.4 to 4,800 kilometers). Crystal detectors were supplanted by far more sensitive regenerative and superheterodyne vacuum-tube receivers, meanwhile, vacuum-tube continuous-wave transmitters began to replace "King Spark". The better equipment led to successful transatlantic transmissions in 1921, and continued exploration of shorter wavelengths would soon lead to a huge increase in nighttime transmission range and reliability. In 1922, J. O. Smith, operator of Special Amateur station 2ZL, reviewed the ongoing progress in Modern Radio Operation, beginning with the Continuous Wave Transmission by Amateurs section -- this review included Paul F. Godley's prediction that "the day is almost here when spark stations will be of interest as having to do with history only". That same year, Charles William Taussig's The Book of Radio included a chapter, What the Amateur Has Done in Radio, which reviewed the post-war activities plus future goals for amateur radio, and showcased the expanding activities of the American Radio Relay League.

In 1914, Hugo Gernsback predicted, in "A Sermon to Parents", that "Electricity and Wireless are the coming, undreamed of, world-moving forces". Ten years later, with the expanding radio industry now "34th on the list of all the industries in this country", the prospects were even brighter, so Gernsback updated his remarks in the December, 1924 Radio News, and in Your Boy and Radio declared that "Radio to the youth is the best possible foundation of the future self made man." Radio Amateur News, April, 1920, page 548: Two Hundred Meters and What It Means By PIERRE H. BOUCHERON IN a recent article the writer attempted to convey to the general radio amateur what may be called the ethical side of the game; that is, he tried to point out the necessity for applied common sense in reference to present day amateur operating conditions. At the same time he briefly outlined a constructive plan of action, hoping that a word to the wise was sufficient. Since then, however, notices from various parts of the United States and particularly from thickly populated radio traffic centers, such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, have been received, showing that a considerable number of amateurs are rather lax in the manner in which they tune their transmitters. Broadly speaking it would seem that the small number of ten out of every hundred transmitters are tuned on the happy and safe side of 200 meters. The average amateur transmission wavelengths seem to run nonchalantly from 250 to 375 meters. This condition is rather deplorable, as such excessive wavelengths are altogether too close to commercial and official traffic, and may eventually result in drastic laws negative to the welfare of the amateur. For this reason, let us indulge in a straight-from-the-shoulder talk. First, let us review some of the most important existing laws and regulations concerning amateur operation. (a) General amateur stations are restricted to a transmitting wavelength not exceeding 200 meters and to a transformer input not exceeding 1 k.w. (b) When within five nautical miles of a Naval or Military radio station, the transformer input is limited to but ½ k.w. (c) A licensed first grade amateur must be able to receive at no less than ten words a minute, counting five letters to the word. (d) At present local government radio inspectors frequently "listen-in" to the activities of amateurs and when they hear any one transmitting above the lawful wavelength of 200 meters immediately warn them if it is the first offense, or impose a fine of $25.00 on the second offense. When the Department of Commerce ruled 200 meters for amateur use, it meant 200 meters and not 300 to 400 as some seem to think. Watch your step, young gentlemen, and do not overstep the bounds of safety. In erecting your aerial, remember that in order to secure effective transmission at 200 meters, its natural period must not be much over 160 meters. Do not expect to keep within the law if you exceed this limit. If you wish to experiment with long wave, long distance reception by all means do so, but do it on a separate long wave receiving antenna. The writer suggest that you carefully read articles which appear from time to time on antenna design and construction. Above all, be up to date upon this important subject. There is an erroneous impression among some amateurs, who really ought to know better, that much greater distances can be covered by employing wavelengths above 200 meters. This is entirely wrong, for just as good results may be secured on 200 meters or less. The reason many amateurs do not find this so lies with the receiver and not the transmitter. Many amateurs design their receivers for long wave, long distance reception and few pay any attention to the efficient reception of 200 meter wavelengths. If a receiver is properly designed for short wave reception, making it possible for the operator to effectively tune down to 200 or 175 meters, he will discover that just as good results will be possible. Perhaps some of you do not know that dependable undampt transmission is now being accomplisht between New York and Boston amateurs on the comparatively low wavelengths of 150 and 175 meters by the use of Vacuum tubes. In view of this fact do not let anyone misguide you into the belief that much greater range can be obtained on 300 than on 200 meters. It is a simple enough matter to tune your transmitter to the proper wavelength. There is nothing very complicated about a wave meter and a very effective one may be constructed without very much difficulty or expense providing, of course, it is properly and accurately calibrated at the start by the use of another one of standard calibration. If you do not care to trust some one else's home-made instrument, one may be purchased at a very reasonable figure. Write to any well known manufacturer and ask for price quotations. The advertising pages of RADIO AMATEUR NEWS are filled with reputable dealers, while text pages frequently give the construction and calibrating data on this important and valuable instrument. As a matter of fact, every radio amateur should possess a wave meter and should be proficient in its use. Employ it as often as the occasion seems to warrant it, for a slight alteration in your transmitting hook-up may change your wavelength considerably one way or the other. When you have increased or decreased the inductance or capacity of your oscillating circuit, do not resort to the time worn practise of calling your nearby friend and asking him for a correct estimate of your wavelength. He cannot give it to you unless he is equipt with well calibrated measuring instruments. At best, he will only guess at it. A very recent guess of this kind proved to be a mere 100 meters out of the proper and lawful amateur wave length of 200 meters. On the other hand do not overdo the tuning process by placing a "brick" on your transmitter key, as the saying goes, and try out all possible wavelengths on the scale. Another important factor is that of sharp tuning; in other words, the primary circuit of your oscillatory system should be in resonance with the secondary or aerial circuit, which in general means a loose coupling (the degree of which is determined by the use of the wave meter) as distinguisht from close coupling. At the present day, there is altogether too much close coupling in amateur transmission; the obvious reason for this, of course, being the fact that one believes he may be heard more rapidly. Remember that there is only one lawful excuse for close coupling and it is one not to be used by amateurs. Its application is solely resorted to by vessels in distress and never at any other time. Under such conditions the ship operator tightens the coupling of his oscillatory circuit, producing high damping so that his distress signals may be heard over a wide receiving range. Be reasonable. Surely the U. S. government is not imposing upon the American amateur when it limits the operating wavelength of your transmitter to 200 meters. Contrast this law to that of Canada, where the limit is placed at 50 meters. As a Canadian amateur recently remarked "With this short wave we may consider ourself fortunate indeed to cover the extraordinary distance of one mile!" As for democratic England, the would be amateur is simply "out of luck," for no license or permission is at present even obtainable under any condition. From the foregoing, we may therefore deduce the timely moral: Keep your transmitter on the lawful side of 200 meters. The Radio Amateur's Handbook, A. Frederick Collins, 1922, pages 349-355:

WIRELESS DON'TS

AERIAL WIRE DON'TS

Don't use iron wire for your aerial. Don't fail to insulate it well at both ends. Don't have it longer than 75 feet for sending out a 200-meter wave. Don't fail to use a lightning arrester, or better, a lightning switch, for your receiving set. Don't fail to use a lightning switch with your transmitting set. Don't forget you must have an outside ground. Don't fail to have the resistance of your aerial as small as possible. Use stranded wire. Don't fail to solder the leading-in wire to the aerial. Don't fail to properly insulate the leading-in wire where it goes through the window or wall. Don't let your aerial or leading-in wire touch trees or other objects. Don't let your aerial come too close to overhead wires of any kind. Don't run your aerial directly under, or over, or parallel with electric light or other wires. Don't fail to make a good ground connection with the water pipe inside.

TRANSMITTING DON'TS

Don't attempt to send until you get your license. Don't fail to live up to every rule and regulation. Don't use an input of more than ½ a kilowatt if you live within 5 nautical miles of a naval station. Don't send on more than a 200-meter wave if you have a restricted or general amateur license. Don't use spark gap electrodes that are too small or they will get hot. Don't use too long or too short a spark gap. The right length can be found by trying it out. Don't fail to use a safety spark gap between the grid and the filament terminals where the plate potential is above 2,000 volts. Don't buy a motor-generator set if you have commercial alternating current in your home. Don't overload an oscillation vacuum tube as it will greatly shorten its life. Use two in parallel. Don't operate a transmitting set without a hot-wire ammeter in the aerial. Don't use solid wire for connecting up the parts of transmitters. Use stranded or braided wire. Don't fail to solder each connection. Don't use soldering fluid, use rosin. Don't think that all of the energy of an oscillation tube cannot be used for wave lengths of 200 meters and under. It can be if the transmitting set and aerial are properly designed. Don't run the wires of oscillation circuits too close together. Don't cross the wires of oscillation circuits except at right angles. Don't set the transformer of a transmitting set nearer than 3 feet to the condenser and tuning coil. Don't use a rotary gap in which the wheel runs out of true.

RECEIVING DON'TS

Don't expect to get as good results with a crystal detector as with a vacuum tube detector. Don't be discouraged if you fail to hit the sensitive spot of a crystal detector the first time--or several times thereafter. Don't use a wire larger than No. 30 for the wire electrode of a crystal detector. Don't try to use a loud speaker with a crystal detector receiving set. Don't expect a loop aerial to give worthwhile results with a crystal detector. Don't handle crystals with your fingers as this destroys their sensitivity. Use tweezers or a cloth. Don't imbed the crystal in solder as the heat destroys its sensitivity. Use Wood's metal, or some other alloy which melts at or near the temperature of boiling water. Don't forget that strong static and strong signals sometimes destroy the sensitivity of crystals. Don't heat the filament of a vacuum tube to greater brilliancy than is necessary to secure the sensitiveness required. Don't use a plate voltage that is less or more than it is rated for. Don't connect the filament to a lighting circuit. Don't use dry cells for heating the filament except in a pinch. Don't use a constant current to heat the filament, use a constant voltage. Don't use a vacuum tube in a horizontal position unless it is made to be so used. Don't fail to properly insulate the grid and plate leads. Don't use more than 1/3 of the rated voltage on the filament and on the plate when trying it out for the first time. Don't fail to use alternating current for heating the filament where this is possible. Don't fail to use a voltmeter to find the proper temperature of the filament. Don't expect to get results with a loud speaker when using a single vacuum tube. Don't fail to protect your vacuum tubes from mechanical shocks and vibration. Don't fail to cut off the A battery entirely from the filament when you are through receiving. Don't switch on the A battery current all at once through the filament when you start to receive. Don't expect to get the best results with a gas-content detector tube without using a potentiometer. Don't connect a potentiometer across the B battery or it will speedily run down. Don't expect to get as good results with a single coil tuner as you would with a loose coupler. Don't expect to get as good results with a two-coil tuner as with one having a third, or tickler, coil. Don't think you have to use a regenerative circuit, that is, one with a tickler coil, to receive with a vacuum tube detector. Don't think you are the only amateur who is troubled with static. Don't expect to eliminate interference if the amateurs around you are sending with spark sets. Don't lay out or assemble your set on a panel first. Connect it up on a board and find out if everything is right. Don't try to connect up your set without a wiring diagram in front of you. Don't fail to shield radio frequency amplifiers. Don't set the axes of the cores of radio frequency transformers in a line. Set them at right angles to each other. Don't use wire smaller than No. 14 for connecting up the various parts. Don't fail to adjust the B battery after putting in a fresh vacuum tube, as its sensitivity depends largely on the voltage. Don't fail to properly space the parts where you use variometers. Don't fail to put a copper shield between the variometer and the variocoupler. Don't fail to keep the leads to the vacuum tube as short as possible. Don't throw your receiving set out of the window if it howls. Try placing the audio-frequency transformers farther apart and the cores of them at right angles to each other. Don't use condensers with paper dielectrics for an amplifier receiving set or it will be noisy. Don't expect as good results with a loop aerial, or when using the bed springs, as an out-door aerial will give you. Don't use an amplifier having a plate potential of less than 100 volts for the last step where a loud speaker is to be used. Don't try to assemble a set if you don't know the difference between a binding post and a blue print. Buy a set ready to use. Don't expect to get Arlington time signals and the big cableless stations if your receiver is made for short wave lengths. Don't take your headphones apart. You are just as apt to spoil them as you would a watch. Don't expect to get results with a Bell telephone receiver. Don't forget that there are other operators using the ether besides yourself. Don't let your B battery get damp and don't let it freeze. Don't try to recharge your B battery unless it is constructed for the purpose.

STORAGE BATTERY DON'TS

Don't connect a source of alternating current direct to your storage battery. You have to use a rectifier. Don't connect the positive lead of the charging circuit with the negative terminal of your storage battery. Don't let the electrolyte get lower than the tops of the plates of your storage battery. Don't fail to look after the condition of your storage battery once in a while. Don't buy a storage battery that gives less than 6 volts for heating the filament. Don't fail to keep the specific gravity of the electrolyte of your storage battery between 1.225 and 1.300 Baumé. This you can do with a hydrometer. Don't fail to recharge your storage battery when the hydrometer shows that the specific gravity of the electrolyte is close to 1.225. Don't keep charging the battery after the hydrometer shows that the specific gravity is 1.285. Don't let the storage battery freeze. Don't let it stand for longer than a month without using unless you charge it. Don't monkey with the storage battery except to add a little sulphuric acid to the electrolyte from time to time. If anything goes wrong with it better take it to a service station and let the expert do it.

EXTRA DON'TS

Don't think you have an up-to-date transmitting station unless you are using C.W. Don't use a wire from your lightning switch down to the outside ground that is smaller than No. 4. Don't try to operate your spark coil with 110-volt direct lighting current without connecting in a rheostat. Don't try to operate your spark coil with 110-volt alternating lighting current without connecting in an electrolytic interrupter. Don't try to operate an alternating current power transformer with 110-volt direct current without connecting in an electrolytic interrupter. Don't--no never--connect one side of the spark gap to the aerial wire and the other side of the spark gap to the ground. The Government won't have it--that's all. Don't try to tune your transmitter to send out waves of given length by guesswork. Use a wavemeter. Don't use hard fiber for panels. It is a very poor insulator where high frequency currents are used. Don't think you are the only one who doesn't know all about wireless. Wireless is a very complex art and there are many things that those experienced have still to learn.

In 1922 J. Owen Smith was a Radio Corporation of America engineer, and was also an official in the RCA-affiliated National Amateur Wireless Association. At this time Smith operated Special Amateur station 2ZL, located in Valley Stream, Long Island, New York, which he used to test and promote continuous-wave operations, on shortwave wavelengths below the traditional amateur wavelength of 200 meters. Smith's 2ZL was also one the stations heard in England during the historic December, 1921 trans-Atlantic tests.

Modern Radio Operation, J. O. Smith, 1922:

Pages 77-78: CHAPTER IX

Continuous Wave Transmission by Amateurs

For a long time before the war the operators of amateur radio stations had discussed the possibility and practicability of the use of continuous wave transmitters for amateur work. Many theories, data and a few facts were submitted from time to time to prove that continuous wave transmission on short wave lengths was both possible and impossible. The advantages of continuous wave transmission, especially its economy and greater flexibility as compared to spark transmission, made its general use by amateurs highly desirable. The deterrent features were the impossibility of easily securing the means of generating undamped waves, and the important fact that continuous waves on short wave lengths were declared by many to be impractical, as it was believed that the slightest change in the characteristics of the transmitter, or the transmitting antenna system would cause audibility changes that would make successful reception impossible. After the ban on amateur transmitting had been lifted, a small supply of transmitting tubes became available and amateur experimenting with C.W. transmitting outfits started in earnest. Thousands of amateurs had used continuous wave transmitters on short wave lengths during the war in various branches of the service. Consequently had become more or less familiar with the general methods and results. As their actual experience with these sets had been more or less confined to attaching wires to binding posts on the outside of cabinets, they found considerable difficulty in securing and assembling the various parts and elements necessary. But it takes brains, energy and perseverance to be a successful amateur, and what might have proved a tough proposition to any other class or set of human beings didn't stop the determination of Young and Old America to possess a reliable, practical C.W. transmitting set. And so the work went on, causing more than one enthusiast to lose more hours of sleep than would possibly be sacrificed by the average person, that is, provided said average person desired to continue to live. A one amateur aptly expressed it, paraphrasing a well-known song--"The hours I spent with thee, dear set." But perseverance will generally win out sometime or other and the result of the untold hours of study and work on the part of the amateurs finally resulted in a finished product. A professional systematizer would undoubtedly suffer mental torture and anguish could he see the numberless types and specimens of C.W. outfits in use by amateurs today, for it would be practically impossible to find two that look as though they were even distantly related, but the important fact is, they work. Starting with the basic parts, a source of plate potential, a tube, or tubes, a home-made coil or two and what other miscellaneous junk could be borrowed or otherwise secured, these ambitious amateurs have always managed to get some amount of undamped energy into an antenna. Some of the circuits which have been tried and tried and tried were really wonderful creations. Some were plain and simple. In fact some were so simple as to be foolish. Others were complicated beyond description. The writer can readily recall his early attempts to secure reliable information on C.W. sets. To the best of his knowledge and belief, the crop totalled something like seventy-five different circuits, all of which were thrown into the waste basket with disgust after many weary hours of wasted trial and effort.

pages 82-83: THOUSAND-MILE AMATEUR RADIOPHONE

The remarkable distance records made by amateur radio stations using continuous wave transmitters with several 5-watt tubes in multiple, are matters of common knowledge. The fact that a set, employing two or three of these small tubes, with approximately an ampere or more of current in the antenna, has been heard and worked by stations 1,000 or 2,000 miles away, causes no special interest at the present time. Experiments at 2ZL station, Valley Stream, Long Island, covering several weeks, during 1920, with transmitting sets employing 5-watt tubes, clearly demonstrated that the signals from such sets are subject to practically the same conditions as damped transmitters, where the distance between the transmitting and the receiving station is more than the regular daylight range of the transmitting station, especially where the C.W. output is modulated in some manner. The foregoing, however, applies only to general conditions. On nights when the stations of the Eighth District, particularly those in Ohio, were inaudible on Long Island, 2ZL, using straight or modulated C.W., was also inaudible at several Eighth District stations, listening on a pre-arranged schedule. When the signals from Eighth District stations were audible on Long Island, the signals of 2ZL were copied in Ohio. During these tests one point of considerable importance developed. On nights when spark stations in the Eighth District "swung" so badly as to make consecutive reading of their signals impossible with two steps of audio-frequency amplification, the straight C.W. signals from 2ZL were reported as being good and steady, and consecutive reading was entirely possible. Summarized, this established the fact that, while the signals from 2ZL were subject to general conditions over long night distances when they were heard at all they were much more steady and reliable than spark signals. It should be remembered also, that the input of the tube transmitter at 2ZL was about 160 watts, plate and filament, as compared to 1,000 watts input--without counting the energy used to run the usual non-synchronous rotary spark gap--in the case of the Eighth District spark stations. After the experiments with the transmitter employing the 5-watt tubes had been carried on for several weeks at 2ZL, and the reports of the listening stations carefully studied, it became evident that the signals of such a small set were entirely satisfactory over distances up to 100 miles. Later on it was decided to increase the power of the set. It was not practical, of course, to use more than three or four 5-watt tubes, because the small added output of more tubes does not warrant the additional expense of the tubes or the extra filament and plate power. As the only obtainable tubes of increased size over 5 watts are of 50-watt output capacity, it was decided to install a transmitter employing tubes of that size, in accordance with figure 26. Right here is where the writer got into the same predicament as the man who caught a wildcat by the tail--he sure started a fine bunch of trouble for himself. It seemed logical to suppose that to install the 50-watt tubes it would only be necessary to insert the new tubes and sockets, supply proper filament and plate voltage and shoot the moon. But it was somewhat different before a smooth working 100-watt set was finally developed. The characteristics of the larger tubes were such that their output was 50 watts on 1,000 volts plate potential. Of course, it was decided, amateur fashion, to get every single possible watt out of the tubes.

pages 87-89:

The signals of 2ZL were reported from stations at the following points while using the set just described and 2ZL worked with a number of them: Miles-- Air Line from 2ZL Miles-- Air Line from 2ZL Palm Beach, Fla. 900 New Orleans, La. 1,079 Stanbridge East, Quebec 350 St. Paul, Minn. 1,025 Little Rock, Ark. 1,025 Kansas City, Mo. 1,080 Chicago, Ill. 725 Louisburg, Nova Scotia 550 Detroit, Mich. 500 Montreal, Quebec 350 St. Louis, Mo. 850 Marion, Mass. 220 Houston, Tex. 1,286 Memphis, Tenn. 925 Port Arthur, Tex. 1,265 Grand Forks, N. D. 1,300 Ellendale, N. D. 1,330 Minneapolis, Minn. 1,025

Using one tube as an oscillator and one as modulator the voice has been reported from Marion, Mass.; Boston, Mass.; Memphis, Tenn.; Anderson, Ind.; Niles, O.; Washington, D. C.; Rochester, N. Y.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Cambridge Springs, Pa.; and Montreal, Quebec, and many other points, and two-way communication has repeatedly been carried through successfully; 2ZL by voice and the other stations replying by spark. The work done when using straight or unmodulated C.W., established new records and distances for amateur C.W. transmission, at that time, in that daily schedules were maintained with the following points: Savannah, Ga. (4XB); Salem, Ohio (8ZG); Canton, Ohio (8ZV); Langley Field, Va. (XF-1). Occasional communication was established with Madison, Wis. (9XM), and Minneapolis, Minn. (9XI). On one or two occasions when communication had been established with Western stations, it developed that no Eastern amateur spark stations had been heard at Western stations, and no Western ones at 2ZL. The straight C.W., however, was going through without any trouble. Slight fading was noticeable, but of a longer period and more gradual character than in the case of spark signals. Insofar as the dependable daylight range of the set was concerned, distances varied with the method of transmission or modulation. Using straight C.W., 2ZL was copied repeatedly during daylight over varying distances up to 200 miles, the greatest distance having been Boston, Mass. Conclusive tests to determine the maximum C.W. daylight range were not made, but it is believed that with three amperes of straight C.W. in the antenna it should be possible to communicate with stations 300 miles distant during fairly favorable daylight conditions. With the output of the set at 2ZL modulated by buzzer, daylight communication has been successfully carried on with stations 150 miles distant, although the reception, of course, called for careful tuning and generally much preliminary transmitting for adjustment of the receiving sets. With voice modulation, during daylight, conversation with stations seventy-five miles away has also been successfully carried on. When the two tubes were used in multiple, with the tone wheel chopping the grid-leak current, the received signals were several times the audibility of buzzer or voice modulation. As a summary, the dependable daylight ranges of a set with approximately three amperes in the antenna, can be reasonably assumed to be as follows: Straight C.W. 200 miles Buzzer modulated 75 miles Voice 75 miles Tone wheel chopper 100 miles

When these ranges and the flexibility of the set are considered, and also the fact that the total input of the set, plate and filament, under all conditions of transmission never exceeded 350 watts, the very great advantage of C.W. transmission over the usual spark method is readily apparent. As a side light on the voice transmission tests made at 2ZL, at that time a letter was received from an amateur in a little town with a population of 160, located thirty miles South of Memphis, Tenn., saying that he frequently heard the phone at 2ZL station. He stated that he used a small aerial and only a single tube as a detector. He said that he and his people liked to listen to the phone and requested that the voice be used often, that music be played occasionally as he and his people enjoyed listening to it. Wonderful and mysterious are the ways of C.W. transmission when an amateur in Tennessee, 925 miles distant, regards a radiophone concert for his benefit by another amateur station in the vicinity of New York as an ordinary matter. With the set previously described all then known amateur C.W. transmission records were broken by 2ZL and 5XB stations on February 11th and 12th, 1921. The latter is the station of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, located at College Station, Texas. The transmitter used there consists of three 5-watt tubes, the total input plate and filament being approximately 175 watts. The overland air line distance between the two points is 1,500 miles. The two stations were in communication occasionally during the winter of 1920-21 and messages were exchanged successfully in both directions.

pages 91-94:

Some experiments were made at 2ZL to determine the practicability of employing wave lengths below 200 meters in connection with tube work. A separate antenna, considerably smaller than the main antenna regularly used, was used for this short wave work. This smaller antenna was about 60 feet long overall and consisted of four wires. Considerable work was done on 175 meters. The antenna current on this wave length being two amperes, it was found entirely possible to work 100 miles in daylight on this wave length without trouble with that amount of current in the antenna. The antenna current on 150 meters was in the neighborhood of 1½ amperes. As practically no amateur stations were equipped with receiving apparatus which would accommodate a wave length of 150 meters, however, it was found impossible to make any experiments on this wave length to determine the daylight range of the set. When the transmitter was adjusted to a wave length of 175 meters it was found, in at least three instances, that the receiving operators had to adjust their secondary circuit variometers at zero in order to hear the signals. When the wave was further reduced it was found impossible to "raise" any of the listening stations. After communication had been carried on for some time on 175 meters considerable comment was made by other amateur stations on the desirability of working on that wave length because of the absence of interference and very little trouble was experienced from atmospheric disturbances on nights when static was giving considerable trouble on wave lengths above 200 meters. A great deal has been heard from various points to the effect that it is difficult or impossible to secure sufficient antenna current on a wave length of 200 meters to enable the transmitting station to work any respectable distances. It would seem that this condition is due entirely to the fact that many amateurs attempt to adjust C.W. outfits to a 200-meter wave on an antenna with a fundamental wave length of 200 meters, which arrangement, of course, precludes sufficient coupling in the tuning arrangement to allow free oscillation of the set. It is, however, entirely possible to work on 175 meters with tube transmitters, without trouble, providing the antenna system is of the proper size for that wave length. The idea that tubes will not operate and generate power on 200 meters is an absolute fallacy which has evidently arisen through lack of knowledge, or because of misinformation. Tubes will oscillate on short wave lengths just as well as on long wave lengths, providing an antenna of the proper characteristics is used.

THE AMATEUR TRANS-ATLANTIC TRANSMISSIONS OF DECEMBER, 1921

The story of the amateur trans-Atlantic tests of December, 1921, is so well known, that it seems unnecessary to tell more than a condensed story of the unprecedented accomplishment in these pages. At the first national convention of the American Radio Relay League, held at Chicago, during the summer of 1921, it was decided to send Paul F. Godley to Europe, with proper receiving equipment, to determine if the signals of American amateur stations could be heard across the ocean, an approximate distance of 3,000 miles. Preliminary trials were held during November and all amateurs were invited to participate, with the understanding that 1,000 miles must be covered to make any station eligible to enter the trans-Atlantic trials on an individual basis. Twenty-seven stations qualified and to each one a group of code letters was assigned, as well as a definite period of transmission. Free-for-all periods for each district were also set apart each night and all stations were invited to participate. The result was not at all what had been expected. Many of the stations which had qualified in the 1,000-mile preliminaries were not heard on the other side at all, while several stations which failed to qualify or which had not participated in the preliminaries were heard, either by Mr. Godley or by English and Dutch amateurs. One station, 2AJW, heard by Godley, employed 5-watt tubes, the input being approximately thirty watts. Several other stations which were not heard at all by Mr. Godley were copied by English amateurs and the code-words verified, precluding any error in reception. A complete list of stations heard by Mr. Godley at Adrossan, Scotland, is as follows:

Spark: 1AAW, not yet located; 3FB, Atlantic City, N. J. 1ARY, Burlington, Vt. 8BU, Cleveland, Ohio; 1BDT, Atlantic, Mass. 9ZJ, Indianapolis, Ind. 2BK and 2DN, Yonkers, N. Y. 3BP, Newmarket, Ontario. 2EL, Freeport, L. I. Continuous Wave: 1ARY, Burlington, Vt. 2ARY, Brooklyn, N. Y. 1BCG, Greenwich, Conn. 2AJW, Babylon, L. I. 1BDT, Atlantic, Mass. 2BML, Riverhead, L. I. 1BGF, Hartford, Conn. 2EH, Riverhead, L. I. 1BKA, Glenbrook, Conn. 2FD, New York City 1RU, Hartford, Conn. 2FP, Brooklyn, N. Y. 1RZ, Ridgefield, Conn. 3DH, Princeton, N. J. 1XM, Cambridge, Mass. 2ACF, Washington, Pa. 1YK, Worcester, Mass. 8XV, Pittsburgh, Pa.

with the probability that 4GL, Savannah, Ga., was also heard. During the tests the following American stations were heard by English amateurs: 1BCG, Greenwich, Conn. 1AFV, Salem, Mass. 1UN, Manchester, Mass. 1XM, Cambridge, Mass. 1ZE, Marion, Mass. 2FP, Brooklyn, N. Y. 2BML, Riverhead, Long Island. 2ZL, Valley Stream, Long Island.

All the stations heard by the English amateurs used C.W. transmitters during the tests. Practically every type of circuit was employed, as 1BCG used D.C. on the plates, 1ZE Kenotron-rectified, 60-cycle A.C., 2FP 500-cycle A.C., 2BML half-wave rectification of 60 cycle A.C., and 2ZL full-wave rectification, 60-cycle A.C. In commenting on the result of the tests. Mr. Godley made the following statement: "In glancing over the above lists one is struck by the preponderance of the C.W. stations, and by the fact that the British heard C.W. stations only. That can mean only one thing, that C.W. is far superior, and I should like nothing better than to see all amateurs change over to continuous wave at once. Spark methods are horribly out of date and are so inefficient, comparatively, as to be ridiculous, were it not that many have invested good money in spark equipment. Station 1AFV, since the tests, has gotten three messages across to England (London) on 200 watts of C.W. Many stations of the Atlantic seaboard are reaching to the California coast with similar powers, while the west coast stations have been shoving signals into the Hawaiian Islands. The day is not far distant when amateurs the world over will be exchanging greetings in many languages, and by the same token, the day is almost here when spark stations will be of interest as having to do with history only." The set used at 2ZL station at Valley Stream, L. I. when signals from the station were heard in England, employed two 250-watt Radiotrons, UV-204, in a full-wave rectification circuit.

CHAPTER XV

WHAT THE AMATEUR HAS DONE IN RADIO

When, just prior to the formulating of the present radio laws, in 1912, the right of the amateur radio enthusiast was being challenged, much was heard pro and con concerning the usefulness or uselessness of the private wireless station. Against the amateur wireless operator, it was stated that he was a nuisance, that he interfered with commercial stations and government stations, and that he pursued radio only to amuse himself, at the expense of the public in general. His opponents were unmerciful in their condemnation. The champions of the amateur were somewhat vague in their praise of him. "Embryo Engineers," "Inventors in the Making," "Future Commercial Wireless Operators," were some of the commendable appellations given him. Wild speculations as to his possible use, in case of war, were indulged in by those who sought to have the amateur protected by law. Just why the amateur finally did become a protégé of the United States Government is not clear, unless it was to defeat the somewhat selfish motives that prompted his opponents, for he was not particularly worthy, in those days, of government protection. Perhaps, however, our lawmakers were farsighted, and had faith in American youth, and saw what lay hidden in Young America's apparently useless hobby. Ten years have passed since Uncle Sam promulgated a law which forever assured to the American radio amateur certain definite rights. In no other country, is the private citizen allowed such freedom in radio as in the United States. Just as the Constitution of the United States provides for free speech, so the Radio Law of 1912 provides for free ether. "What has the amateur done in the past ten years, to justify the privileges granted him by his government?" Such was the question the writer put to Hiram Percy Maxim, the inventor of the famous Maxim Silencer, and President of the American Radio Relay League, an organization of 10,000 amateur wireless operators. Seated around a small table in the grill of the Hotel Bond in Hartford, were Mr. Maxim, the writer, Kenneth B. Warner, Secretary of the League, and his assistant, R. L. Northrop. Mr. Maxim told the following story: "Early in April, 1917, a Captain in the Army, with whom I was well acquainted, telephoned me and asked if I would call and see him. I called on him and he told me that in all probability war would be declared and they would require a great many radio operators. He further stated that the Army was faced with a shortage of radio operators, and that they did not have the proper machinery or organization to teach them. Owing to my connections with the American Radio Relay League the Captain thought that I might be able to assist him. I promised to do what I could. "As soon as war was declared, we appealed to the amateurs, through our official paper Q S T, to enlist. Their response was instantaneous and, in thirty days, we supplied 2,000 expert radio operators to the Army and Navy. Before the war was over, 3,500 members of the American Radio Relay League were serving Uncle Sam in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps."

Mr. Warner, at this point, interrupted in order to emphasize what it meant to the Army and Navy to have such a large number of trained radio operators ready for service. ["During the war" said Mr. Warner], "I was an instructor of radio operators. I found it difficult to turn out a good operator in less than six months. Had we not been able to draw in such large numbers from the amateur ranks, we would have been in a sorry predicament. British and French officers, whom I met in the course of my work, expressed admiration for our foresight in having such an army of radio operators ready for immediate call. The officers of these countries told me that they were severely handicapped in not having radio operators, and they blamed this on the fact that both their countries had very strict laws, practically prohibiting amateur radio, as it is practiced in the United States. These officers stated that they intended to bring pressure on their respective governments, in order that some of the restrictions which hampered the amateur might be lifted. France was somewhat successful in this, and now has a large number of amateurs."

Mr. Maxim then told how an amateur, Charles E. Apgar, of New Jersey, in the autumn of 1914, recorded the signals sent out from the German-owned radio station at Sayville, Long Island, on an Edison dictaphone, and caused the United States government to close down the German station, thus preserving our neutrality. It seems that Apgar, shortly after the declaration of war in the summer of 1914, listened one evening to Sayville sending out messages to Nauen, Germany. One of the messages was as follows: "Ship 300,000 shovels express C.O.D." This message did not appear to Apgar as being "on the level." There was something peculiar about a shipment of 300,000 shovels to he expressed C.O.D. He decided to keep a record of what Sayville was sending, and with the ingenuity so often shown by American amateurs, he secured an old Edison dictaphone and connected it to his receiving apparatus. Every dot and dash sent out by Sayville was registered on the waxen cylinder. Cylinder after cylinder was impressed with Sayville signals. After having collected a great many, he took them to Radio Inspector Terrell. Inspector Terrell turned the cylinders over to the Secret Service. A few nights afterwards, Apgar was called on the telephone. It was Detective Burns of the Secret Service. Could Apgar see him? Certainly! Burns called on Apgar and arranged to receive further messages on the amateur's radio receiver. They bought a new dictaphone and recorded everything sent out by Sayville. A short time later, Detective Burns brought suit against the German wireless company, who owned the Sayville station, on the grounds that they were violating the neutrality of the United States. In a short time, the Sayville wireless station was taken over by the Government. Thus did the amateur again justify his existence. One of the most useful features of amateur radio is the wonderful organization that has been built up, to a large extent through the efforts of Hiram Percy Maxim. Though a middle-aged man, with steel-gray hair, Mr. Maxim seems to be more the average American boy with a hobby, than an internationally-known inventor. In talking amateur radio with Mr. Maxim, you strike a sympathetic chord, and you are not surprised that 10,000 boys, girls, men and women have gathered around him to form one of the most typically American and useful amateur organizations in existence. Mr. Maxim does not claim the credit, which is surely his, for this achievement in organization. "It is the bond of the American Radio Relay League," he said. "There is an invisible link that binds all radio amateurs to one another, and to their organization. No doubt, it is the romance of radio that is the cause, for surely a man cannot sit in his room evening after evening, and exchange greetings, messages and ideas with a fellow man, five, six, seven, eight hundred, a thousand miles away, without feeling some tie to him, other than the ether waves." "Just what is the purpose of the American Radio Relay League, Mr. Maxim?" He turned to Mr. Warner, who recited the following, just as he might recite any creed which was almost a part of him: "A national, noncommercial organization of radio amateurs, banded for the more effective relaying of friendly messages between their stations, for legislative protection, for orderly operating, and for the practical improvement of short wave radio communication." The organization is divided into seventeen operating districts, covering the entire United States, Canada, Alaska, and the Hawaiian Islands. At the head of the Operating Department is F. H. Schnell of Hartford, Conn., who is the Traffic Manager. It might be mentioned here that Mr. Schnell and Mr. Warner are the only paid officers of the League, and they are paid because it is necessary for them to give their entire time to the League. Each division is headed by a Division Manager, who has one or more assistants. The Manager has charge of all amateur radio communication in his district. There are also a District Superintendent and City Managers in each district. The personnel of the system of nation-wide relaying consists of 400 radio operators scattered over various trunk lines throughout the country. Every town and city in the United States has one or more radio stations, in consequence of which messages can be sent to almost any part of the United States via the American Radio Relay League's trunk lines and other amateur stations. No charge is made for any of this work. Recently, a test was made for speed in handling traffic and a record was made by transmitting a message from Hartford, Conn., via the American Radio Relay League stations to Los Angeles, Calif., and transmitting a reply from Los Angeles to Hartford, which arrived there 6½ minutes after the first message had been sent. Whereas, this speed is not regularly accomplished, it indicates what can be done by amateurs in cases of emergency. In winter, rush messages via amateur radio can be counted on to average one hour across the continent. In summer, when atmospheric conditions are not so good, somewhat longer time is taken. An average of 30,000 messages are sent to various parts of the country via American Radio Relay League stations, every month. Since the memorable achievement late in 1921 of American amateurs transmitting across the Atlantic Ocean on short wave lengths and with limited power, amateurs in France and in England are regularly picking up American Radio Relay League stations. Owing to the strict regulations, limiting amateur transmitting stations, actual exchange of messages is not, at the moment, possible. It is to be hoped, however, that the time is not distant when the governments of Great Britain, France and other European countries will recognize the value of amateur radio and lift some of the regulations that prevent long distance transmission. Recently Mr. Maxim received a letter from General Ferrie of France, who has charge of radio in that country, saying that the French amateurs expected to attempt radio communication with America in a short time. How great a step toward international amity will be taken, when John Smith of Meriden, Conn., will be able to sit in his home of an evening, and carry on a conversation with his friend François in some little French village! Or, the rivalries of some international sporting event can be aired via ether waves between two amateurs, one in London and the other in New York. This is not a vague dream; it merely requires a change in government regulations abroad. America has done her part toward this end. Transmission of radio messages across the Atlantic has been accomplished by American amateur stations, using as little power as five watts, which is considerably less power than is required to light an ordinary electric lamp. On October 6, 1920, Messrs. Harold and Hugh Robinson of Keyport, New Jersey, were heard talking over their radiophone by a station in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Among the more recent accomplishments, Mr. Maxim told me of the extension of the American Radio Relay League relay system to the Hawaiian Islands. Mr. Clifford S. Dow, call letters 6ZAC, located at Wailuku, Maiu, Hawaii, handles the traffic for this outlying territory of Uncle Sam. Only the night previous had Mr. Maxim sent a message to Mr. Dow. "I transmitted it directly from Hartford to a station in West Virginia for relaying to Hawaii," said Mr. Maxim. "It was the first message thus routed, and I wager that the West Virginia amateur nearly fell off his chair when he saw the address." All this relay work is accomplished, using the limited wave lengths and power allotted to the amateur by United States regulation. "Mr. Maxim, some people have the idea that amateur radio serves no useful end, other than the amusement it affords the amateur himself. Are you acquainted with any work done by the amateurs of your organization which can be considered of service to the public ?" Mr. Maxim's eyes sparkled as he replied, "The radio amateur is always ready to be of service and needs no prompting to show him his duty in time of need, as is shown in the following incident: "During the latter part of February, 1922, a terrific sleet storm and blizzard visited Minnesota and near-by territory. Wire communication from Minneapolis and St. Paul, to the outside world, was completely destroyed. On the evening of February 22d, at 6 o'clock, the wire service went out of commission. Minneapolis was completely cut off from the rest of the country. No messages could reach the city, nor could any go out. The Minneapolis Tribune appealed to the University of Minnesota, which had a radio installation, and asked them to get news for its morning issue. Therefore, 9XI (those being the call letters of the University of Minnesota) attempted to get into communication with the outside world. They succeeded in communicating with 9ZS in Indianapolis, but, due to the terrific atmospheric disturbances, were unable to secure any news. At 2 o'clock in the morning, the University of Minnesota communicated with Morris MacCabe, station 9AXF, at No. 1223 Foster Ave., Chicago, Ill. Before any traffic was handled between these two stations, the Associated Press opened up line communication to Chicago by a roundabout series of connections, which took in Vancouver, Denver and St. Louis. Early on the morning of the 23d, this line also went out of commission, and with it the entire service of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company. The Telephone Company immediately set out to repair the lines, but requested that some of the Minneapolis and St. Paul amateur radio stations get in touch with Chicago. The University of Minnesota, another station with the call letters 9ZT, and Albert P. Upton, No. 2328 Taylor St., Minneapolis, Minn., all proceeded to establish communication. At 10 o'clock in the morning, the station of Donald Clair Wallace of No. 823 Snelling St., St. Paul, Minn., call letters 9DR, raised 9MF at St. Cloud, Minn., and also Ivan J. Bullock, No. 1004 North Ave., Fairmount, Minn. "All these connections were made before noon. At noon, St. Cloud was in touch with Brainard, and also with 9BAC, some miles to the north. Fairmount had by that time gotten in touch with New Ulm, Minn., and before the end of the afternoon, a network had been established to Le Mars, Iowa. Every hour, the entire system was checked. From Le Mars, communication was had with Davenport, Iowa, and from there to Rood House, Ill. This network of amateur radio stations was the only communication to be had in the district until 4 o'clock in the afternoon, when the telephone line was reestablished. Station 9XT and 9ZT not only succeeded in getting into communication with Chicago, but copied press from the Government Station at Arlington, Va., which they turned over to the local newspapers. Mr. J. F. Carpenter of the University of Minnesota, is the manager of the City of Minneapolis for the American Radio Relay League, and it was largely due to his direction that this network was formed. He stayed at his post, routing messages and keeping the ether clear, for 40 hours without sleep." Various feats of this sort, accomplished by the American Radio Relay League, are published in their official organ Q S T, and serve as examples of how every amateur is expected to act in cases of emergency. "At another time," said Mr. Maxim, "Kenosha, Wis., was completely isolated by a severe blizzard. All the wires were down. There were wrecks and snowdrifts blocking the railroads. Most of the power lines were down, and besides there was no coal for the power station. The factories stopped running and almost every amateur aerial was on the ground. Not to be daunted, however, several amateurs constructed emergency aerials in the attics of their houses, and one succeeded in putting an aerial on the roof of a mill. With spark coil and storage battery, they rigged up temporary transmitters and after a short time succeeded in communicating with a naval station at Manitowoc, Wis. Through the naval station, the outside world was made aware of Kenosha's plight, and relief was sent at once. The municipal authorities utilized the amateur stations to send messages of civic importance directing their rescuers. Through these amateur stations, the railroad was assisted in the work of reëstablishing its lines. Coal, food and medicine were requested andAlthough still unfocused, scattered broadcasting activities, taking advantage of the improvements in vacuum-tube equipment, expanded when the radio industry returned to civilian control.

Broadcasting experimentation, in most cases using vacuum-tube transmitters, accelerated beginning in 1919, especially after the end of the wartime civilian radio restrictions. In late 1918, A. A. Campbell Swinton, in an address to the Royal Society of Arts in London, suggested that radio was poised to develop in its "proper field" of "communication of intelligence broadcast over the earth", as reported in New Possibilities in Radio Service from the December 28, 1918 issue of Electrical Review. Swinton's talk dealt mainly with the idea of transmitting news accounts to tickers located in businesses and private homes. (In Device to Supplant News Tickers, from the February, 1920 Radio Amateur News, Guglielmo Marconi wrote about plans to change ticker connections from fixed telegraph lines to the flexibility of radio transmissions, which would make possible mobile tickers located in automobiles.) However, Swinton also envisioned the possibility, in the near future, "of a public speaker, say in London, in New York or anywhere, addressing by word of mouth and articulate wireless telephony an audience of thousands scattered, may be, over half the globe." Meanwhile, responding to the existence of a niche consumer market, a short notice appeared in the October, 1919 issue of QST announcing the availability of a Jeweler's Time Receiving Set, sold by the Chicago Radio Laboratory, which was "ideal for the jeweler to whom receipt of time signals is a matter of business and who cannot spare the time to learn the operation of a more complicated set". A 1921 catalog from the William B. Duck Company noted that "All the progressive jewelers are taking advantage of the time being sent out daily by a great number of Government Naval Radio Stations" and offered a Type RS-100 Jewelers Time Receiver, manufactured by the DeForest Radio Telephone and Telegraph Company, which, when combined with a loud-speaker, promised to be an "exceptional commercial value to the jeweler since the time signals may be heard all over his store, and should produce an excellent advertisement for his business".

The pioneer broadcast which appears to have had the most international impact was Nellie Melba's June 15, 1920 concert transmitted from the Marconi station at Chelmsford, England, which was reviewed in Radio Concerts by Hugo Gernsback for the September, 1920 issue of Radio News, Melba Entertains Europe by Wireless Telephone in the July 10, 1920 Telephony and A "Wireless" Concert, in the June 18, 1920 issue of The Electrician. (Some of Dame Nellie's earlier Covent Garden concerts had been carried over the London Electrophone.) Numerous broadcasting experiments were also taking place throughout the United States, although at the time most had only a local impact. The independent nature of these efforts later led to conflicting claims about primacy, still being sorted out. But, separately, for a variety of reasons, the possibilities of broadcasting were starting to be developed in earnest. A few of these pioneering stations, in 1919 and 1920, included: • A station located at the Glenn L. Martin aviation plant in Cleveland, Ohio, under the oversight of F. S. McCullough, which transmitted a concert on April 17, 1919, and was also reported planning weekly broadcasts, according to the August, 1919 Electrical Experimenter: Caruso Concerts to Amateurs by Wireless 'Phone.

• WWV, set up as an experimental station in 1919 by the Bureau of Standards in Washington, District of Columbia. An Almost Unlimited Field For Radio Telephony, which appeared in the February, 1920 Radio Amateur News, enthusiastically reviewed a test broadcast by WWV, noting that recent advances meant radio was poised to make "Edward Bellamy's dream come true", for soon it would be possible to transmit entertainment directly to homes nationwide. The May, 1920 issue of the same magazine reported on the continuing tests in Washington Radio Amateurs Hear Radio Concert, while Music Wherever You Go, which appeared in the August, 1920 Radio News, reviewed the Bureau's "Portaphone", a portable radio receiver designed to allow people to "keep in touch with the news, weather reports, radiophone conversations, radiophone music, and any other information transmitted by radio". And a report in the October, 1920 Scientific American Monthly, Radio Music, noted that the Bureau's Radio Laboratory was now broadcasting Friday-night concerts, and "the possibilities of such concerts are great and extremely interesting".

• 2XG, Lee DeForest's experimental "Highbridge station", which returned to the New York City airwaves after being shut down during the war. On November 18, 1919, the station broadcast on-the-scene reports from the Wesleyan-New York University football game, as reported in Foot Ball Score--Via Wireless Telephone by Morris Press in the December, 1919 Radio Amateur News. A report in the January, 1921 QST noted that the company was now offering a nightly news service broadcast.

• 8XK, beginning in late 1919, licenced to Westinghouse engineer Frank Conrad, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An early report on this experimental station, Amateur Radiophone Concerts, ran in the January, 1920 Radio Amateur News.

• DeForest Company engineer Robert F. Gowen's experimental station in Ossining, New York, 2XX, which beginning in late 1919 made test voice and music transmissions, reported by Gowen in Some Long Distance Radio Telephone Tests from the April, 1920 Electrical Experimenter, and by Marlin Moore Taylor's Long-Distance Radio Talk With Small Power, from the April, 1920 Telephone Engineer. These tests were followed by more comprehensive entertainment programs, including one featuring Broadway's Duncan Sisters, reviewed in "Radio Vaudeville" Heard Miles Away from the May, 1921 Science and Invention.

• 1DF, an amateur station operated by A. H. Wood, Jr., of Winchester, Massachusetts, which was reported by the February, 1920 QST to be transmitting concerts on weekday nights and Sunday afternoons.

• A station at McCook Field conducting point-to-point communication and broadcasting tests, according to William T. Prather's report, Radio Telephone at Dayton, Ohio, in the May, 1920 Radio Amateur News.

• 8XB, beginning in early 1920, an experimental station operated by the Precision Equipment Company in Cincinnati, Ohio: 8XB First Station to Radiocast, by Lt. H. F. Breckel, Radio Digest, October 4, 1924.

• A cluster of stations in the San Francisco Bay area, an early example of which was reported in American Legion Couples Dance to Music by Radio from the March, 1920 Radio Amateur News. The most prominent, however, was Lee DeForest's experimental station 6XC, the "California Theater station", beginning in April, 1920. Wireless Telephone Demonstration in San Francisco, an early report on 6XC's activities, appeared in the August 21, 1920 issue of Telephony, while Talking to a Nation by Wireless, from the September 1, 1920 Journal of Electricity, reviewed a broadcast by 6XC of a talk by American Radio Relay League president Hiram Percy Maxim, who predicted that someday radio broadcasts would have audiences in the millions. Radio Telephone Development in the West, an overview of early regional radio activity by Harry Lubcke, comes from the February, 1922 issue of Radio News.

• 9BW, Charles A. Stanley's amateur station in Wichita, Kansas, which in mid-1920 featured Sunday night sermons by Dr. Clayton B. Wells, reviewed in Enter--The Radio Preacher, Radio News, November, 1920.

• 8MT, an amateur station operated by Robert M. Sincock in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A one-line notice in the June, 1920 QST reported that the station was being used to "broadcast information on entries, schedules, etc., for the races to be held at the Uniontown Speedway".

• A concert performance by the Georgia Tech band in Atlanta, Georgia, transmitted by radio through the efforts of Sergeant Thomas Brass, as reviewed in the July, 1920 issue of Telephone Engineer.

• May L. Smith in Manchester, New Hampshire, who in mid-1920 was featured as the first prize amateur station winner in the August, 1920 Radio News: Radio Station of Miss May L. Smith.

• 2AB, the amateur station of Morton W. Sterns in New York City, which Concerts de 2AB in the August, 1920 QST noted was broadcasting regular Friday evening and Sunday morning concerts.

• 2XJ, AT&T's experimental station in Deal Beach, New Jersey, whose weekly Tuesday night concerts, consisting of "selections by famous artists, band music, humorous pieces and lectures" were reported by Bright Outlook for Amateur Radio, in the October, 1920 Radio News, along with the prediction that "the next five years will see many radical changes". This station also inspired a whimsical innovation by W. Harold Warren, reviewed in The Radiophone on Roller Chairs, Radio News, August, 1920.

• 8MK, an amateur station on the air beginning August, 1920 for the Detroit News: WWJ--The Detroit News (extract), by the Radio Staff of the Detroit News, 1922.

• Plans by the Michigan Agricultural College in East Lansing, Michigan for "a regular wireless telephone service, through which weather reports, crop reports, extracts from lectures on agricultural topics, etc., will be disseminated", reported in Michigan College Plans Wireless Telephones for Farms from the August 14, 1920 Telephony.

• 9BY, an amateur station licenced to the Young & McCombs Company in Rock Island, Illinois, which the September, 1920 QST reported was planning Thursday evening concerts, to begin around September 1st.

• 2ADD, an amateur station licenced to the Union College Electrical Laboratory in Schenectady, New York, which began weekly Thursday night concerts in October, 1920, according to Jetson O. Bentley in Radiophone Concerts, from the December, 1920 QST.

In the June 8, 1919 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, Francis A. Collins' When the President at the Phone May Speak to All the People foresaw the imminent expansion of radio broadcasting into a nationwide service, reviewing the "astonishing advance of wireless by which a single voice may actually be heard in every corner of the country", as recent radio advances were poised to "work a revolution comparable to that of the railroad and the telegraph". In the June, 1920, Electrical Experimenter, "Newsophone" to Supplant Newspapers reported on a proposed news service by recorded telephone messages, and also predicted that readers could expect to soon see "radio distribution of news by central news agencies in the larger cities, to thousands of radio stations in all parts of the world", which would mean that "any one can simply 'listen in' on their pocket wireless set". And the San Diego Sun noted Nellie Melba's Chelmsford concert and Dr. Clayton B. Wells' weekly sermons, as reprinted in the Current Radio News section of the September, 1920 Pacific Radio News, and wondered -- "Why can't all the world listen in?" After the development of the telegraph, it was quickly discovered that the long lines used were often affected by mysterious induced electrical currents. And contrary to some of the speculation in this article, the effects actually weren't related to the weather, but instead were caused by radiation produced by solar flares.

New York Times, January 12, 1873, page 3:

THE ELECTRIC WAVE.

Manifestations of the Phenomenon in Western States Last Week. From the Chicago Tribune. Jan. 9.

The storm which has just come over us from the North-west is a doubly remarkable one. Aside from its intolerable severity, it was accompanied by an electric storm, which is, in itself, a phenomenon. For two days past, the electric wave has swept over Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Northern Illinois, rendering many of the telegraph wires entirely useless. This phenomenon is peculiar to the Winter season. The electricity pervading the atmosphere is not manifested in thunder and lightning as in Summer, but is frequently attended by brilliant auroral displays. These electric storms are most powerful when accompanied by high winds and falling snow. The fact that lines running east and west, or north and south, are alike affected, renders it extremely difficult to trace the origin or direction of the electric wave. Though not particularly unusual, it is still a phenomenon long familiar to telegraphers and electricians, yet little understood. Doubtless the United States Signal Service, with its abundant facilities for the collection of information, and the ability and opportunities to carefully and scientifically analyze them, will be able to deduce therefrom new and valuable electric laws intimately relating to the remarkable rain and snow-storms that occasionally deluge the country. The electric waves--so troublesome to the telegrapher--are variable in length, and vary from a second to one minute in duration. At times they act in conjunction with the battery current upon the wire, their united force grinding through the instruments with astonishing power, burning off the insulated covering from office wires, and melting the corners of brass machinery. All the marvellous power of lightning is displayed, though with less tension. No electricity is discernible upon the wires, and only at points where there are slight breaks is the flash visible. Extreme force is rarely exhibited. The storm generally expends itself in waves of moderate length, which rapidly follow each other, rendering the adjustment of instruments difficult, and the transmission or reception of messages impossible. An interesting feature is developed sometimes, when the atmospheric current runs in opposition to the battery power, and they neutralize each other, rendering the wires lifeless for the nonce, and indicating quite clearly that both are of equal strength. Were it not so, the stronger would neutralize the weaker, and still have power left for manifestation on the line. These considerations have led to a discovery that is grandly sublime. When the electric wave is of considerable duration and power, the operators have been known to let go their batteries, detach the wires, carry them to the ground, and, by means of the electric throbs, messages have been transmitted entirely independent of the ordinary auxiliaries. Many such instances are on record among telegraphers, but the experiments are necessarily brief, and, in practical results, unsatisfactory. In large telegraph-offices, where numerous wires centre to a common switch-board, the brass straps and faces are often illuminated by a constant succession of flashes interchanged between the several lines, which are harmless unless touched, and are beautifully attractive, especially at night. Yesterday afternoon this wonderful achievement was exemplified in the general office of the Chicago and North-western Railway. The chief operator took out both keys and left the wire to Clinton, Iowa, open at both ends. So fully surcharged with electricity was the atmosphere, that the wire could be easily worked without the use of the battery; indeed the force was greater with the key open than with the aid of the battery. The electric storm of Tuesday and Wednesday has been of unusual duration. It displayed the greatest severity in Iowa and out on the Western plains, placing an embargo upon telegraph communications with the Pacific coast. During its prevalence, a strong wind from the west and north-west, accompanied by a slight fall of snow has also prevailed. At Boone, Iowa, on the line at the Chicago and North-western Rail way, the switch-board was enveloped in a sheet of flame. In Minnesota, the telegraph wires were down all Wednesday. No warning ominously heralds the approach of these electric storms, and their departure is equally abrupt and unexpected. They come without any apparent change in the external condition of the temperature or weather--approaching and vanishing in obedience to a law as yet beyond human comprehension--irritating the operator, perplexing the philosopher, hindering journalists, and annoying the public generally. Although details are sparse, for this experiment Lee DeForest appears to have used an arc-transmitter, originally developed by Valdemar Poulsen, and an electrolytic receiver, originally developed by Reginald Fessenden. And the lack of continued experiments showed that audio radio transmissions were still far from being perfected enough to go into commercial operation.

New York Times, March 8, 1907, page 16:

MUSIC BY WIRELESS TO THE TIMES TOWER __________

Telephone Messages Also Received Through the Ether. __________

A HINT OF WHAT MAY BE __________

By and By You Can Talk to Your Wife When She's on a Steamer Out at Sea.

__________

To the top of the Times Building from Telharmonic Hall at Broadway and Thirty-ninth Street, music and telephone messages were sent by wireless last night. The message received varied in importance, from "Harriman has not yet butchered the Government" to "soon every up to date reporter will be equipped with a wireless telephone, which he will ground with his heel in the mud and through which he will tell his city editor that the rumor that Mrs. Blank has abandoned her poodle dog is false." After many messages had been received in this way the Telharmonium people began to send their music through. While the music was being received the wireless stations at 42 Broadway, in Bridgeport and at the Brooklyn Navy Yard cut in with their irregular beat of Morse. All this came to the twenty-fourth floor of THE TIMES Building. There the receiving apparatus was arranged. From it two wires led up to the top of the flagstaff on the tower. On the top floor of the Telharmonic Building was a transmitting apparatus connected similarly with two wires leading to the flagpole of that building. At the sending end was the source of the current, which was strong enough to light five thirty-two candle-power incandescent globes. By means of an oscillator the direct Edison current was changed into high frequency oscillating currents. These caused the radiation of electric waves from the ends of the flagpole wires at Thirty-ninth Street into the ether. The frequency of these currents is too great to be detected by the human ear at the receiver in telephoning; so a microphone with a diaphram was inserted in the oscillating circuit in such a way that the vibrations of the diaphragm were reproduced with perfect fidelity at the receiving end. Dr. Lee De Forest of the De Forest Radio Telephone Company, inventor of the wireless telephone, began to receive the messages in THE TIMES tower just before 8 o'clock. He explained that the electric waves, varying in intensity according to the vibrations of the voice at the other end of the wireless line, were transmitted from the flagpole wires at THE TIMES end to a cup of fluid whose resistance to a secondary current of electricity was in direct ratio to the intensity of the waves received. This secondary current of electricity, which flowed from a dry-cell battery through a tiny telephone line entirely at the receiving end was in reality a local telephone for the transformation of modulated electric waves into vibrations which could be distinguished by the ear as sounds. Consequently, with a receiver over the ears not unlike an ordinary telephone receiver, the listener could not only hear words, but all other sounds originating at the transmitting end. As the pitch used was much the same as that of wireless telegraphy, the occasional breaking in of the wireless stations could not be obviated, though later experiments with the pitch will change this. The sending of the music was a different process. By means of induction, the electric current of the Telharmonium plant was made to induce its modifications in the Edison current, so that the electric waves eventually were heard as music. Dr. De Forest will now increase the area of his experiments. Using his laboratory as a sending station, he will receive at different points of increasing distance. Eventually, probably some time this Summer, he will set up a station. He hopes to effect an arrangement with some railroad which employs a fleet of tugboats so that by using the regular telephone into his station from their own offices they can be put into direct communication with their tugs in the bay and the rivers. In the future he believes that a man, sitting in Bridgeport at the telephone in his own house, by calling up the De Forest station, can talk to his wife as she sails for Europe, even after she is out of sight of land. The wireless telephone has the advantage of not requiring the services of an operator. Dr. De Forest began experimenting with his present apparatus last December. He had, however, obtained patents some five years ago. His earlier experiments were purely laboratory ones designed to increase the articulation. The perfection of the wireless telephone will also mean that houses will not have to be wired to receive Telharmonic music. With a receiver they can take it from the air.

Although experimenter Nathan Stubblefield worked in the "wireless" communication field, it appears that he employed short range conduction and induction, and not radio signals. Although Stubblefield himself was honest, his patents fell into the hands of stock promoters, and eventually became part of the Continental Wireless Telegraph & Telephone Co., which was shut down by federal regulators in 1910 for fraud.

Scientific American, May 24, 1902, page 363:

THE LATEST ADVANCE IN WIRELESS TELEPHONY.

BY WALDON FAWCETT.

The latest and one of the most interesting systems of wireless communication with which experiments have recently been conducted is the invention of Nathan Stubblefield, of Murray, Ky., an electrical engineer who is the patentee of a number of devices both in this country and abroad. The Stubblefield system differs from that originated by Marconi in that utilization is made of the electrical currents of the earth instead of the ethereal waves employed by the Italian inventor, and which, by the way, it is now claimed, are less powerful and more susceptible to derangement by electrical disturbances than the currents found in the earth and water. In this new system, however, as in that formulated by Marconi, a series of vibrations is created, and what is known as the Hertzian electrical wave currents are used. The key to the methods which form the basis of all the systems of wireless telephony recently discovered--the fundamental principles of wireless telephony, as it were--was discovered at Cambridge, Mass., in 1877 by Prof. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone system which bears his name. On the occasion mentioned Prof. Bell was experimenting to ascertain how slight a ground connection could be had with the telephone. Two pokers had been driven into the ground about fifty feet apart, and to these were attached two wires leading to an ordinary telephone receiver. Upon placing his ear to the receiver, Prof. Bell was surprised to hear quite distinctly the ticking of a clock, which after a time he was able to identify, by reason of certain peculiarities in the ticking, as that of the electrical timepiece at Cambridge University, the ground wire of which penetrated the earth at a point more than half a mile distant. Some five years later Prof. Bell made rather extensive experiments along this same line of investigation at points on the Potomac River near Washington, but these tests were far from satisfactory. It was found on this occasion that musical sounds transmitted by the use of a "buzzer" could be heard distinctly four miles distant, but little success was attained in the matter of communicating the sound of the human voice. Meanwhile Sir William Preece, of England, had undertaken experimental study of the subject of wireless telephony, and during an interval when cable communication between the Isle of Wight and the mainland was suspended, succeeded in transmitting wireless messages to Queen Victoria at Osborne by means of the earth and water electrical currents. Mr. Stubblefield's experiments with wireless telephony dated from his invention of an earth cell several years ago. This cell derived sufficient electrical energy from the ground in the vicinity of the spot where it was buried to run a small motor continuously for two months and six days without any attention whatever. Indeed, the electrical current was powerful enough to run a clock and several small pieces of machinery and to ring a large gong. Mr. Stubblefield's first crude experiments looking to actual wireless transmission of the sound of the human voice were made without ground wires. Nevertheless, by means of a cumbersome and incomplete machine, without an equipment of wires of any description, messages were transmitted through a brick wall and several walls of lath and plaster. As the development of the system progressed, the present method of grounding the wires was adopted, in order to insure greater power in transmission. The apparatus which has been used in the most recent demonstrations of the Stubblefield system, and which will be installed by the Gordon Telephone Company, of Charleston, S. C., for the establishment of telephonic communication between the city of Charleston and the sea islands lying off the coast of South Carolina, consists primarily of an ordinary receiver and transmitter and a pair of steel rods with bell-shaped attachments which are driven into the ground to a depth of several feet at any desired point, and which are connected by twenty or thirty feet of wire to the electrical apparatus proper. This latter consists of dry cells, a generator and an induction coil, and the apparatus used in most of the experiments thus far made has been incased in a box twelve inches in length, eight inches wide and eighteen inches in height. This apparatus has demonstrated the capability of sending out a gong signal as well as transmitting voice messages, and this is, of course, of great importance in facilitating the opening of communication. The most interesting tests of the Stubblefield system have been made on the Potomac River near Washington. During the land tests complete sentences, figures, and music were heard at a distance of several hundred yards, and conversation was as distinct as by the ordinary wire telephone. Persons, each carrying a receiver and transmitter with two steel rods, walking about at some distance from the stationary station were enabled to instantly open communication by thrusting the rods into the ground at any point. An even more remarkable test resulted in the maintenance of communication between a station on shore and a steamer anchored several hundred feet from shore. Communication between the steamer and shore was opened by dropping the wires from the apparatus on board the vessel into the water at the stern of the boat. The sounds of a harmonica played on shore were distinctly heard in the three receivers attached to the apparatus on the steamer, and singing, the sound of the human voice counting numerals, and ordinary conversation were audible. In the first tests it was found that conversation was not always distinct, but this defect was remedied by the introduction of more powerful batteries. A very interesting feature brought out during the tests mentioned was found in the capability of this form of apparatus to send simultaneous messages from a central distributing station over a very wide territory. Extensive experiments in wireless telephony have also been made by Prof. A. Frederick Collins, an electrical engineer of Philadelphia, whose system differs only in minor details from that introduced by Mr. Stubblefield. In the Collins system, instead of utilizing steel rods, small zinc-wire screens are buried in the earth, one at the sending and another at the receiving station. A single wire connects the screen with the transmitting and receiving apparatus, mounted on a tripod immediately over the shallow hole in which the screen is stationed. With the Collins system communication has been maintained between various parts of a large modern office building, and messages have been transmitted without wires across the Delaware River at Philadelphia, a distance of over a mile.

The Electrician (London), October 14, 1898, pages 814-815:

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

Elsewhere in our issue this week will be found a lengthy report of the second ordinary general meeting of the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. (Limited), which was held on Friday, the 7th inst. The speech of the Chairman and Managing Director (Mr. H. J. DAVIS) will, we are sure, be read with great interest by our readers, and especially by those who have been watching the development of wireless telegraphy from its earliest stage. These latter are now able to recognise in the formulæ of the electromagnetic theory of CLERK MAXWELL the tiny germ of a commercial system for the transmission of intelligence. Commencing thus as a mere mathematical theory, based upon the experimental investigation of the relation between optical and electro-magnetic phenomena, the science and industry of wireless telegraphy has undergone a process of development which cannot fail to interest equally the pure scientist, the practical engineer and the man of commerce. Succeeding the purely theoretical aspect in which it was viewed in the Maxwellian formulæ, its next development was the practical experiments of HEINRICH HERTZ, who was really the first actually to transmit energy across non-conducting space in the precise manner in which it now serves to convey the signals used in the Marconi and allied systems of wireless telegraphy. For some considerable time the scientific aspects of this development completely obscured its more practical applications. Scientists were so charmed with the experimental evidence it afforded as to the validity of MAXWELL'S electromagnetic theory, that for many years the fact that these experiments possessed any practical value as a means of signalling between two pieces of disconnected apparatus almost escaped their notice. Thus all the essential features of this method of signalling were really outlined in scientific laboratories long before any idea of utilising them for commerce had occupied prominent attention. It is true that the suggestion was cursorily thrown out, by one or two leaders of science, that the Hertzian waves might be utilised for signalling; but this suggestion was never more than a mere bald idea, conveying no practical directions as to its detailed working, and it was generally received with curiosity rather than with any serious idea of putting it into practical use. Although, therefore, as we have said, the principles of wireless telegraphy and the essential details for its operation were worked out in scientific laboratories, all honour is due to Signor MARCONI for having been the first to bring prominently forward before official bodies and the public the possibility, and, indeed, the eminent practicability, of using Hertzian waves for telegraphing between two places not connected by an electrical conductor. For some considerable time experiments on the Marconi system were carried out in this country by the inventor under the ægis of the Post Office but, from various causes, this fraternisation did not lead to the new system of telegraphy being generally taken up by the Post Office. Eventually Mr. MARCONI'S patents were acquired by a Company, an ordinary general meeting of which we have just alluded to. This Company owns not only the British but a very considerable number of foreign patents, having actually sealed no less than 22 out of applications for 29. Its operations, therefore, extend considerably beyond the area controlled by the Post Office. Indeed, as will be learned from the Chairman's speech, the major part of its operations have recently been--and give, promise of being even more markedly in the future--greater at sea than on land. We need not particularise in this respect the successes which have been made in the communication between moving vessels and coast stations, for details of these will be found in our report of the meeting. We have more than once discovered not a little curiosity among the public, and in the electrical profession, as to the particular means by which the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. proposes to obtain a dividend-bearing revenue. In order to pay a reasonable dividend upon the original capital of £100,000--which it is now proposed to increase to £200,000 by the creation of a further batch of £1 shares--a very considerable annual revenue would have to accrue; and where this is to come from is, in the minds of some individuals, somewhat of a riddle. We think, however, that it is not as insoluble as the riddle of the Sphinx; for although at present the operations of the Wireless Telegraph Co. are being carried on apart from any licence from the Post Office--which, it will be remembered, holds the monopoly of all systems of electrical signalling for the business of transmitting messages in this country--a wide field of activity for this company might very well be profitably tilled outside of the particular area which would have to be sanctioned by the Post Office. In other words, even though the Post Office should place a veto on the transmission of inland telegrams by wireless telegraphy, there are a number of other applications quite sufficient, if properly developed, to pay a handsome dividend upon the comparatively modest capital of this undertaking. It will be observed, for example, that negotiations are now on the point of being concluded between the Company and Lloyds, which, if carried into practical effect, will probably result in an extensive application of wireless telegraphy for signalling between Lloyds' stations and outward and homeward bound vessels passing along the coast. When it is remembered that the radius of practical working of the Marconi system over the sea has been proved to be at least 25 miles, and has been shown to be not injuriously affected by changes of weather, there will be no difficulty in recognising that, from this application alone, an extensive revenue from royalties might be acquired. Indeed, it is not at all beyond the bounds of practical possibility for the whole of the English coasts--as, indeed, also foreign coasts--to be dotted with wireless telegraph signalling stations keeping up a constant communication with the mercantile and naval fleets near the shores. Then, again, there is the application of wireless telegraphy for lighthouses and lightships, and for communicating between these and the shore. The lighthouses and lightships themselves can now be equipped with an apparatus more far-reaching and more certain in its action than the fog-horn or the lantern. Ships carrying wireless telegraphic receiving apparatus could be warned, at a much greater distance than hitherto, of the approach of danger; and captains and masters could carry on a definite conversation with the occupants of the lighthouse or lightship. That this might, in certain circumstances, be infinitely more serviceable than the short signal of a ray of light or the fog siren, it will readily be seen. Again, it seems not improbable that the commercial development of ship's apparatus for wireless telegraphy will speedily lead to the abandonment of the time-honoured nautical practice of signalling with flags--a tedious process at the best, and one that is often full of uncertainty, if not of absolute error. We recollect, for example, an ocean tramp signalling to a liner in mid-ocean "What is your longitude?" and being tendered in reply, "Have you seen any ice?" the first question being completely misunderstood. Had the two vessels been equipped with efficient Marconi apparatus, not only would the error not have arisen, but copious information as to the whereabouts of the unfortunate tramp could have been supplied to her all the time she was above the horizon of the liner. Turning from sea to land, we find, as we have already indicated, a more circumscribed field of application for telegraphy without line wires. Even were the Post Office to grant a licence for the ordinary business of transmitting inland telegrams, we doubt whether much more would be done than can probably be legally undertaken without that licence. True, there are rare cases where, as Dr. LODGE once expressed it, it might be advantageous to "shout" the message, spreading it broadcast to receivers in all directions; and an instance may arise in the case of press messages. Little or nothing is to be generally gained by using ether waves radiating in all directions; and, indeed, some inventors have sought to discover means whereby the waves might be focussed. We are inclined to accept the view confided to us by a well-known physicist, that the most effective mode of directing and focussing ether waves is to use a conducting wire--ordinary line telegraphy, in fact. There is nevertheless one application of telegraphy on land which has not received the attention it merits, and the efforts to accomplish which have hitherto not been commercially successful. We refer to the sending of messages between a moving train and any other point either stationary or in motion. The most obvious example is the establishment of continuous communication between a signal-man in his box and a driver in his engine cab. Hitherto this has been attempted by various systems of electro magnetic or electrostatic induction; but there would appear to be far more chance of success with the use of Hertzian waves. Other applications of wireless telegraphy it will require but little technical knowledge and scant imagination on the part of any reader, to discover; and it is not difficult to perceive that the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co. possesses a property which, if carefully developed, can readily be made to flourish, as well for the shareholders as for the benefit of the community at large.

The Electrician (London), January 28, 1898, pages 452-453:

HERTZIAN TELEGRAPHY AT THE PHYSICAL SOCIETY.

For reasons which are fairly obvious, the Physical Society is not remarkable for overcrowded meetings, but on Friday last the Society and its visitors taxed to the utmost the accommodation of the Chemical Society's room in Burlington House. The occasion was to hear Prof. OLIVER LODGE'S discourse on "Wireless Telegraphy," as the new telegraphy is popularly termed. An unannounced event opened the proceedings, when Prof. FITZGERALD exhibited some photographs, sent by Mr. TOLVER PRESTON, showing the spectra of zinc, cadmium and iron, exhibiting the Zeeman effect. The action of the magnetic field on different lines varied considerably, and in some cases where a triple line should appear a doublet was seen or a quadruplet, the two inner members or which were comparatively faint. Arguing on the generally-accepted theory of the Zeeman effect, the varying action of the field on different lines can scarcely be due to difference of amplitude, except indirectly, or in so far as the amplitude depends upon the mass of that portion of the atom which takes part in the vibration corresponding to the particular line. In applying, however, any results based upon the preliminary assumption of a comparatively simple vibrating system, it must be remembered that the iron atom is not likely to be a very simple affair, or it would not have so many distinct periods of vibrations as are indicated by the number of the lines in its spectrum. The whole question of the revolution of the electrically-charged atom or of the charge on the atom has acquired increased interest in another direction by Prof. FLEMING'S hypothesis as to the structure of the ferromagnetic molecule. But this takes us quite beyond the range of the Physical Society's meeting, and of the subject of Hertzian signalling. After drily remarking that the public seem to think they want "wireless telegraphy," Prof. LODGE said that in 1894 he had not considered it likely his researches would have any practical value in this direction. Incidentally, he mentioned that the title given to his Paper on the agenda was incorrect; he had proposed "Signalling without Connecting Wires"--one of the best names yet suggested for the erroneously-termed "wireless telegraphy." As to the practical applications, there were occasions when one wanted to "shout to the world"--as in distributing political speeches to the Press--and for such a purpose the Hertz-wave and the coherer might be of service. But did not Prof. LODGE forget that no one wants to pay for shouting to the world on a system by which it would be impossible to prevent non-subscribers from benefitting gratuitously? In respect of practical signalling, the whole matter is to arrange some way in which there can be a sufficient degree of "tuning." Prof. LODGE'S exposition of the conditions that an apparatus must comply with to be able to permit of this was a good example of the scientific rather than the haphazard method of invention. The first thing needful is to have a persistent vibration to which to tune, and not one that dies off rapidly and irregularly. This at once excludes the simple RIGHI transmitter. To get persistency, capacity is necessary; the period can be altered by varying either capacity or self-induction. Prof. LODGE introduces both into his system, and tunes with the latter. The coherer is connected up with the resonator in such a way as not to damp the vibrations, but to take the overflow when resonance is set up. The receiver is therefore a real resonator, and not a mere collector of vibrations. The receiver closely resembles the transmitter, except, of course, that the spark gap is removed from the former; the most markedly novel feature is the coil of copper introduced between the two triangular wings. An incidental result of the method of tuning is that the waves used are over 80 yards long. From one point of view this ought to be no disadvantage, since the "shadow" of any obstacle of moderate size would be so much the shorter. In fact, the Hertz-wave would bend round behind it as much as a sound-wave does. Once upon a time Prof. LODGE used to work with 8in. waves. The length of Mr. MARCONI'S waves was about 4ft. On the other hand, it appears that little has been done in the way of getting a plane wave-front--in other words, sending signals in a specific direction. The dimensions of a reflector such as would be required to work effectively with waves 90ft. in length would seem startlingly large, and any method of directing them other than by reflection does not appear hopeful. It was laid down by a famous bishop, of splendid memory, that a needle could support upon its point eleven angels. There certainly seems mystery and virtue enough in a needle's point to lend probability to the truth of the bishop's dictum. Prof. LODGE tells us that the coherer may advantageously be reduced to a single contact--i.e., that a needle pressed against a flat spring is, of all coherers, the most sensitive, and that it possesses the further merit of requiring no mechanical "tapping-back." Who then, we may ask, would suffer the pangs of questioned priority, the difficulties of adjustment, and the doubtful working of a mass of filings, when better things may be attained with a bare bodkin? The needle-point coherer, however, has its drawbacks, one of which is that in certain conditions it is too sensitive; but in suitable circumstances it may be made to give better results than a Branly tube. In fact, the single-contact coherer works best with what Prof. LODGE called "electrical tapping-back." The resistance-change produced by the oscillations is found to be almost simply proportional to the power of the received Hertz-waves; moreover, a weaker discharge following a stronger is able nearly to restore the resistance to its first value. If our memory serves us aright, an effect akin to this was observed about ten years ago by Prof. MINCHIN, in relation to his photo-electric cells. One of these cells, under certain conditions, became insensitive to solar radiations, and its sensitiveness could be restored in one of two ways, namely, either by mechanical or acoustical tapping of the cell or its support, or by connecting a small battery of a few volts to the electrodes of the cell. It is surprising that the actinic aspect of the "coherer" problem has received so little attention. Prof. MINCHIN'S cell engenders electromotive force when exposed to light; that is its proper function, and it is intimately associated with the coherer--for it is alive, as the coherer is, to Hertz-waves, and to mechanical and electrical tapping back. Can the coherer be rendered sensitive to light? We suggest that it is highly probable that it can. The "big new tower" mentioned in this article was a reference to the on-going construction of the Navy's new high-power station, NAA, in Arlington, Virginia.

Electrician and Mechanic, October, 1912, pages 256-258:

WIRELESS TIME FOR JEWELERS*

H. E. DUNCAN

When the sale of a timepiece is made, it is safe to assume that the purchaser has in mind a certain degree of time-keeping excellence in his purchase, and that he should not be disappointed in this respect. If his purchase was based on the claims of the $1 pocket clock made in its advertisements, or worse still, the claims of the department stores of "the best at one-half price," that fill our daily press, it is my opinion that he will be disappointed, and in his dissatisfaction he will blame the jeweler or his workman. How many dealers in watches--I call them the legitimate jeweler and the watchmaker--are today beyond the possibility of being classed under the many uncomplimentary heads named by the dissatisfied purchaser? Gentlemen, this condition will remain as long as you continue to sell timepieces without knowing yourself how well they will run before you sell them. When selling you are asked to warrant them, and you do so. Why is not such a procedure a plain gamble on your part? You do not know how they will run. You think the manufacturer has had that in hand, and you will take a chance on that; so does the department store owner, and his chances of success are as good as yours. If all watches remained in the condition in which they left the hands of the makers, then would the purchaser judge the watch and its makers by its performance when he got it; but if through some cause they are not in that condition, then by proper timing will they tell where they are at? Do you yourself know this, or do you take your chances--gamble, I call it? A standard, Webster defines as something established by authority, and standard time in the United States is obtained from the Naval Observatory at Washington, D.C. or its only branch at the navy yard, Mare Island, on the Pacific coast.

TIME FROM STAR TRANSITS

They obtain their time from star transits, noting the error of their clocks, as ΔΤ (Delta Tau). Now this means that their clocks are never on exact time, and they are positive of their error only at the instant of observation. After that it is based on what the clock or standard has done in the past, and what it will probably do up to the instant of the next observation; and this is called the projected rate. They can tell you to the fraction of a second how much each clock varies from this standard--the fixed stars--at any day, hour and minute of the year past, but not for the year to come, as that is not known. Once a day they set a secondary clock, or transmitting clock, as near as possible on time without the error of the standard clocks (and it is very close on time you may feel confident), and at about noon they connect this clock with the Western Union Telegraph Company lines, and they transmit the beats of this observatory clock over their lines for five minutes. Any failure to transmit these beats, or inaccuracy in doing so, is not the fault of the clock; it is due to the telegraph company, and the limitations of its instruments and electrical conditions. The United States Naval Observatory can tell you each day what the slight error of their transmitting clock was. Who can check up on the time taken from the wires? Is it the same as that sent out by the Naval Observatory? Now, one step more. The Naval Observatory makes no charge for the standard time to any one, but can you get it for nothing? If so, it is not the usual experience. But, gentlemen, we are on the eve of a new condition--a condition I am pleased to state that the company I represent has already availed themselves of obtaining the "ticks" of the Naval Observatory transmitting clock by wireless waves. This new method of transmission is in its infancy now, but it is not too early for you to study up a little and get in line to keep in your proper position before your public as the local authority for standard time.

THE WIRELESS WAVES

Before considering the necessary equipment to grab the time signals as they go by as wireless waves we will first take up the wave itself. You must not lose sight of the fact that with the making of the wave, or, in plainer words, the transmission of the signal, we will have nothing to do. We must put all our attention on detecting the passing of a wave. First, let us take the air as an example of motion. With a fan in your hand you can so wave the fan that a person near you can feel the motion (a breeze you may call it); and if the motion of the fan is not too rapid, you can count its vibrations by counting the impulses you feel in the air. You will also note that the more power you put into the fan's motion the greater will be the effect in moving the air (let us call it air waves). Most things in the path of these air waves will interrupt or deflect them, or neutralize the power expended in moving the fan. We could go further as an example of these waves and say that if they were counted we can classify many of them by pitch or musical tones. Four hundred and fifty waves per second is one of the standards. While sound will travel in the form of waves in the air it will not do so in a vacuum; yet light will. And accepting the scientific explanation that light travels as waves and can be reflected, condensed and dispersed, that it will pass through a vacuum, but sound will not. Then light doesn't depend on air to transmit its waves. Now light is made up of waves of different length; mix them all up and we have white light, or daylight; but science says there are many kinds of light waves we do not see with our limited eyesight. Some of these light waves are not put out of commission, but go on or pass through many things that we once thought would stop light; but science proved itself correct with the X-ray. It requires the sensitive photographic plate to record their passage; the human eye can not do it.

ETHER WAVES

Now we come to this fact, that while sound will travel as air waves, light must use some other medium; something that is more fluid or flexible than air, and this medium is called ether. As water will flow between rocks or sand, so will ether flow through almost all known matter, but not always with the same ease or freedom; and this is called resistance. Magnetic and light waves are both waves of the ether in motion but at different speeds or rapidity of vibration. The United States government will transmit the wireless time signals. At first they may not have in mind the jeweler, but later they will be recognized and their wants will be freely met by a suitable service. I am at present using a Clapp-Eastham receiving set, contained in a mahogany box on a shelf on the wall, and the reading of the signals is made with a pair of telephones with a head strap. The next thing required is the aerial, or antenna. There are many kinds of these, but they may be briefly described as a grid of about 150 ft. of wire suspended in mid-air and a vertical wire leading from the grid to the instruments. As we fail to detect the X-ray waves of light with the human eye, so will the human ear fail to detect the magnetic waves of the wireless signal. In the former instance we use the photographic plate; in the latter, the telephone. Wireless waves at the rate of 100,000 per second are about the slowest of any practical value. In the establishment of a receiving station in the ordinary place of business, the first thing to be considered is that of the aerial, or antenna as it is usually called. It would be well to base your estimates of the aerial on 150 ft. of copper wire, something about No. 15 B.&S. gauge. This will work out nicely as one piece of wire, or you can cut it up into four pieces, 25 ft. long, putting them up, as it were, in the form of a gridiron. Now when these are suspended they must have no contact with the ground. They gather the magnetic waves as they pass through the air. Should they accidentally have contact with the ground, you would lose all the effect; but supposing you decide to use the four strands of 25 ft. long, the first thing to consider is the distance of the station that is sending out those signals. The more distant the station and the weaker the power, the more energy they must have, or the greater surface of wire to gather in the waves for your use. It is safe to say that with 150 ft. of wire, at 75 to 100 ft. high, properly insulated or protected from ground currents, the average commercial or government station signals can be picked up at 150 miles distant.

RECEIVING INSTRUMENT

The next is the receiving instrument. The receiving instrument is introduced in the wire, called the lead-in wire, that leads from the aerial to the receiver, through the receiver and out to a suitable ground connection, which is preferably a water pipe or a large sheet of metal buried deep in the earth if there are no pipes. In the degree of excellence of this ground depends much of the success of your receiving set. The receiving set, properly speaking, consists of a coil of wire wound on some kind of an insulated cylinder, and every time the electric waves pass your aerial they cause an exceedingly small amount of magnetic current to flow down from the aerial through the lead-in wire, around this coil, and so on to the earth. Now by making a similar coil of wire on another cylinder and slipping it inside this first cylinder, yet not touching it in any way, we have the second part of the coil, known as the induction coil. The duty of this coil is to recognize any magnetic current that passes through the first, or receiving coil, and intensify it. This intensification is subject to more or less adjustment by slipping the coil out or in as may be necessary to get the signals more plainly to the ear. Now these currents are so exceedingly small that the ear would not detect them; yet if you pass them through a pair of very fine-wound (or high resistance) telephones you will hear the disturbance; that is, you will note the passage of a wave. The transmitting instruments at the main station that is sending out these waves do not send them out as one long electric movement, but it is a series of exceedingly fine pulsations, as I have stated before, not less than 100,000 per second. To those that have never heard the message or waves coming in on the phone I can best describe what you hear as being similar to the ringing of an electric door-bell; technically speaking, it is a buzzing sound like the bee, or like the sound of a humming bird. Now we have come to the receipt and interpretation of the signals. If it was a regular wireless message, you would put the receivers to your ears and wait until somebody sent a message, and then you could hear more or less distinctly these little buzzing sounds. They, translated into letters of the Morse alphabet, mean dots and dashes. The shortest possible dot of vibration that you could distinguish would be known as E, and if five of those should follow in rapid succession it would be the numeral 5. But here is where there is a little difference between taking the time signals and taking the regular wireless message. The government will, when the time comes, send out their signals at some stated hour. You will not have to listen and wait sometimes a half hour for some message to be sent; but at the hour and minute when the government signals are due you will go to your instruments, put the telephones on your ears and wait the beating of the transmitting clock. When you begin to hear the beats (and there will be no mistake on your part) all you have to have near you is some timepiece, or be within sight of your standard clock, and you can note the difference between those signals and the time shown by your clock. At the present time the government is sending out signals from four stations on the Pacific coast, and eleven stations on the Atlantic coast, giving the time to mariners. Jewelers who are within the radius of any of these stations can, if they wish, equip themselves with the wireless at an expense of not over $35, plus the expense of the aerial receiving sets in addition to this, and avail themselves of those signals. When the big new tower is done everybody will be in range of the main station. Understand, that after you have once set your instruments the chances are that except for lightning or some other interference with the adjustment of your coil you will not have to do any tuning or changing, as you would if you were to endeavor to take messages from various stations throughout your territory. ________ < a>* Address by H. E. Duncan, of Waltham Walsh Co. before Annual Convention Indiana Retail Jewelers' Association. Much of the earliest broadcasting was public service information, including time signals and weather reports, transmitted in Morse Code by government stations.

Radio Stations of the United States, July 1, 1915 edition, pages 169-172:

TRANSMISSION OF TIME SIGNALS BY NAVAL RADIO STATIONS.

The transmission of time signals to vessels at sea by means of radiotelegraphy was first accomplished in the United States in 1905, and this service, enlarged and extended, has continued to the present time. This service is of the greatest value to mariners, as it furnishes a means by which the time, as given by the transmitted signals, may be compared with a ship's chronometer and the error of the chronometer found. Similar comparisons over a number of days enable data to be obtained by which not only the error may be found, but also the chronometer rate; that is, the rate at which it is gaining or losing. The noontime signals on the Atlantic coast are sent out through the coast radio stations by connection with Western Union telegraph lines from the United States Naval Observatory at Washington, D. C. By the operation of proper relays in electrical circuits, the beats of the seconds of a standard clock in the observatory are sent out broadcast as a series of radio dots, commencing five minutes before the time of the final signal. By omitting certain dots in a series, the comparison between the dots and the beats of the chronometer seconds can be checked until the instant of local noon (seventy-fifth meridian time) is reached. This is marked by a longer dot, which gives the time of exact noon. A comparison with the chronometer time at that instant gives its error referred to the seventy-fifth meridian time. Applying the difference in longitude, namely, five hours, between the seventy-fifth meridian and Greenwich, which is the standard meridian (or 0º longitude), the error of the chronometer referred to Greenwich time is determined. Time signals are now sent out on the Atlantic coast only through the radio stations at Arlington, Key West, and New Orleans. Signals from Arlington and Key West, which reach a zone formerly served by other coast stations, are sent out every day in the year twice a day, viz, from 11.55 a. m. to noon and from 9.55 to 10 p. m., seventy-fifth meridian time. Time signals from New Orleans are sent out daily, including Sundays and holidays, commencing at 11.55 a. m., seventy-fifth meridian time, and ending at noon. In case of failure of the Arlington high-power station, the signals are sent out by the small set in the same station, and the stations at Boston, New York, Newport, Norfolk, and Charleston are notified, and they each send the signals broadcast. On the Pacific coast the time signals are sent broadcast to sea through the naval radio stations at Mare Island, Eureka, Point Arguello, and San Diego, Cal., and at North Head, Wash. The controlling clock for each station is in the naval observatory at the Mare Island Navy Yard. Signals from Mare Island are sent out every day from 11.55 to noon, and from 9.55 to 10 p. m., one hundred and twentieth meridian standard time. Those from North Head, Eureka, Point Arguello, and San Diego are sent out daily, excluding Sundays and holidays, from 11.55 to noon, one hundred and twentieth meridian standard time. To get the maximum clearness of signals, the receiving circuit should be tuned to that of the sending station. Arlington and Mare Island send on a 2500-meter wave length, North Head and San Diego on a 2000-meter wave length, Eureka on a 1400-meter wave length, Key West and New Orleans on a 1000-meter wave length, and Point Arguello on a 750-meter wave length. On the completion of the new radio station at the training station, Great Lakes, time signals will be transmitted from that station for the benefit of shipping on the Great Lakes, as well as the weather reports for that region, now transmitted by Arlington after the Atlantic coast weather bulletin, following the 10 p. m. time signals.

TRANSMISSION OF WEATHER REPORTS BY NAVAL RADIO STATIONS.

Through cooperation with local offices of the United States Weather Bureau, weather forecasts are sent broadcast to sea through naval coast radio stations at certain times, varying with the locality. Coast stations are generally prepared to give local forecasts to passing vessels without charge, on request. Storm warnings are sent whenever received and the daily weather bulletins are distributed by the naval radio stations at Arlington, Va., and Key West, Fla., a few minutes after the 10 p. m. time signal. These bulletins consist of two parts. The first part contains code letters and figures which express the actual weather conditions at 8 p. m., seventy-fifth meridian time, on the day of distribution, at certain points along the eastern coast of North America, one point along the Gulf of Mexico, and one at Bermuda. The second part of the bulletin contains a special forecast of the probable winds to be experienced a hundred miles or so off shore, made by the United States Weather Bureau, for distribution to shipmasters. The second part of the bulletin also contains warnings of severe storms along the coasts, as occasions for such warnings may arise. Immediately following this bulletin, a weather bulletin for certain points along the Great Lakes is sent broadcast by the naval radio station at Arlington, Va., consisting of two parts. The first part contains code letters and figures which express the actual weather conditions at 8 p. m., seventy-fifth meridian time, on the day of distribution, at certain points along the Lakes. The second part of the bulletin contains a special forecast of the probable winds to be experienced on the Lakes, during the season of navigation--about April 15 to December 10. The points for which weather reports are furnished are designated as follows: For Atlantic coast and Gulf points, S=Sydney, T=Nantucket, DB=Delaware Breakwater, H=Hatteras, C=Charleston, K=Key West, P=Pensacola, and B=Bermuda; for points on the Great Lakes, Du=Duluth, M=Marquette, U=Sault Ste. Marie, G=Green Bay, Ch=Chicago, L=Alpena, D=Detroit, V=Cleveland, and F=Buffalo. All bulletins begin with the letters U. S. W. B. (United States Weather Bureau) and the weather conditions follow. The first three figures of a report represent the barometric pressure in inches (002 30.02); the next figure, the fourth in sequence, represents the direction of the wind to the eight points of the compass: 1=north, 2=northeast, 3=east, 4=southeast, 5=south, 6=southwest, 7=west, 8=northwest, and 0=calm. The fifth figure represents the force of the wind on the Beaufort Scale, given below.

In late 1906, Reginald Fessenden had developed an alternator-transmitter, located at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, to the point that it was a reliable audio transmitter. In December, Fessenden began presenting a series of demonstrations of the transmitter's capabilities to interested groups of scientists and business representatives. This was followed by more general tests, culminating, on the evenings of December 24, 1906 (Christmas Eve) and December 31, 1906 (New Year's Eve) in two transmissions which are generally believed to be the first-ever entertainment broadcasts by radio. Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any early accounts of these broadcasts -- the review below was apparently extracted from a letter Reginald Fessenden wrote twenty-five years later to S. M. Kinter on January 29, 1932, and may be the only first-hand account. Moreover, although the alternator-transmitter's possible use for distributing music and information was noted at the time, Fessenden's subsequent work concentrated almost exclusively on developing it for private point-to-point communication, as an adjunct to the wire telephone system, and these two publicity broadcasts seem to be the sum-total of his broadcasting career.

Builder of Tomorrows, Helen Fessenden, 1940, pages 153-154:

CHAPTER XV

WIRELESS TELEPHONY AND THE HIGH-FREQUENCY ALTERNATOR

On Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve of 1906 the first Broadcasting occurred. Three days in advance Reg had his operators notify the ships of the U.S. Navy and of the United Fruit Co. that were equipped with the Fessenden apparatus that it was the intention of the Brant Rock Station to broadcast speech, music and singing on those two evenings. Describing this, Fessenden wrote:-- "The program on Christmas Eve was as follows: first a short speech by me saying what we were going to do, then some phonograph music.--The music on the phonograph being Handel's 'Largo'. Then came a violin solo by me, being a composition of Gounod called 'O, Holy Night', and ending up with the words 'Adore and be still' of which I sang one verse, in addition to playing on the violin, though the singing of course was not very good. Then came the Bible text, 'Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will', and finally we wound up by wishing them a Merry Christmas and then saying that we proposed to broadcast again New Year's Eve. The broadcast on New Year's Eve was the same as before, except that the music was changed and I got someone else to sing. I had not picked myself to do the singing, but on Christmas Eve I could not get any of the others to either talk, sing or play and consequently had to do it myself. On New Year's Eve one man, I think it was Stein, agreed to sing and did sing, but none of the others either sang or talked. We got word of reception of the Christmas Eve program as far down as Norfolk, Va., and on the New Year's Eve program we got word from some places down in the West Indies." It is not surprising that it was widely heard even beyond the group of Fessenden equipped boats--for as he further states-- "As a matter of fact, at the time of the broadcast, practically everyone was infringing the liquid barreter. When the broadcast was made, practically every ship along the coast was equipped to receive it." The transmission system proposed in this review wasn't very practical, but the thoughts about what could be achieved by a radio broadcasting system were very advanced for the time.

Electrical World, April 13, 1911, page 923:

SIMPLIFIED WIRELESS TELEPHONY.

By M. FREIMARK.

So little has been heard of late from wireless telephony that it almost seems as if the art were entirely forgotten, or at least that it does not make any progress. It therefore gives the writer pleasure to bring out a few facts which he has observed and which he hopes will be followed up. In the spring of 1910, while making experiments to devise a method for locating open circuits in insulated and concealed wiring, it was found that the human body acts as an excellent antenna and detector and responds remarkably to the slightest excitation from electromagnetic waves or static induction. Having perfected this method for localizing breaks in telephone, wiring, a close resemblance was observed between the apparatus and a miniature wireless-telegraph sending station. The details of the apparatus, fortunately, were of a simpler and, necessarily, of a different design from those of a wireless station owing to the fact that neither a deafening spark nor high-tension currents can be tolerated on telephone lines or cables, as they would seriously interfere with transmission and insulation, and would carry beyond the break and possibly cause injury and damage to subscribers and property. The sending outfit being identical--from a purely theoretical point of view--in the two cases, one could not help thinking why the receiving station should not be the same, and why, in particular, it should not be used for wireless telephony. To this end it was necessary merely to change the sending station to a talking circuit. An operator's telephone set answered the purpose. A few dry cells were put in series with the transmitter and the primary side of the induction coil. One terminal of the secondary was grounded, the other one serving as the sending antenna, as indicated in the accompanying illustration. The receiving station consisted of nothing more or less than a telephone receiver with one terminal connected to the body (ear or finger) and the other one to a wire which trailed on the ground or was directly connected to ground for the purpose of better receiving. The results were as anticipated. The sounds were audible a few feet from the antenna. Further experiments with a phonograph, in connection with a small step-up coil, such as is used in wire-telephone practice, brought out the fact that the phonograph could be heard through the receiver anywhere in a good-sized living-room when the wire was concealed under the rugs. Metal, such as a brass bedstead or a tin roof, readily takes up the waves, acts like a sounding board and gives them off with seemingly increased strength. The writer could not make any further investigation on the subject. It seems, however, that good results could be obtained by taking into account the standard methods and apparatus which wire-telephony has established and which have reached such a high degree of development. It is doubtful whether a transmitter of the present type will ever be developed to withstand currents strong enough to serve directly for wireless transmission. However, there is no doubt that combinations of this transmitter with generators, transformers, arc lamps or coils can be made which will be able to transmit sound within the limits of any city, and for overland or oversea transmission very high frequency waves can be used as the carrier. Like present-day telegraphy the method described has the disadvantage of publicity, and even more so since anybody equipped with a receiver can pick up the message; for the same reason it also has the good side--though it is only one-way transmission--that it is accessible to everybody, rich or poor. A city equipped with such a station could, for example, send out orders to the whole police force in an instant, publish election or ball-game returns, give free concerts to the whole population and accomplish a good many other things which would tend to better the social life of its citizens.

Sound Recording Research at Bell Labs 1915 - AT&T inaugurated the first transcontinental telephone service for San Francisco World's Fair, made possible by the new vacuum tube amplifier developed

Arnold's 1914 tube, from Fagen 1975 by Harold D. Arnold at what would become Bell Labs (see Evolution of Bell Labs for the changing names and corporate structure of the Labs). Arnold had been one of the first to recognize the significance of Lee de Forest's audion tube as a way to amplify telephone signals. After John Stone from the Boston Bell Labs arranged a demonstration of the de Forest tube Oct. 30, 1912, Arnold started his amplifier research project. Using a vacuum pump from Germany, he discovered that removing the air from the tube greatly increased the flow of electrons across the grid electrodes. He built the first amplifying vacuum tube Oct. 18, 1913, and began to install the tubes in telephone amplifiers for long line transmission. Arnold also began a long-term research program to improved the quality of telephone sound, "to get an accurate physical description and a measure of the mechanical operation of human ears in such terms that we may relate them directly to our electrical and acoustical instruments..." (Arnold quoted in Fagen 1975 p. 929). Arnold's program marked a new direction in the "Grand System" of Alexander Graham Bell that would lead to a revolution in sound recording. 1916 - Harvey Fletcher joined the Research Division of Western Electric Engineering Dept to work with Irving Crandall on hearing and speech, was director of acoustic research at Bell Labs 1927-49, built the Western Electric Model 2A hearing aid and a binaural headset in the 1920's, published the widely-read book Speech and Hearing in 1929 that analyzed the characteristics of sound. Fletcher would lead much of the research on binaural, or what later would be called "stereophonic" sound recording, at Bell Labs. 1916 - E.C. Wente at Bell Labs developed the condenser microphone to translate soundwaves into electrical waves that could be transmitted by the vacuum tube amplifier. His patent 1,333,744 entitled "Telephone Transmitter" was filed December 20, 1916 and granted March 16, 1920. The device used two condenser plates, one of which was a very thin steel diaphragm .002-inch thick, spaced .001-inch from a large backplate. In his 1917 article, Wente explained "The general construction of the transmitter is shown in Fig. 2, from which the principal features are evident. The diaphragm is made of steel, 0.007 cm. in thickness, and is stretched nearly to its elastic limit. The condenser is formed by the plate B and the diaphragm. Since the diaphragm motion is greatest near the center, the voltage generated, which is proportional to C1/C0, will be greatest if the plate is small." This produced a flat response to 15,000 cycles in the lab. Wente continued to improve the microphone. In his 1922 article, he explained, "A sectional drawing of the transmitter is shown in Fig. 1. The transmitter differs from the instrument previously described in several essential respects. The diaphragm, A, is made of 0.002 inch (0.0051 cm.) steel and is stretched so that its natural frequency in free air is 7,000 cycles per second. Annular grooves are cut into the face of the back plate, B, to give the diaphragm the desired natural frequency and damping. The length of the air-gap is 0.001 inch (0.0025 cm.). To keep out moisture, the space surrounding the back-plate is sealed off completely from the outside air. A thin rubber diaphragm, C, is provided to keep the pressure on the two sides of the steel diaphragm substantially equal under all conditions of temperature and atmospheric pressure." Wente made more improvements in 1923: "By a change in the dimensions of the film of air and by the substitution of a duralumin for a steel diaphragm in 1923 a condenser microphone was produced which had a sensitivity 100 times as great as that of previous models. This microphone was sufficiently sensitive to permit the pickup of ordinary sounds at a distance without interference from noise voltages generated in the amplifier, whereas the use of the older models under such circumstances would have been impractical." In 1926 this improved model was sold as the Western Electric 394-W microphone for sound motion picture production. 1918 - Henry Egerton patented on Jan. 8 the first balanced-armature loudspeaker driver, based on the 1882 balanced armature telephone patent of Thomas Watson, and used in the Bell Labs No. 540AW speakers developed by N. H. Ricker Oct. 6, 1922. 1921 - The amplifier, microphone, loudspeaker innovations were combined to create the first public address systems. The largest public demonstration of such as system took place on Armistice Day for the national broadcast of the burial of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery, heard over 80 loudspeakers linked by telephone lines in New York, San Francisco, and Arlington. By the next year, standardized p.a. systems were introduced. 1923 - Wente developed the light valve in patent 1,638,555 entitled "Translating Devices", filed May 1, 1923 and granted August 9, 1927. This ". . . . relates to translating devices and has for its object to vary the intensity of a beam of light in response to variations in an electric current." Wente placed a pair of stretched conductors forming a closed loop in a strong magnetic field. Alternating electric currents (representing the signal) passing through the conductors caused them to open and close the slit formed between them. A light beam directed through the slit could then be modulated to form a light record on a moving photographic film. This record could be a sound track or picture elements in a transmission system. 1925 - Henry C. Harrison at Bell Labs developed a matched-impedance recorder to improved the frequency range from the previous narrow 250-2,500 cycles range of acoustic recorders to a wider range of 50-6,000 cycles using the condenser mic, tube amp, balanced-armature speaker, and a rubber-line acoustic recorder with a long tapered horn. This system was licensed to the Victor Talking Machine Co. that used it in April to make the first electrical recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski. The new system was sold in October by Victor as the Orthophonic phonograph capable of playing back acoustically-produced and electrically-produced records. 1926 - Wente developed the moving coil speaker, the Western Electric No. 555 Receiver (Horn driver) is described in patent 1,707,545 entitled "Acoustic Device", filed August 4, 1926 and granted April 2, 1929 . . . ." An object of the invention is to receive and transmit sound with high and uniform efficiency over a wide frequency range." Wente employed a moving coil/diaphragm mechanism moving in a strong magnetic field. It was designed to drive a theater horn and was rushed to the August 6 premier of Don Juan. The important feature was a conical plug in front of the diaphragm which shaped the expanding sound passages from an annular opening at the periphery to a circular aperture at the exit where an exponential horn was to be attached. This provided a fairly efficient transfer of sound from driver to horn with good fidelity at levels required in the theater. The development of the "555" receiver is shared with A. L. Thuras who filed on other aspects as described in patent 1,707,544 with simultaneous dates. 1928 - Wente and A. C. Thuras developed a moving coil, or "dynamic," microphone described in patent No. 1,766,473 entitled "Electrodynamic Device" filed May 5, 1928, and granted June 24, 1930. Thuras filed patents 1,847,702 and 1,954,966 and 1,964,606 in 1931 and 1932 for commercial models of this microphone. 1931 - in April, Leopold Stokowski invited Bell Labs to begin sound recording experiments with his Philadelphia Orchestra. After a series of disappointing radio broadcasts by NBC of his orchestra in 1930-31 that failed to achieve the high quality of reproduction Stokowski was seeking, he helped Bell Labs set up a test room at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Arthur C. Keller installed a vertical-cut recorder equipped with a new moving coil pickup with sapphire stylus that extended the dynamic range to 10,000 cycles. Surface noise was reduced by coating the wax master with gold film and a layer of electropated copper, and making the duplicate release copies pressed on ceullulose acetate rather than shellac. In December, the first electrical recordings were made and continued throughout the 1931-32 concert season. 125 of these test recordings have been preserved (a limited edition album of these masters was released in 1980 by Bell Labs). 1932 - in March, several test recordings were made at the Academy of Music using two microphones connected to two styli cutting two tracks on the same wax disk. On March 12 Stokowski recorded his first binaural disc, Scriabin's "Poem of Fire." This recording is the earliest example of stereophonic recording that has survived, although it was not called "stereo" at that time. Keller had apparently made similar dual recordings in New York in 1928 but were lost; Alan Blumlein made his "stereo" recording of Thomas Beecham and the London Philharmonic in January 1934. 1933 - first public stereo transmission over telephone lines of a concert conducted by Alexander Smallens in Philadelphia to an audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. on April 27, using a 3-channel system of microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and telephone lines. The test was a success , but FM would be used for high-fidelity music broadcasting, not telephone lines. Charles Sumner Tainter and the Graphophone Summary: Charles Sumner Tainter was born April 25, 1854, in Watertown, MA, the son of the inventor of an automatic wood-boring tool. He attended public school but was mostly self-educated, reading technical books from the local library, and his father's subscription to Scientific American. In 1870 Charles Tainter began working for electrical instrument companies in Boston. In 1873 he took a job with Alvan Clark and Sons of Cambridgeport, MA, makers of telescopes and optical instruments. This firm had received the contract to craft the instruments for the U.S. expedition to observe the Transit of Venus Dec. 8, 1874. Tainter was appointed a member of the expedition and traveled to New Zealand to record the transit, and around the world to return to Washington DC. In 1878, Tainter began his own business in Cambridge, MA, making scientific instruments, including electrical devices for Alexander Graham Bell. In 1879, he decided to accept Bell's invitation to set up a laboratory in Washington DC to experiment with the transmission of sound. In 1880 Bell and Tainter developed the radiophone using light waves and selenium cells to transmit wireless sound. For this invention, he was awarded a gold medal at the 1881 Electrical Exhibition in Paris. In 1881 he became part of the Volta Laboratory Association with Alexander Graham Bell and Bell's cousin, Chichester A. Bell, a noted chemist from London. These three men from 1881 to 1885 used the Volta prize money granted to Bell for his telephone invention to develop an improved phonograph called the graphophone, and received several important patents in 1886 that would shape the future of the recording industry. Tainter married Lila R. Munro in June 1886 and lived in Washington DC while he worked on improving the graphophone so it could be sold as a dictation machine to businessmen. While building a graphophone factory in Bridgeport CT in 1888, Tainter became severely ill with pneumonia. He recovered well enough to travel to Europe in 1889 to help establish the International Graphophone Co. and received a decoration from the French government at the Paris Exposition. He returned to New York City and continued working on improving the graphophone until 1893. In that year, he again became ill while struggling to make 100 graphophones for an exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair. In the following years he traveled to the Mediterranean, Europe, Canada and Alaska seeking a healthful climate. After a fire destroyed his laboratory in 1897, he worked at home in Washington DC to complete one of his final patents, a method of duplicating phonograph records. He tried sanitariums in New York and Battle Creek MI and Walter's Park PA to improve his health but none were successful. In 1903 he and his wife moved to San Diego where he would live for the next 30 years. Tainter was awarded a gold medal for his graphophone at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Diego. His first wife died in 1924 and he married Laura F. Onderdonk in 1928. He was 83 in 1937 and living at 2960 First Ave. when the Smithsonian box sealed in 1881 was opened in Washington DC. At this time, Dictaphone Company honored him for his invention of the graphophone that led to founding of the company. He died on April 20, 1940.

. The Volta Lab

Charles Tainter's career as an inventor began when he moved to Washington D. C. in November 1879 to set up a laboratory on L Street between 13th and 14th Streets. He began to experiment with selenium to improve telephone transmission using light. He also sought to improve Edison's phonograph, experimenting with an Edison tin-foil phonograph given to Tainter and Bell in 1879 by Gardiner G. Hubbard, Bell's father-in-law. In November the lab began work on selenium, with the help of scientific books borrowed from the Smithsonian. The photophone was tested in spring 1880 and Bell read a paper on the new device at American Association for Advancement of Science in Boston in the summer of 1880. A 1937 newspaper article described the photophone's success. Bell then went to Europe in 1880 to receive the Volta Prize of 50,000 francs ($10,000) for the invention of the telephone and demonstrated his photophone at the Paris Electrical Exhibition in 1881. While Bell was in Europe, Tainter started experiments with the Edison phonograph in late fall of 1880. [1] Tainter began his Home Notes March 28, 1881, that would fill 13 volumes by 1886. Volumes 9, 10, 13 were burned in a fire Sept. 1897. In the fall of 1880 Tainter moved the lab to 1221 Connecticut Avenue. Work on the photophone continued during winter 1880 into 1881 and patents were granted Dec. 1880. In his manuscript on the "Talking Machine" written in 1930, Tainter quoted from an 1888 article by Henry Edmunds that Edison allowed his British patent 1664 of April 24, 1878, to expire because his phonograph did not work. According to Edmunds, the patent was for "a backing of wax, or yielding material, instead of a grooved surface, in order to support the metal foil which received the indentation. The term indenting, as used by Mr. Edison throughout his patent specifications, clearly means the action of embossing the material without the removal of any part of it, as in forming a record in tin foil by pressing it with a style. But that he did not believe in the practicability of his Phonograph is shown by the fact that this patent was allowed to lapse in April 24, 1885, in consequence of non-payment of 100 pounds fee, just at the period of the completion of the experiments of the Volta Laboratory Association." [2] 2. Cutting Wax

Tainter and Chichester Bell and A. G. Bell began work on improving the phonograph in the spring 1881, and found that the indenting method using a pliable strip of tin foil was the main problem. Some other method of engraving a solid material needed to be developed, using a cutting stylus to form a groove. This "new method of recording and reproducing sounds which I had brought to Mr. Bell's attention several months before" was illustrated on the first page of Tainter's "Home Notes" with this description: "I have had in my mind for several months past a method of obtaining a record of speech vibrations, and of reproducing the speech from the record so made. The idea occurred to me while discussing the phonograph, and the defects of that instrument with Mr. Bell, and he seemed to think very highly of it at that time. This idea together with some others upon the same subject, was noted upon a piece of paper as our note-book was not at hand at the time they occurred to us. This paper has doubtless been lost or destroyed before this, and I will note the idea here. [illustration] Fig. 1 is a plan view of my phonograph (or graphophone) and Fig. 2 is an end elevation partly in section... Attached to the end of the axle E. is a large circular disk K. upon which the speech vibrations are to be recorded. This disk can be made of some soft metal that can be easily engraved, or it can be made of some light substance, like hard rubber, ivory, celluloid, or box-wood. " [3] This use of a "light substance" to engrave a record groove was an important improvement over Edison's original phonograph of 1877. Tainter hired a mechanic May 1, 1881, to help him build the recording machine represented by the letters L and M and N in the illustration on the first page of the "Home Notes". This machine was a lathe designed to cut spiral grooves. He made another machine in Sept. 1881. Tainter first tried direct etching, but then tried the reverse, which was electroplating to form a raised instead of sunken line. Then he filled a groove with beeswax, cut the sound engraving in the wax, and filled the groove with reduced iron. He used a chisel-shaped stylus on June 8, 1881, and tried to use a jet of air under pressure to reproduce the sounds. He had discovered that a wax record cut with a stylus was able to better reproduce high-pitched sounds than Edison's tin-foil record. 3. The Smithsonian Box 1881

Tainter began making lateral-cut or zig-zag records July 9, 1881, but experiments were interrupted by an attempt to locate a bullet in President Garfield July 11-Aug 28. Work on the recording machine resumed in September. Fearing that Edison would learn of their work before patents were filed, Tainter and the Bells decided to prepare a sealed tin box to be placed in a vault in the Smithsonian Institution containing their work. "We did this," said Tainter, "so that if Edison's company should get hold of our invention, through any leakage of information, before our patent was complete, we would have dated proof of what we had worked out." [4] They also signed a formal agreement October 8, backdated to May 1, creating the Volta Laboratory Association to be the owner of their patents. The box began to be prepared in Sept. 1881 for deposit in the Smithsonian, but would not be sealed until Oct 20. It would contain the Edison phonograph with a cylinder coated with wax and recorded by indentation with the words of Prof. A. Melville Bell, father of A. G. Bell, who said "I am a Graphophone and my mother was a Phonograph." This was recorded at an exhibition of the apparatus Sept. 25 and sealed in the box with an air-jet tube for reproducing it, but not the other air-jet apparatus. Also included were signed testimonials from the Sept. 25 exhibition, copies of pages from Tainter's Home Notes. The word "graphophone" was a transposition of the word "phonograph" to convey the same meaning. Tainter said in his Home Notes that it was Alexander Graham Bell who originated the term "graphophone" sometime before March 28, 1881, when the Homes Notes began. The word was coined as a little joke according to Bell's relatives who listened to the recording when the box was opened in 1937. [5] Tainter prepared an electrotype for his Smithsonian box that was finally sealed and deposited at the Smithsonian Oct. 20. In his Home Notes vol. 3, page 51, he said: "Several days ago we succeeded in getting a fair electrotype of a zig-zag phonogram, in the manner described on the preceding page. This electrotype was put into the sealed package which we have been preparing for some time past, together with the phonograph upon which nearly all the experiments have been made, and yesterday was taken to the Smithsonian Institution and deposited in the confidential archives of the Institution." The phonograph mentioned by Tainter was an Edison tin foil cylinder phonograph that had been used by Tainter and Bell for experiments since 1879. Tainter emphasized that his electrotype was different than the Edison cylinder: "It may be well to note that the record formed on the cylinder of the phonograph deposited in the Smithsonian Package was of the vertical type, or the form in which vibrations are impressed perpendicular to the surface of the recording material, like that used in the DICTAPHONE, and commonly called the "hill and valley" type, because the record groove is of varying depth. In 1881, we used to call this the Edisonian record, as it was the type Mr. Edison used in the Phonograph of 1877. The record on the electro-type in the Smithsonian package is of the other form, where the vibrations are impressed parallel to the surface of the recording material, as was done in the old Scott Phonautograph of 1857, thus forming a groove of uniform depth, but of wavy character, in which the sides of the groove act upon the tracing point instead of the bottom, as is the case in the vertical type. This form we named the zig-zag form, and referred to it in that way in our notes. Its important advantage in guiding the reproducing needle I first called attention to in the note on p. 9, Vol. 1, Home Notes on March 29, 1881, and endeavored to use it in my early work, but encountered so much difficulty in getting a form of reproducer that would work with the soft wax records without tearing the groove, we used the hill and valley type of record more often that the other." 4. Experiments 1881-84

During this period of late 1881 and early 1882, Tainter experimented with different methods of duplication, such as stamping and pressing, different kinds of reproducers using magnetism and air and fluids, and different kinds of wax mixtures. He resumed work on his talking machine after a short vacation June 30-August 15, 1882. In August, he developed a speed governor similar to the device he had developed in 1873 making chronographs at the Alvan Clark & Sons factory for the Transit of Venus Expedition of 1874. The purpose of this governor was to produce a constant record speed. Tainter first described in his Home Notes Vol. 5 on 1881/12/30 the principle of constant surface velocity that was included in patent #341,214 of 1886/05/04. This made the flat disk a practical alternative to the cylinder. He was most successful during this period with the jet principle that later would be described in patent #341,212. He was trying to overcome one of the most persistent problems in recording, the surface noise caused by the needle rubbing inside the groove. "According to the present invention the record is caused to act upon a fluid (gas or liquid) in which it induces the sonorous vibrations or changes similar to such vibrations. The solid body or style which rubs over the record, or is otherwise directly vibrated by it, and which has heretofore always been employed, is or may be dispensed with. The vibrations are communicated to the air or other suitable fluid by direct contact of the same with the record. One advantage of the arrangement is that wear on the record is or may be thus reduced, if not practically avoided. It may also be observed that this method not only admits of reproduction from a very minute record, but also enables sounds of considerable loudness to be obtained. The fluid may remain as a body in contact with the record, or it may be forced against the same as a jet." [6] Although his Home Notes for the period from Dec. 11, 1882, and March 25, 1883 were lost in a fire of 1897, Tainter remembered continuing work on his jet reproducer. (pp. 49-51) He hired a photographer friend, Mr. J. Harris Rogers, to help with the photographic recording experiments. Chichester Bell noted on April 15, 1884: "During the past few days a good many experiments have been made by Mr. Rogers, Mr. Tainter and myself in photographing speech vibrations impressed on a jet. Mr. Rogers has made enlarged copies of parts of the negative from which the positive facing page 62 were printed, which show most beautifully the variations in form of the jet. A remarkably beautiful photograph has been taken by Mr. Tainter and Mr. Rogers of a beam of light varied by transmission through the nappe formed on a glass plate in front of a slot, by a bichromate of potash jet, to which I recited Moore's - 'Believe me of all those endearing young charms,' etc. During May and June, Tainter perfected the jet telephone transmitter for patent #336,173. 5. The First Graphophone 1885

"In the early spring of 1885, I designed and made a model of the form of talking machine shown in Figs. 18-19-20 of patent 341,214, which forms the records on long narrow strips; in this case, strips of paper coated with the wax mixture we were using at that time." This was described in the patent lines 66 on p. 5 to line 24 on page 6. From this machine, Tainter learned the need to reduce the size of the record groove. "This was a very important discovery, and I followed it up immediately, by constructing a machine of the cylindrical form." Tainter's drawings of his first cylinder machine were given to a mechanic and it was built by May 14, 1885. This was a machine similar to patent 341,288 with a paper cylinder 9-inches long and 2 inches diameter coated with a wax mixture 1/4-inch thick. The cylinder played for 10 minutes and the spacing between grooves was 1/250 inch (i.e., 120 grooves per inch "pitch"). Tainter built a second cylinder machine July 6, 1885, with a smaller cylinder, 6 inches long and 1-3/8 inches diameter, with a "pitch" of 150 grooves per inch rather than the first machine's 120 grooves. On July 15 he added hearing tubes of the kind shown in Fig. 16 of patent 341,288. He continued perfecting this machine through August 1885. It was then decided to build and test 6 machines before the Volta Lab would end with the departure of Chichester Bell on November 1. At the suggestion of Hubbard, Tainter went to New York to supervise the construction of these 6 machines at the factory of Bergman & Co., 292 Avenue B, in New York. But the work was too slow, so Tainter shipped the unfinished machines to D.C. and returned to the Volta Lab to finish them there in November and December 1885. These machines were completed by Jan. 1, 1886, and were similar to patent 341,288. The earliest Smithsonian graphophone that survives appears to be similar to these first successful models built by Tainter. 6. The Volta Graphophone Company 1886

"About the first of Jan. 1886, these machines were ready, and proved so satisfactory the members of the Volta Laboratory Association decided to form a joint stock company to succeed the Association, and take over our inventions, and attend to the marketing of the Graphophone devices." The agreement to form the Volta Graphophone Company of Alexandria, Virginia, was signed Jan. 6, 1886, by the 3 Volta associates and James H. Saville and Charles J. Bell (brother of Chichester Bell, and a lawyer and banker). As a result of the agreement, the Volta Graphophone Company was incorporated in Virginia on Feb. 3, 1886. Tainter established a new laboratory for the company at 2020 F Street in Washington DC and hired a mechanic, Charles Stolpe, to help improve the graphophone. To replace the original wax-covered paper cylinder that needed to be shaved clean for each use, Tainter developed the helically wound paper tube that was granted patent 374,133 on Nov. 29, 1887. He also developed a machine to make the paper tubes. This tube "became in later years, an extensive article of commerce, and is now used for many purposes, such as mailing tubes, cartons for groceries, drugs, and many other things, besides the recording tubes for which it was specially invented." Patent 428,646 was granted May 27, 1890, on improved machine that made the tubes in lengths of four feet and heat-fused a very thin and highly polished coat of wax to the surface. This corrected a problem of air bubbles in the wax of the early tubes. 7. The Treadle Graphophone 1886

The new investors in the Volta Company wanted to sell a dictation machine, and Tainter complied. "In 1886, after correcting the record cylinders troubles, I designed and made the type of Graphophone shown in patent 375,579. This machine was arranged specially for dictation purposes, and had a number of new features added. As this was before the age of electric motors, and their conveniences, the motor problem was a serious one, and after considering all of the various kinds that might be used for the Graphophone, I settled upon the sewing machine type of treadle motor, as the best, all things considered, and the apparatus was arranged upon a Wheeler & Wilson sewing machine table, of the style in use at that time." This treadle graphophone had a new speed regulator to rotate the cylinder at a constant speed, starting and stopping keys, a brush to clean wax shavings, a new feed screw and carriage, a detachable cylinder arbor to make it easy to add and remove cylinders, a pointer added to the carriage, and a new reproducer. This graphophone was intended to be sold as a dictation machine for business use." "I find upon referring to my article published in the Electrical World July 14, 1888, that I constructed another model in 1886, which was intermediate between that of patent 341,288 and patent 375,579. This model, which had escaped my memory, is shown in the illustration Fig. 4, of the Electrical World article. The machine was a modification of patent 341,288 model, and I arranged it upon a sewing machine table with a governor, as shown in Fig. 4 of the World article." 8. Patent Victory 1887

In 1887 Tainter improved his wax mixture with the addition of a hard carnauba wax. A competing patent filed by Edison disputed his patent application of Nov. 19, 1887, but Tainter proved his application was the earliest and was granted patent 393,190 on Nov. 20, 1888. By the end of 1887 Tainter had developed his new ozocerite wax to be completely different from Edison's wax. The ozocerite patent 421,450 was filed Nov. 14, 1887 and granted Feb. 18, 1890. "At this period there was strong suspicion among inventors that there were leaks in the patent office, and that all patent applications were not being kept secret, as they should have been. The filing of interfering application was a favorite method of getting an invention away from an inventor. It forces him to prove when the invention first occurred to him, which is usually difficult to do." Tainter had been keeping detailed notes and drawings since 1881 in his Home Notes and was able to win this patent case and the important case of 1896 that upheld the validity of the graphophone patents. [7] Tainter improved the cylinder holder and ear-plugs in patent 380,535, and added a new feature that allowed the making of two records at the same time, allowing the operator to keep one copy of a dictated letter and mail a duplicate copy to the correspondent. In early 1887, the Volta Company investors urged Tainter to make several models to test. "These gentlemen were Mess. Andrew Devine, and John H. White, both official reporters of the National House of Representatives, and James O. Clephane, a former official reporter of the House, but who at that time had a large stenographic business of his own, and was also occupied with the promotion of several important inventions of that day; one of them being the Mergenthaler Linotype machine, and another, the Lanston Monotype machine, both of which came into very extensive use." Tainter gave Andrew Devine one of the new dictation graphophones to take to the Capitol for use in the House of Representatives. "As soon as this was demonstrated the system was adopted by the other House reporters, and later by the Senate reporters as soon as they were able to get the machines to use." 9. The American Graphophone Co. 1887 The new American Graphophone Company sought to merge with Edison in May 1887, demonstrating to two of Edison's representatives at the St. James Hotel in New York the new improved graphophone. Tainter was opposed this merger and believed that a showing his graphophone to Edison would cause the inventor to start work again on his old phonograph that he had put aside in 1879. Tainter was right. On May 26, 1887, Edison employed Dr. Schulze-Berge, who had worked under Helmholtz in Germany, to develop a natural wax material, similar to the carnauba mixture that Tainter was then using, to replace the impractical tin foil of Edison's old cylinder phonograph. [8] Edison organized a new company, the Edison Phonograph Works, April 30, and delivered an Improved Phonograph to the Electric Club in New York in May. Edison finished his Perfected Phonograph after a 72-hour marathon beginning June 13 and ending June 16, captured in the famous photo made by W.K.L. Dickson at 5:30 am June 16. On June 27, Edison signed the contract that sold his company to Jesse Lippincott for $500,000. The new North American Phonograph Co. was formed by Lippincott July 14. The American Graphophone Co. signed an agreement March 26, 1888, to allow Lippincott to sell graphophones. [9] The Graphophone Company tried to manufacture 300 machines in New York but the work went slowly and required many adjustments in the laboratory for defects. Tainter proposed that the Company establish its own factory to make the graphophones, and on July 26, 1888, the Company signed an agreement with Tainter and Saville to develop such a factory. After Tainter finished negotiations in late July with Henry Edmunds of the English electrical firm of Walter T. Glover & Co. to allow Edmunds to sell to sell the British patents of the Volta Co., he and Saville went to Bridgeport Conn. to rent the old Howe Sewing Machine factory. The Volta Lab then moved its machines and workers to Bridgeport and slowly struggled to build the machine tools necessary to manufacture graphophones for Lippincott's sales agencies. By October, Tainter was physically exhausted and came down with a bad case of pneumonia. He went to Barbados in the Caribbean until sufficiently recovered to return to Bridgeport in Feb. 1889. 10. Rise of Columbia 1889

The only company that was able to successfully sell the treadle graphophone was the Columbia Phonograph Company organized January 15, 1889, by Edward D. Easton. His success was based on sales of music rather than dictation machines, especially cylinders of the popular United State Marine Band under John Philip Sousa. Easton produced the first record catalog in 1890, a one-page list of Edison and Columbia cylinders. This would grow to 10 pages by 1891, including 36 songs by the popular whistler John Yorke Atlee, and to 32 pages by 1893. When Tainter became ill and resigned from the American Graphophone Co., Easton became a company director and sought a merger with Lippincott and Edison interests. But Lippincott's health was failing and he would lose control of his North American Co. with the phonograph rights eventually going back to Edison by 1894. Easton became general manager of the American Graphophone Co., and decided to file a lawsuit against his own Columbia Phonograph Co. for selling Edison phonographs that infringed on the Volta Lab wax cylinder patent. His strategy was successful when the courts ruled against Columbia and validated the original graphophone patent over Edison's improved phonograph. Edison was forced to sign an agreement with Easton in 1896 to share patents. This allowed Easton to make and sell music cylinders of the Edison type under the graphophone name. The old treadle graphophone with its narrow 6-inch cardboard cylinders never did work very well and was discontinued. The Columbia Phonograph Co. rose to become one of the Big 3 phonograph companies, producing Edison-type cylinders that played on low cost spring-motor machines such as the 1897 Eagle model that sold for only $10. [10] 11. Berliner's Challenge 1887

Emil Berliner created the third member of the Big 3 that would dominate the phonograph business by 1900. Berliner was an employee of the National Bell Telephone Company in Boston since 1879 when he decided to quit in 1884 to become a full-time inventor. With his new wife, Cora Adler, he moved to Washington DC and began to develop the gramophone in his lab on Columbia Road between 14th and 15th Streets in 1886. Berliner filed patent application 237,060 on May 4, 1887, for the lateral-cut method of on a lampblacked surface that was photoengraved on a permanent "indestructible" flat disc. This patent application was not approved, being similar to the method of Charles Cros. He reapplied Sept. 26 and his patent 372,786 was granted Nov. 8. This patent became the foundation for Berliner's rights to the non-wax disc with a lateral-cut groove at an even depth. Berliner in the meantime improved his process and had applied for a new American patent Nov. 7 (not granted until July 28, 1896) and for a British patent Nov. 8. This improved process used a lampblacked glass disc to make negative master of glass that was used to expose grooves created by acid etching on a metal disc of copper or zinc. The earliest Berliner disc is a zinc disc at the Smithsonian dated July 26, 1887. The first public story describing this process was published in Electrical World Nov. 12, 1887, on page 2, showing an 11-inch glass disc with duration of 4-minutes. However, Berliner was yet unable to mass reproduce copies of his glass masters, and everything was still experimental. He began to etch directly on zinc discs by Feb., using a thin wax coating to make the master recording impression, but had problems with impurities. On May 16, 1888, he lectured at the Franklin Institute, demonstrating a machine with a pivot arm at 30 rpm. By Aug., he increased the speed to 60 rpm and began to use celluloid for copies, but it was too soft. He showed a new machine to Electrical World Aug. 18, but still had problems making copies of his discs. By July 10, 1889, Berliner was finally able to make hard vulcanized rubber copies of his discs, pressed in a mold from a steel-faced copper or zinc negative master. Werner Suess helped him develop an improved machine. Until the American patent was granted, the gramophone could only be sold in Europe. Berliner went to Germany in August, gave a public demonstration Nov. 26 to the Electro-Technical Society and a story was printed in the New York World Feb. 5, 1890, that Berliner's machine was superior to Edison's. [11] Berliner published in 1894 his first list of gramophone discs for sale, at 60 cents each, 6 and 7/8-inch diameter (after 1895 are 7-inch), made of celluloid, after 1895 of hard rubber, after 1897 of shellac. [12] The Berliner Gramophone Co. finally received its American patent in 1896, began to manufacture machines wholesaled to distributors such as Frank Seaman's New York Gramophone Co. for $3 per machine and $1.50 per dozen discs. Seaman sold under another name, the National Gramophone Co. [13] Eldridge Johnson filed Aug. 16, 1898, for a patent on the lateral-cut wax master and electroplated matrix master and multiple stampers. Johnson later said that this "changed the Gramophone or disc Talking Machine from a scientific toy to a commercial article of great value. It was the first and most important step in the evolution of the disc talking machine." [14] Eldridge Johnson had improved the gramophone with a spring motor in 1897 and would be the founder of the Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1901 with the "little nipper" dog as trademark. Philip Mauro of Columbia won lawsuit against Berliner in 1899 with a dubious "floating stylus" theory, and filed an injunction against Berliner to prevent his use of the gramophone name. Columbia made machines based on the Joseph Jones patent filed 1897, awarded 1901, but Johnson would eventually win his lawsuit over the Jones patent claim in 1911. Victor and Columbia would pool patents 1902. [15] 12. Conclusion After 1900, the disc phonograph of Victor and Columbia would grow in popularity over the cylinder phonograph of Edison. Shellac would replace wax for mass duplication of records. Although the graphophone with its long 6-inch wax cylinder never succeeded in the market place, the influence of Charles Sumner Tainter was significant and long lasting. He had been the first to introduce the method of cutting a zig-zag spiral groove in the wax surface of a record to improve sound quality. The helically wound cardboard tube would become a widely used packaging product. His work at the Volta Laboratory with selenium and the photophone were the first successful attempts at wireless communication using light waves. His Graphophone Company would lay the foundation for the later success of the Columbia Phonograph Co. and the Dictaphone Co. His more than 40 patents, including 25 in the field of sound recording, made him one of the most productive experimental scientists in that Heroic Age of Invention that produced Bell and Edison and Berliner at the end of the century. Notes 1. Unless otherwise noted, the information on Charles Tainter is from his unpublished manuscript "The Talking Machine and Some Little Known Facts in Connection with its Early Development," Tainter Papers, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D. C. 2. Edmunds, p. 10. 3. Tainter, "Home Notes," p. 1. 4. San Diego Union, "Phonograph Said Perfected..." 5. San Diego Union,"Original Wax Record..." 6. "Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 341,212," Tainter Papers. 7. see the articles by Fabrizio and Wile on the corporate and patent battle between Edison and Tainter. 8. Burt, p. 713. Natural waxes of esters with high amounts of fatty acid and alcohol included beeswax, carnauba, spermaceti, and montan wax. Ozocerite was a mineral wax from coal, not a true wax. Schulze-Berge and Edison experimented in 1887 and 1888 with all kinds of natural and mineral waxes for Edison's gold-plating process patent caveat filed Oct. 21, 1887. It is not clear whether Edison or Tainter was first to experiment with ozocerite, but Tainter was the first to file for the ozocerite patent Nov. 14, 1887. By 1903, Edison had settled on a stearic acid-ceresin-carnauba mixture for his gold-plating process. In 1912 Edison introduced the Blue Amberol cylinders made of celluloid and his Diamond Disk laminated flat disk made of celluloid covered with a condensite varnish later. 9. Wile, "Edison and Growing Hostilities," pp. 8-33. 10. Fabrizio, pp. 5-10 11. Wile, "Etching the Human Voice," pp. 2-22. 12. Charosh, p. xiii. 13. Wile, "The Gramophone Becomes a Success." pp. 139-170. 14. Isom, pp. 718-719. 15. Kennedy, p. 6 Bibliography • Bell, Alexander Graham. "On the Production and Reproduction of Sound by Light," American Journal of Sciences, Third Series, vol. XX, n. 118, Oct. 1880, pp. 305- 324. [Read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Boston, August 27, 1880] from Histoire de la television by Andre Lange • Burt, Leah S. "Record Materials, Part I: Chemical Technology in the Edison Recording Industry," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 25, October/November 1977, pp. 712-717. • Charosh, Paul, compiled by. Berliner Gramophone Records, American Issues, 1892-1900. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. • Edmunds, Henry. "The Graphophone," paper read Sept. 7, 1888, at the British Association for the Advancement of Science Bath Meeting, copy in the Tainter Papers, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D. C. • Fabrizio, Timothy C. "District of Columbia: The Graphophone in Washngton, D.C.," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 27, no. 1, 1996, pp. 1-10. • "First 'Radio' Built by San Diego Resident; Partner of Inventor of Telephone," San Diego Evening Tribune, July 31, 1937. • Isom, Warren Rex. "Record Materials: Evolution of the Disc Talking Machine," Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 25, October/November 1977, pp. 718-723. • Kennedy, Rick. Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Studios and the Birth of Recorded Jazz. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. • Koenigsberg, Allen. The Patent History of the Phonograph,1877-1912.Brooklyn, NY: APM Press, 1990. • Maguire, Franck Z. "The Graphophone," Harper's Weekly, July 17, 1886, pp. 458-460. • "Original Wax Record of 1881 Played First Time; S. D. Man Co-Inventor,"San Diego Union, October 28, 1937. • Paul, George F. "Opportunity Lost: The American Graphophone Company and its Six Inch Cylinders," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 30 Spring 1999, pp. 7-19. • "Phonograph Said Perfected by San Diego Man, Not Bell," San Diego Union, October 29, 1937. • Tainter, Charles Sumner. "The Graphophone," Electrical World, July 14, 1888, pp. 57-74. • Tainter, Charles Sumner. "Exhibit Tainter Home Notes, U.S. Circuit Court, District of New Nersey, American Graphophone Co. vs. Edison Phonograph Works." Vols. 1-8, 11-12, 1881-1886, Tainter Papers, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D. C. • Tainter, Charles Sumner. "The Talking Machine and Some Little Known Facts in Connection with its Early Development," unpublished manuscript, 1930, pp. 1-104, Tainter Papers, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington D. C. • Wile, Raymond R. "The Development of Sound Recording at the Volta Laboratory," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 21, No. 2, 1990, pp. 208-225. • Wile, Raymond R. "Edison and Growing Hostilities," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 22, No. 1, 1991, pp. 8-33. • Wile, Raymond R. "The Gramophone Becomes a Success in America, 1896-1898," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 27, No. 2, 1996, pp. 139-170. • Wile, Raymond R. "Etching the Human Voice: The Berliner Invention of the Gramophone," Association for Recorded Sound Collections Journal 21, No. 1, 1990, pp. 2-22.

1874 - Ernst W. Siemens was the first to describe the "dynamic" or moving-coil transducer, with a circular coil of wire in a magnetic field and supported so that it could move axially. He filed his U. S. patent application for a "magneto-electric apparatus" for "obtaining the mechanical movement of an electrical coil from electrical currents transmitted through it" on Jan. 20, 1874, and was granted patent No. 149,797 Apr. 14, 1874. However, he did not use his device for audible transmission, as did Alexander G. Bell who patented the telephone in 1876. After Bell's patent was granted, Siemens applied for German patent No. 2355, filed Dec. 14, 1877, for a nonmagnetic parchment diaphragm as the sound radiator of a moving-coil transducer. The diaphragm could take the form of a cone, with an exponentially flaring "morning glory" trumpet form. This is the first patent for the loudspeaker horn that would be used on most phonographs players in the acoustic era. His German patent was granted July 30, 1878 and his British patent No. 4685 was granted Feb. 1, 1878.

1898 - Oliver Lodge filed for British patent No. 9712 on Apr. 27, 1898, for an improved loudspeaker with nonmagnetic spacers to keep the air gap between the inner and outer poles of a moving coil transducer. This was the same year he applied for a patent on his famous radio tuner. A model of his loudspeaker is in the British Science Museum in South Kensington, and a photo was published in Wireless World Dec. 21, 1927. This improvement was later claimed by Pridham and Jensen in the Magnavox application for patent No. 1,448,279 filed Apr. 28, 1920, and granted Mar. 13, 1923. 1901 - John Stroh first described the conical paper diaphragm that terminated at the rim of the speaker in a section that was flat except for corrugations, filed for the British patent No. 3393 on Feb. 16, 1901, granted Dec. 14, 1901. 1908 - Anton Pollak improved the moving-coil loudspeaker with a voice-coil centering spider, filed for U.S. patent No. 939,625 on Aug. 7, 1908, granted Nov. 9, 1909. 1911 - Edwin S. Pridham and Peter L. Jensen in Napa, California, invented a moving-coil loudspeaker they called the "Magnavox" that was used by Woodrow Wilson in San Diego in 1919. 1915 - Harold Arnold began program at Bell Labs to improve phonographic sound recording. The first priority was the electronic amplifier using the new vacuum tube, second was the microphone, and third was the loudspeaker that would improve the "balanced armature" units developed for public address. After WWI, J. P. Maxfield led this project that produced E. C. Wente's moving coil speaker by 1925, the Orthophonic phonographic player by 1925, and Vitaphone talking motion pictures by 1926. 1918 - Henry Egerton on 1918/01/08 filed patent for balanced-armature loudspeaker, used in the Bell Labs No. 540AW speakers developed by N. H. Ricker Oct. 6, 1922, that became the 540 commercial speaker by 1924; was based on the balanced armature telephone patent of Thomas Watson granted Oct. 24, 1882, similar to devices also developed by Siemens and Frank Capps 1921 - The Phonetron based on patent No. 1,847,935 filed Apr. 23, 1921, by C. L. Farrand, was the first coil-driven direct-radiator loudspeaker to be sold in the U.S. and was well-received, competing with the horns used by table radios 1923 - The Thorophone was a gooseneck loudspeaker with a voice-coil driver 1925 - The research paper of Chester W. Rice and Edward W. Kellogg at General Electric was important in establishing the basic principle of the direct-radiator loudspeaker with a small coil-driven mass-controlled diaphragm in a baffle with a broad midfrequency range of uniform response. Edward Wente at Bell Labs had independently discovered this same principle, filed patent No. 1,812,389 Apr. 1, 1925, granted June 30, 1931. The Rice-Kellogg paper also published an amplifier design that was important in boosting the power transmitted to loudspeakers. In 1926, RCA used this design in the Radiola line of a.c. powered radios. 1925 - Victor Orthophonic acoustic phonograph player had a folded exponential horn that was later used as model for the Klipsch speaker of the hi-fi era. Within a year, the Orthophonic faced competition from all-electric phonographs with an electromechanical pickup, vacuum-tube amplifier, and moving-coil loudspeaker, such as the Brunswick Panatrope sold by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. 1926 - Vitaphone sound system for motion pictures used a new speaker developed at Bell Labs. Wente and Thuras designed the Western Electric 555-W speaker driver that was coupled with a horn having a 1-in. throat and a 40-sq. ft. mouth; it was capable of 100-5000 hz freq. range with an efficiency of 25% (compared to 1% today) needed due to low amp power of 10 watts. The power amps were 205-D. Older loudspeakers were balanced armature type, but the newer 555-W speakers of the Vitaphone were moving coil type. 1928 - Herman J. Fanger filed patent No. 1,895,071 on Sep. 25, 1928, granted Jan. 24, 1933, that described what came to be known as the coaxial speaker, composed of a small high frequency horn with its own diaphragm nested inside or in front of a large cone loudspeaker, based on the variable-area principle that made the center cone light and stiff for high frequencies and the outer cone flexible and highly damped for lower frequencies. 1929 - E. W. Kellogg filed patent No. 1,983,377 on September 17, 1929, granted December 4, 1934, that described an electrostatic speaker composed of many small sections able to radiate sound with out magnets or cones or baffles. This patent, as well as the 1932 British patents of Hans Vogt, influenced Peter Walker to build the Quad ESL flat panel speaker in 1957. 1929 - J. D. Seabert of Westinghouse developed a horn-type loudspeaker that directed the sounds of human speech toward the audience better than cone speakers that were intended for the over-all sound including music to fill the entire theater. These "directional baffle" horns had an opening 3 ft. by 4 ft. and were different from small-throat horns. 1930 - Albert L. Thuras filed patent No. 1,869,178 on Aug. 15, 1930, granted July 26, 1932, for the bass-reflex principle while working at Bell Labs. Early cabinets used a passive baffle to direct sound to the front, allowing the back of the cabinet to be open for the low sounds. The bass-reflex enclosure kept the low-frequency sounds from being lost from the rear of the diaphragm. 1931 - Bell Labs developed the two-way loudspeaker, called "divided range" for the demonstration by H. A. Frederick in December of vertically cut records. The high frequencies were reproduced by a small horn with a frequency response of 3000-13,000 hz, and the low frequencies by a 12-inch dynamic cone direct-radiator unit with a frequency response within 5db from 50-10,000 hz. By 1933, a triple-range speaker had been developed for the Constitution Hall demo in April, adding Western Electric No. 555 driver units as the mid-range speaker. For the low frequency range 40-300 hz, a large moving coil-driven cone diaphragm in a large baffle expanding from a 12-in throat to a 60-inch mouth over a total length of 10 ft. This 3-way system was introduced in motion picture theaters as "Wide Range" reproduction. 1932 - RCA demonstrated a dual-range speaker of its own design for theaters, using three 6-inch cone diaphragms with aluminum voice coils in divergent directions, with a response of 125-8000 hz, and 10-ft. horns 40-125 hz. 1933 - "Progress was such that a demonstration of the new system - called "stereophonic" because of its ability to give a spatial sense corresponding to stereoscopic vision - was given before the National Academy of Sciences and many invited guests at Constitution Hall, Washington in the spring of 1933. Transmission was

over wire lines from the Academy of Music in Philadelphia and three channels were used with microphones respectively at left, center and right of the orchestra stage and loud speakers in similar positions in Constitution Hall." This transmission of music "was carried out with special loud speakers developed for the purpose by Dr. Wente and the late A. L. Thuras. The objectives in the design of these loudspeakers were uniform response over the whole tonal range of the orchestra, an enhanced sound power output capacity without noticeable non-linear distortion and uniform distribution of the emitted sound at all frequencies throughout a wide solid angle. For the receiving unit and the multicellular horn which were developed for this demonstration, Dr. Wente, jointly with the Bell Telephone Laboratories, was awarded a gold plaque by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1936." (Bell Labs, 1953) 1935 - Douglas Shearer and John Hilliard at MGM developed a standard theater speaker system, starting with the Loews 5000-seat Capitol Theater on Broadway. James Lansing and Dr. John F. Blackburn of Cal Tech designed a 2-way speaker system; the high frequency driver had a 3-inch aluminum diaphragm and throat size of 1.4 inches; the low frequency baffled cone unit was 15 inches. ERPI provided speakers from Fletcher's hi-fi experimental equipment to help design the speakers. The low frequency horn used four 15-in. Lansing cone drivers and Lansing 284 drivers for multicell horns of different sizes. The system was installed in 12 theaters for the opening of "Romeo and Juliet" with Norma Shearer, sister of Douglas,

then installed in all Loews Theaters, then became the standard established by the Academy

Pre-radio science career Reginald Fessenden may well be the greatest Canadian-born scientist, inventor and engineer. As a scientist he should be considered the intellect, peer of Lord Rutherford, Sir J.J. Thompson and Lord Kelvin. Oliver Heaviside and, particularly, A. E. Kennelly (co-discoverers of the Kennelly-Heaviside ionospheric layer) were his contemporary colleagues. As an inventor, he held some 230 patents. As an engineer, he did not confine his expertise to one discipline but worked with equal facility in the chemical, electrical, radio, metallurgical and mechanical fields. Yet in spite of his brilliance, the number, and the continuing usefulness of his contributions, he is now virtually forgotten, except by a few.2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 In Susskind's9 comprehensive review of the early history of electronics and wireless, no mention was made of him. Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was born in Knowlton, Brome County, Canada East (now Quebec) on 6 October, 1866. The family resided at East Bolton (now Austin) at that time. In 1871 the family moved to Fergus, Ontario, and in 1875 to Niagara Falls, Ontario. Educationally, the young Fessenden was a prodigy. He attended De Veaux Military Academy, Niagara Falls, New York, for one year at the age of nine. He went to Trinity College School, Port Hope, Ontario, where he won prizes and the praise of the headmaster as one of the best students that he had ever had. At the age of 16, he accepted a mathematics mastership at Bishop's College, Lennoxville, Quebec, where he became interested in science through private reading of the periodicals Nature and Scientific American. In 1886, he accepted the principalship of Whitney Institute, Bermuda. Although he never lived in Canada again, he considered himself a Canadian, and he spent vacations at his uncle's cottage near Peterborough, Ontario. Fessenden worked at Thomas Edison's laboratory, East Orange, New Jersey, from 1887-1890. When Edison gave him the task of producing a nonflammable insulation for electrical wires, Fessenden set out to learn all he could about elasticity. The recognized authorities on the subject were Sutherland and Lord Kelvin, who held the view that both elasticity and cohesion were due to a gravitational attraction between the atoms. Fessenden was skeptical, and began a research study for a better explanation. Using mathematics as a basis for his study, Fessenden concluded that atoms had to be spherical in shape, with a positive charge at their centres and a negative charge on their surfaces. He considered atoms as electrostatic doublets. In a series of technical notes Fessenden proposed his electrostatic doublet theory of cohesion, and used it to calculate the physical and electrical properties of metals, reportedly showing that the cohenion, rigidity and Young’s modulus came out right.10,11 His paper entitled "The Law and Nature of Cohesion," published in 1892, was deemed preposterous by contemporary scientists, including Sir J.J. Thompson, Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, on the grounds that since metals were conductors, the individual atoms must also be conductors and could not contain internal charges! Ironically it was Sir J.J. Thompson who, five years later, demonstrated that atoms were electromagnetically constituted. In 1890, Edison encountered financial difficulties, and Fessenden was laid off. He went to work for Westinghouse. Here he tackled different problems. The method of using platinum connecting wires for an electric lamp made light bulbs expensive, and was covered by a patent. Fessenden found ways of fusing wires of iron or nickel alloys to the glass, greatly reducing the price. This breakthrough was a significant early step in the transition of electric light from a novelty to an everyday necessity. He later developed silicon steel. Early transformers and electric motors were lossy due to hysteresis loss in the iron cores of the transformer and iron pole pieces in motors. Fessenden reasoned that replacement of the large carbon atoms in the steel by smaller silicon atoms would reduce the hysteresis loss, and in almost a century, no better method has been found than his silicon steel. In 1892, he accepted the chair of electrical engineering at Purdue University, and although he stayed there for only one year, he was responsible for establishing the Electrical Engineering Department at the university, and his influence is perhaps still felt today.12 In 1893, the University of Pittsburgh persuaded him to accept the same chair in that city, largely because George Westinghouse was anxious to have Fessenden nearby and helped with a substantial honorarium. In 1899, Fessenden attempted to return to Canada, but McGill returned his application for the chair of electrical engineering. The position was filled by a "professor" from Nebraska. Fessenden never did graduate formally from a university, but because of the positions he held with Purdue University and the University of Pittsburgh he was hereafter referred to as Professor Fessenden. One can only speculate what might have happened if he had worked at McGill with Rutherford and Soddy. Fessenden's inventive mind was already in evidence. By 1901, he already held nine patents with respect to incandescent lamps. His hobby of photography led him to the invention of what he called microphotography, an early form of microfilm. He also began experimenting with radio waves, and it is in the field of radio science that Fessenden made his greatest contributions. Wireless telegraphy Fessenden closely followed the work and research methodology of Heinrich Hertz, Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. In 1900, he joined the US Weather Bureau, which sought a system for transmitting weather forecasts. Unfortunately, he soon fell out with his superior at the bureau and resigned in August 1902. In September, he secured the financial support of two Pittsburgh millionaires, T.H. Given and Hay Walker; and together they formed the National Electric Signalling Company (NESCO). While the partnership eventually collapsed (in 1912), Fessenden's greatest achievements occurred under its aegis. It is interesting to note that Fessenden, in 1905, established the Fessenden Wireless Telegraph Company of Canada. Unfortunately, this venture never went anywhere. The Canadian Company never received support from his American partners. It acquired a transatlantic license from the British government, but not from Canada. Only Marconi was licensed to erect towers in Canada and install radio equipment in Canada - a senseless Government regularity ruling that held back the competitive development of radio in Canada for more than two decades. Marconi, for his transatlantic experiment in December 1901, employed a Braun type of antenna system, see below, and a spark transmitter designed and constructed by Fleming. Marconi knew very little about his transmitter. It is interesting to speculate on whether Marconi drew the hand-drawn sketch of "his" transmitter, labelled Marconi's transmitter, published in a 50th anniversary publication of the IEEE on the early history of wireless. This "transmitter" simply would not work. Ratcliffe13 has discussed scientists' reaction to Marconi's transatlantic experiment. The author has also pursued this subject. He modelled Marconi's Poldhu antenna system to determine its frequency of oscillations. But that is another story. The technology of the era as exemplified by Marconi systems was based on the generation of radio waves by creating a spark, which can be likened to a whiplash effect. Let us digress for the moment and speak about spark-transmitters. Spark transmitters The simplest method of producing high-frequency oscillations is to give an electrical shock to an oscillatory circuit consisting of an inductance and a capacitance in series. This principle is used in the so-called spark transmitter. Hertz’s transmitter, in 1888, placed the spark gap across the terminals of the antenna, which was an endloaded dipole. The equivalent circuit of an antenna at frequencies near its self-resonant frequency is a series-resonant circuit (La - Ca -Ra) Marconi, following the lead of Hertz, employed such a spark transmitter, but his antenna was a monopole type, a wire fed against ground. Since the only conducting path for the transmitting antenna to ground was by way of a spark across the gap, the oscillations on the antenna were in very short bursts. The natural L-C-R response of the antenna system was interrupted when the spark discharge ceased. The only connection to ground was through the low impedance of the spark discharge. But this cap was considered to be an essential element of the radiating system. Indeed, some contemporary mathematicians concluded on the basis of their "theoretical" studies that no antenna could radiate without a gap! This not-wanted gap was eliminated by Braun, a German physicist, who in 1898 patented a circuit in which the spark gap was in a separate primary circuit in series with an appropriate coil and condenser. But the contribution of the Braun patent is perhaps as controversial as is the subject of who was the first to devise electromagnetic antennas. The German patent has been questioned. Nothing original was said about tuning, and the oscillating circuit was said to be much "slower," tuned to a lower frequency, than the antenna circuit. If the coupling between the oscillating and antenna circuits is high, a double peaked amplitude frequency response will result, and while such a response is not wanted, both circuits should certainly be tuned to the same frequency. I say "not wanted," because this double-hump response in effect made the transmitter transmit a "double wave." In fact, early radio regulations were introduced encouraging "single-wave" or "sharp" emissions, by limiting the amplitude of the second wave to say one-tenth the amplitude of the stronger, desired wave. Notwithstanding, Braun's "tank circuit" was coupled inductively to a secondary consisting of the antenna in series with a coupling coil in which the driving electromotive force was induced and which provided a continuous conducting path from the antenna to ground. Except for the later insertion of a transmission line between the antenna and the coupling coil, the Braun antenna arrangement provided the complete electrical equivalent of the present-day base-driven monopole antenna. A Braun-type spark transmitter was a considerable improvement over the "simple" or "Marconi type transmitter." It consisted of a condenser and an inductor in series with a spark gap, across which is connected an induction coil. The induction coil had a low-voltage primary winding and a high-voltage secondary winding. The low-voltage primary winding was driven by a battery and an interrupter, which made and broke the connection of the primary winding to the at some low audio frequency rate. When the induction coil was working properly the condenser was charged up, and when the potential across it was sufficiently high to break down the insulation of air in the gap, a spark then passed. Since this spark has a comparatively low resistance, the spark discharge was equivalent to closing of the oscillatory L-C-R circuit. The condenser now discharged through the conducting spark, and the discharge current took the form of a damped oscillation, at a frequency determined by the resonant frequency of the spark transmitter. The RF energy flowing in the inductor was inductively coupled to an antenna, which was tuned to the same frequency as that of the spark transmitter. The induced oscillation in the antenna circuit was also a damped wave, but the period of oscillation was significantly longer than the oscillation in the primary. In effect, the primary is the "tank circuit" and the secondary the "antenna circuit." Marconi's early telegraphy experiments were made using such a spark transmitter. However, it was with the simple form of transmitter, spark gap across the antenna terminals, that he obtained his first successful results and demonstrated the possibility of wireless telegraphy by means of electromagnetic waves propagated over great distances. The interrupter was a mechanical device, operating at a rate corresponding to a low audio frequency. Thus, each time the key was pressed the receiver would "hear" a buzz (ignoring for the present that a suitable detector so that the operator could actually "hear" the sound of the transmitted signal had not been devised). The audio sound to be "heard" was the interrupter frequency accompanied by the ragged and irregular noise of the spark-generated signal. Most early radio experimenters followed or improved upon the Marconi method of signalling because in their view a spark was essential to wireless. But later experimenters employed an AC generator and a high-voltage step-up transformer, rather than an induction coil and battery, for the power source. Fessenden’s work in radio was important, not only for the results he secured, but because of its originality. From the outset he sought methods to generate and receive continuous waves, not damped waves which started with a bang and then died away quickly. However, his early experiments had to make do with spark transmitters, the only means known at that time for generating appreciable power. So he set his mind to make this type of transmitter more CW-like. This led to his development of the synchronous rotary spark-gap transmitter. An AC generator was used, which as well as providing the energy for the spark transmitter, was directly coupled to a rotary spark-gap so that sparks occurred at precise points on the input wave. The spark was between a fixed terminal on the stator and a terminal on the rotor, in effect the rotor was a spoked wheel, rotating in synchronism with the AC generator. Thus, a higher spark rate was achieved, high compared with the frequency of the AC generator. But another advantage was realized, since in effect a rotary spark cap was a kind of mechanically quenched spark cap transmitter. The oscillations of the primary circuit ceased after a few cycles, since when the rotating gap opened the spark ceased, and the antenna circuit continued to oscillate with its own damping. The quenched spark gap was more efficient, probably a less noisy, narrower-band signal compared with the unquenched gap, since any of the spark methods of excitation inherently involve consumption of energy in the spark, in addition to the energy losses occurring in the antenna circuit. Many forms of quenched spark gap transmitters were devised, described as Wein transmitters, but the Fessenden synchronous rotary spark-gap transmitter was perhaps the best. With a synchronous spark-gap phased to fire on both positive and negative peaks of a 3-phase waveform, precisely on the peak for maximum efficiency, a 125 Hz AC generator would produce a spark rate of 750 times a second. These rotating gaps produced clear almost musical signals, very distinctive and easily distinguished from any signal at the time. It was not true CW, but it came as close as possible to that, and the musical tone was easily read through atmospheric noise and interference from other transmitters. His Brant Rock station employed a synchronous rotary spark gap transmitter, the latest one built to date. It was completed on 28th December 1905. The rotary gap measured 6 feet in diameter at the stator and 5 feet in diameter at the rotor. Its rotor had 50 electrodes (poles), and its stator had four. Coupled to this rotary gap was a 125 Hz, 3-phase, 35 kVA alternator. HF alternator for CW Spectacular as was the Brant Rock transmitter, Fessenden, after achieving initial success (to be described) soon turned his attention to other directions, devoting his efforts to newer and better developments: the HF alternator. Fessenden realized, as we have already noted above, that this stop-and-go system, the spark transmitter, was incapable of transmitting satisfactorily voice and music. A means of sending and receiving continuous waves was required. The idea came to him during discussions with his uncle Cortez Fessenden, as I have already told you, while visiting with him at his cottage on Chemong Lake near Peterborough in 1897, and is described in his US Patent No 706737, dated August 12, 1902. But it was not before the fall of 1906, when Fessenden's HF alternator was developed to a point where it could be used practically (frequencies up to 100 kHz were possible), that continuous-wave transmission became feasible. Marconi and others working this new field of wireless ridiculed Fessenden's suggestion that a wireless signal could be produced by applying an HF alternating current to an antenna. All were unanimous in their view that a spark was essential to wireless, an error in reasoning that delayed the development of radio by a decade. Fessenden was right, but alone in his belief. "The whip-lash theory however passed gradually from the minds of men and was replaced by the continuous wave one with all too little credit to the man who had been right."14 To document the reaction of his colleagues to this departure from conventional transmission methods, spark or damped wave transmissions, we can note that J.A. Fleming, in his book Electromagnetic Waves, published in 1906, said, in reference to Patent No 706737, that "there was no HF alternator of the kind described by Fessenden, and it is doubtful if any appreciable radiation would result if such a machine were available and were used as Fessenden proposes." Fleming was totally wrong, since 1906, the year in which his book was published, was the year of Fessenden's greatest achievements using continuous waves generated by an HF alternator, with one terminal of the alternator connected to ground and the other terminal to the tuned antenna. Certainly, the referenced statement did not appear in subsequent editions of Fleming's book. Judge Mayer, in his opinion upholding Fessenden’s patent on this invention, said, "in effect it has been established that the prior art practiced, spark, or damped wave transmission, from which Fessenden departed and introduced a new or continuous-wave transmission, for the practice of which he provided a suitable mechanism which has since come into extensive use."15 Initially, Fessenden employed various forms of arc transmitters and rotating spark cap transmitters with varying degrees of success. When he had perfected his HF alternator in Fessenden had achieved his goal, viz a continuous wave transmitter, the frequency of which was not determined by aerial tuning but by the speed of the HF alternator. The aerial tuning only determined the power transfer from his transmitter to the aerial. Subsequently, the HF alternator was replaced by vacuum-tube transmitters, and nowadays by solid-state transmitters, but the basic principle of operation of the Fessenden transmitter is the same as that today. As early as 1890, Tesla built high-frequency alternating current (AC) generators. One, which had 384 poles, produced a 10 kHz output. He later produced frequencies as high as 20 kHz.16 There is no fundamental reason that such frequencies could not have been used for worldwide wireless communications; in fact, in 1919, the first continuously reliable transatlantic radio service, with a transmitter installed in Brunswick, New Jersey, used a 200 kW HF alternator operating at a frequency of 21.8 kHz. However, practical antennas used in the early days of radio were not large enough to radiate efficiently at such a low frequency, so LF rather than VLF had to used.17 Fessenden contracted the GE Company to build an HF alternator operating at speeds of 50-100 kHz. Alexanderson struggled for two years to develop such a machine, and in September 1906, GE delivered his best effort - which in Fessenden's view was a "useless machine." The Alexanderson alternator did not meet Fessenden's specifications. The GE alternator was returned with a letter stating that in the opinion of its engineers it "could never be made to operate above 10,000 cycles"21. It is not clear what had been improved over the Tesla alternator. So Fessenden took upon himself to rebuild the machine. He must have persevered, day and night, in the usual way he attacked a problem, since by November 1906, he had a machine that would operate at frequencies in the 50-90 kHz band. The Fessenden high frequency alternator was a small machine of the Mordey type, having a fixed armature in the form of a thin disc, or ring, and a revolving field magnet with 360 teeth, or projections (see below). At a speed of 139 revolutions per second, an alternating current of 50,000 Hz and a terminal EMF of 65 volts was generated. The maximum output of the alternator at the above speed was about 300 watts20. Very little difficulty seems to have been obtained in running the machine at so high a speed. A simple flat belt drive was used, powered by the steam engine at Brant Rock, and a thin self-centring shaft which entirely eliminated excessive vibration and pressure on the bearing. The belt and the step-up gear box can be seen on the far right of the photograph, the alternator is on the left. The frequency of the alternator was determined by the speed of the steam engine, which had to be well regulated. Fessenden later developed a high frequency alternator that had an output of 50 kW. This machine was scaled up to 200 kW by the GE company, and put on the market as the Alexanderson alternator, named after the man who supervised the job. History forgot that Fessenden developed the prototype. Zennick22 has detailed the early efforts to develop this high frequency alternator, and described the principle of its operation. Figure 1a is a diagrammatic cross-section of one of these alternators. The excitation is obtained by means of a single large field coil, S, which is wound around the entire machine and supplied with direct current. The magnetic flux lines, M, of this coil pass through the iron cores, E1 and E2, of the armature coils, S1 and S2. The only moveable part, J, has teeth or projections, Z, of iron, at its periphery. When one of these teeth is just between the armature coils, S1 and S2, the magnetic flux, M, has a path almost entirely through iron, excepting for the very small air gaps between the teeth, Z, and the cores, E1 and E2. In this position then, the magnetic reluctance is a minimum, and the magnetic flux passing through cores E1 and E2 a maximum. When now a space instead of a tooth lies between the armature coils, the air gap, and hence the reluctance are much larger, so the amount of flux through the armature windings is very small. Hence as the moveable part J rotates, the magnetic flux varies periodically between a maximum and a minimum value, so an oscillatory EMF is generated, whose frequency = the product of speed in revolution/second x number of teeth, is induced in the armature windings. The rotor of the Fessenden-Alexanderson machine is shaped like the cross-section J, in Figure 1a. The rotor of the machine shown in Figure 1d with its DC motor had 300 teeth. The space between the teeth was filled with non-magnetic material (phosphor-bronze) so the surface of the rotor, J, was quite smooth, thereby preventing any loss due to air friction (windage). The armature windings S1 and S2, in which the oscillatory EMF was induced did not properly consist of coils, but a single wire wound in a wave shape form. Any two consecutive U-formed wires could be considered as a pair of coils of one turn each, joined in series but so as to oppose each other. Figure 1c shows one half of the completed armature. One of these early machines is shown in Figure 1d. Here the drive is an electric motor. The photograph shows three main parts to the whole set up, from right to left, the electric motor, a step up gear box (which Fessenden refers to as a de Laval gear in connection with his alternators) and the alternator on the far left. Clearly the alternator shaft and the motor shaft are not in the same line, the difference being taken up by the gear box. The small object in front (and driven by a flat belt) is an oil pump to ensure lubrication of all high speed bearings. The capacity of the alternator increases as the air gap between armature and rotor is decreased. It was 2.1 kW in one machine having an air gap of 0.37 mm. Receiving continuous waves The use of CW created problems for Fessenden, not only in regard to the generation of continuous waves but for reception. First, at a distant station where the received signal was weak, and if it were receivable at all, one had to find and tune the receiver to this narrowband signal in the expanse of unused radio spectrum. The broadband spark signal was more easily found. Second, the coherer-type detector used for reception of spark transmission was useless for detecting CW. Fessenden was convinced that the successful detector for wireless signals must be constantly receptive, instead of requiring resetting as was characteristic of the coherer. But this was more easily said than done. He first devised a hotwire barretter, similar in nature to a miniature lamp of which the filament was made of Wollaston wire. From it he produced, as a result of an accident during the process of making his hotwire barretter, a liquid barretter. The hotwire barretter needed to have the silver coating removed from a very short length of the wire by a nitric-acid treatment. It was during such treatment that Fessenden observed that one of several such barretters, in this silver-dissolving part of the process, was giving indications on a meter attached to the circuit of signals received from an automatic test sender sending "D"s. An examination revealed that this one had a broken filament, while the others were complete. A brief investigation disclosed the fact that this Wollaston wire dipping into the 20% nitric-acid solution was far more sensitive and reliable than any other known type. The word barretter was coined by Fessenden from his classical language background. The term is a derivation from the French word exchanger, implying the change from AC to DC. For proper operation, the platinum-coated Wollaston wire needed to make point contact, lightly touching the acid solution (refer US Patent No 727331, 5 May 1903 for the basic detector; and No 793684, December 1904 for a sealed detector for shipboard use). This detector was the standard of sensitivity for many years, until it was replaced by the galena crystal detector, and by the vacuum tube in about 1913. This detector, when used with a telephone receiver in a local shunt circuit, gave such accurate reproductions that radio operators could identify several wireless telegraphy stations in the passband of the receiver by the different characteristics of the spark transmissions, just as a friend's voice is recognized by its peculiarities of tonal quality. And it made possible subsequently the reception of radio telephony (voice). It is interesting to read a paper by Leslie A. Geddes, Purdue University, entitled "The Rectification Properties of an Electrode-Electrolyte Interface Operated at High Sinusoidal Current Density"18 for a modern analysis of the Fessenden barretter type of detector. The authors became aware of Fessenden's pioneering work only after acceptance of their paper by the Journal. Fessenden's telegraphy transmissions employed a synchronous rotary spark-gap transmitter, which was in effect a modulated quasi-CW method of signalling, well suited to detection by rectification. But this rectifier-detector was useless for the reception of unmodulated continuous waves. All that would be heard would be clicks, as the Morse key was closed and opened. Again Fessenden's fertile mind worked around this problem. He devised the methodology of combining two frequencies to derive their sum and difference frequencies, and coined the word heterodyne, derived from the joining of two Greek words hetero, meaning difference, with dyne, meaning force. Today, heterodyning is fundamental to the technology of radio communications. Some radio historians consider that his heterodyne principle is Fessenden's greatest contribution to radio science. His initial heterodyne circuit is described in US Pat No 706740, dated 12 August 1902 and his advanced heterodyne circuit, Pat No 1 050 441 and 1 050 728, is dated 14 January 1913. Armstrong's superheterodyne receiver is based on the heterodyne principle. Except for method improvement, Armstrong's superheterodyne receiver remains the standard radio receiving method today. Spark telephony Fessenden's one desire was to transmit voice without wires. In 1899, while experimenting with spark transmission employing a Wehnelt interrupter operating the Ruhmkorff induction coils, Fessenden noted that, when the telegraphy key was held down for a long dash, the peculiar wailing sound of the Wehnelt interrupter was reproduced with good clarity in the receiving telephone. This at once suggested that by using a spark rate above the voice band, wireless telephony could be achieved. Professor Kintner, who was working for Fessenden at that time, designed an interrupter to give 10,000 breaks a second, and this interrupter was built by Brashear, an optician. The interrupter was delivered in January or February 1900, but experiments were not conducted until the fall of that year. To modulate his transmitter, he inserted a carbon microphone directly in series with the antenna lead. After many unsuccessful tries, transmission of speech over a distance of 1.5 km was finally achieved on 23 December 1900, between 15-metre masts located at Cobb Island, Maryland. The received telephony transmission was reported to be perfectly intelligible, but the speech was accompanied by an extremely loud disagreeable noise due to the irregularity of the spark. The first voice over radio was that of Reginald Aubrey Fessenden on 23 December 1900, and this is what he said: "Hello", he undoubtedly shouted into his microphone, "one, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen? If it is, telegraph back and let me know." Barely had he finished and put on the headphones, when he heard the crackle of the return telegraphy message. Intelligible speech by electromagnetic waves had been transmitted for the first time in the history of radio. Continuous-Wave telephony By the end of 1903, fairly satisfactory speech had been obtained by the arc method, but it was still accompanied by a disagreeable hissing noise. In 1904 and 1905, both the arc method and HF alternator method were employed (The alternator at this stage of development operated at a maximum frequency of 10 kHz). The transmission was however still not quite "perfect."19 In the fall of 1906, as we have already noted, the HF alternator had been brought to a practical shape. It could operate at speeds that produced frequencies as high as 100 kHz and was initially used for radiotelephony transmission from Brant Rock to Plymouth, a distance of 17 km, and to a small fishing schooner. But the transmission distance extended far beyond this range. The method of modulation was in a like manner to that used for his telephony spark, transmitter experiment, viz a carbon microphone in series with the antenna lead. The quality of the transmission was good, reported to be better than over wire lines at that time.20 Fessenden's communications successes Fessenden's greatest radio communications successes happened in 1906. On 10 January, two-way transatlantic telegraphic communication was achieved -- another first – between Brant Rock, Massachusetts, and Macrihanish, Scotland. James C. Armor, Fessenden's chief assistant, was the operator at Macrihanish, and Fessenden himself was the operator at Brant Rock. During January, February and on into March 1906, two-way telegraphy communication was established on a regular basis, exchanging messages about the workings of the machines, and each day improvements were made. Fessenden and his team had beaten Marconi [see Box] at transmitting telegraphy messages both ways across the Atlantic. The frequency used was about 88 kHz. Fessenden's sending apparatus consisted of a 40 horsepower steam engine driving a 35 kVA 125 cycle alternator, which in turn supplied current to transformers in which the voltage was raised to a value required to operate the spark. This was a rotating spark-gap driven from the generator and arranged to give sparks at predetermined points on the voltage wave. These synchronous rotating spark gaps produced clear, almost musical signals, very distinctive and easily distinguished from any signal at the time. They were superior to other signals commonly used at the time which by comparison, were very rough and ragged. Fessenden and Marconi Marconi, who had succeeded in signalling, so he said, rather uncertainly across the Atlantic one-way on 12 December 1901 between Poldhu, Cornwall, and Signal Hill, Newfoundland, and on 15 December, 1902, between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia and Poldhu, Cornwall, had not yet succeeded in sending messages reliably over this distance even by one-way transmission. Marconi, in this time period. was using frequencies about 10 times higher (820 kHz), which is the reason for his difficulty if not impossibility to receive the daytime signal radiated at the fundamental oscillation frequency of his antenna system. Frequency trend as their work progressed is another contrast between Fessenden and Marconi. Marconi's initial experiments in 1885 were made at centimetre wavelengths. To achieve communications over greater and greater distances, Marconi built bigger and bigger antenna systems which resulted in a decrease of the antenna's fundamental oscillation frequency. By 1904, his English antenna had become a pyramidal monopole with umbrella wires, and the frequency was 70 khz. ln 1905, his Canadian antenna was a capacitive structure with a very large top-hat, and the frequency was 82 kHz. Fessenden, on the other hand, was attempting to move up in frequency. His initial experiments using HF alternators were made at VLF (10 kHz), since this was the upper frequency of the early machines. However he realized that for practical long-distance communications with realizable antennas he had to use higher frequencies (50-100 kHz), besides which he wanted to modulate his transmitter for telephony and therefore had to use frequencies well above voice band. He knew [reference Patent No 706737 filed 29 May 1901] that when the frequency of the alternator was very much less than the self-resonant frequency of the antenna system, that the principle fields would be electrostatic and magnetic (induction fields), which fall off as a high power of distance, and that the radiation field would be small. He knew that the "ether wave" had a wavelength that was greater than four times the monopole height. Clearly he had a good understanding of the fundamental principles of antennas and radiation.

Employing 420-foot umbrella top-loaded masts at each end of the link, three different frequencies were employed in the communications between Brant Rock and Macrihanish. The results were carefully recorded and compared at various times of day and night and as a function of day of the month. These records were perhaps the first field strength recordings ever made. Atmospheric conditions were also included in the record. The encouraging results of these tests and the reaction of those listening in, far and wide, precipitated requests for Fessenden equipment. But Given and Walker refused to permit sales of the equipment, on the assumption that such sales would jeopardize their ultimate chances of selling the whole system in a package deal. Then, at the height of excitement over the success in spanning the Atlantic with two-way communications, devastating news reached Brant Rock by cable. The Macrihanish tower had crashed to the ground in a winter storm on 5 December 1906. The station was never rebuilt. New HF alternator In November 1906, Fessenden and colleagues were conducting experimental transmissions using his newly-developed HF alternator, between stations at Brant Rock and Plymouth, Massachusetts. The station at Brant Rock was modulated by a carbon microphone connected in series with the antenna lead. About midnight, on an evening early in November, Mr. Stein was telling the operator at Plymouth how to run the dynamo. His voice was heard by Mr. Armor at the Macrihanish, Scotland station with such clarity that there was no doubt about the speaker, and the station log book confirmed the report. Fessenden's greatest triumph was soon to come. On 24 December, 1906, Fessenden and his assistants presented the world's first radio broadcast. The transmission included a speech by Fessenden and selected music for Christmas. Fessenden played Handel's Largo on the violin. That first broadcast, from his transmitter at Brant Rock, MA, was heard by radio operators on board US Navy and United Fruit Company ships equipped with Fessenden's radio receivers at various distances over the South and North Atlantic, as far away as the West Indies. The wireless broadcast was repeated on New Year's Eve. The final days of King Spark As CW systems were later developed (1905-1915), Marconi sought to use his spark expertise to achieve a semi-continuous timed spark that approximated to a continuous wave. In a sense this was the ultimate Marconi spark transmitter and was used as the international tranmitter at Caernarfon, Wales, for a few years. It was noisy, and a Poulsen arc was held in standby. Eventually, the Marconi spark transmitter was replaced by a General Electric Co. (Alexanderson) HF alternator. The Fessenden-Marconi competing radio technologies battle was over. Fessenden had won. His CW technology was the way to the future. The US Navy installed a high-power Fessenden rotary spark transmitter at Arlington, Virginia, in 1913, call sign NAA. This transmitter was subsequently replaced by an HF alternator, which was used for their VLF Fleet Broadcast at 33 kHz until the mid 1950s, but over the years the HF alternator was gradually replaced by vacuum tube transmitters, as are today's transmiters being replaced by solid state transmitters. The three-element vacuum tube was well-known by 1915 to be capable of regeneration and oscillation. It could therefore generate CW. World War I spurred transmitting-tube development. The rise of CW followed in post-war years. Radio amateurs contributed to the demise of spark. Using spark and CW superpower, commercial and government stations were working intercontinental distances, yet, as 1921 began, no radio amateur signal from this side of the Atlantic had ever been reported heard in Europe. The ARRL sponsored one-way transatlantic tests in December 1921, and sent Paul Godley, a well-known amateur and engineer, to England with the latest receiving apparatus. Godley set up a tent on a windswept Scottish beach and, using a Beverage wave antenna and frequencies near 200 metres, he copied nearly 30 American radio amateur signals. CW stations outnumbered spark stations by almost two to one. CW had won the race. By 1924, spark was forbidden on the new 80, 40, 20, and 5-metre radio amateur bands. Concluding remarks Fessenden, a genius and mathematician, was the inventor of radio as we know it today. Marconi finally had to admit that Fessenden was right, when in 1914 the Marconi Company purchased a license to Fessenden's patents from the National Electric Signalling Company (NESCO), which later became the Radio Company of America (RCA). Fessenden was at home in his laboratory, but out of his element when dealing with the business and political aspects of inventing. He never reaped until late in life any financial reward for his radio inventions, and was compelled to spend much time and energy in litigation. Disagreement with his partners Given and Walker came to a head at the end of December 1910. While Fessenden was detained at a meeting in Pittsburgh, an attempt was made to shut down operations at Brant Rock and to remove his papers, but the quick-wittedness of his wife and the loyalty of most of his staff circumvented this manoeuvre, but only delayed his ouster from NESCO, which occurred on 8 January 1911. Fessenden immediately launched litigation, first with NESCO and, subsequently, with GE, Westinghouse and, finally, with RCA, which was only settled fifteen years later when he received an out-of-court settlement for a half-million dollars from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which had long since acquired Fessenden's patents. The Queen's University Library Archives holds a Fessenden declaration to the IRS in Washington in which he certifies that he received $500,000, with $200,000 of this sum going to his lawyers. He certainly never reaped the financial rewards that were due him for his radio inventions, but he had the satisfaction of being proven right. He was indeed the greatest wireless inventor of the age. To conclude, let me continue briefly in the vein in which I began, viz Fessenden was an inventor who worked in many fields of science. In addition to the inventions already mentioned, Fessenden gave us the radio pager (he called his device a beeper); he gave us sonar, which he demonstrated could detect icebergs, and his fathometer to measure the depth of water beneath the keel of a ship. He gave us turbo-electric drive to power ships; the first gyrocompass, the loop antenna; radio direction-finding; his pheroscope for submarines; a first TV receiver; ultrasonic methods for cleaning; electrical conduit; carbon tetrachloride; and tracer bullets. Professor Fessenden was deeply disturbed by the sinking of the ocean liner Titanic on her maiden voyage to New York during the night of 14-15 April 1912. The vessel struck an iceberg just before midnight, and sank within two hours. He considered that the Titanic's iceberg avoidance procedure (clear air vision from the crow's-nest) to be very dangerous and that it should be replaced by a reliable system discovered by himself. Sonic frequency echo sounding could prevent a recurrence. He set his mind to perfecting this technology; later known as Sonar (Sound Navigation And Ranging). The principle of such a sounder was to send a short-duration burst of sound (frequencies up to 20 kHz) from a transducer located about 3 metres below the surface of the water, of such power that it would travel as far as several kilometres through the water. When this wave came into contact with a solid object, such as an iceberg or the floor of the ocean, an echo was created. By measuring the time taken for the sound waves to travel out and the echo to return, it was possible to determine the distance to the object. During the period 1914 to 1925 Fessenden was granted over thirty patents for inventions using sonic frequencies.22 In September 1914, the USS Miami tested Fessenden's Submarine Electric Oscillator in the North Atlantic. Fessenden demonstrated that indeed he could get distinct echoes from icebergs, as far as 4 kilometres from a very large iceberg. The USS Alywin, in that same year conducting tests in the Boston Harbour, showed that Fessenden's sonic detection device could pick up the signals from a moving submarine from distances as great as 9 kilometres. In an associated test, the captain of one US submarine was able to direct the movements of another submarine several kilometres away by modulating the sonic signal by the Morse dot and dash method. During US involvement in WWI years, 1917-1918, the USN fastened Fessenden's sonic listening device to the hulls of many troop carriers. By picking up the sounds of submerged submarines, the transports could often escape torpedo attacks. Submarines lying silent on the ocean floor could also be detected using his echo sounder. In the 1920s, Fessenden's depth sounder or fathometer became a common instrument aboard vessels of all sizes from large passenger liners to small fishing boats. It was used on cable-lying vessels. Fessenden set to work to see if his echo sounder could be used as a geophysical tool to detect underground ore and oil deposits. This work led to his development of a new more efficient transducer, a piezoelectric sonar transducer. Not only was the device able to transfer more sound energy to conducting media, sea water or land, but the same device could be used for receiving. "Sound" frequencies as high as 60 kHz could be used. His work involved with safety at sea won him the Scientific American Gold Medal in 1929. Other awards included the Medal of Honour of the Institute of Radio Engineers for his efforts in that field, and the John Scott Medal of the City of Philadelphia for his invention of continuous wave reception. Reginald Aubrey Fessenden died in his house by the sea in Bermuda on 22 July, 1932. Burial was in St. Mark's Church cemetery, and over the vault was erected a memorial with fluted columns. On the stone lintel across the top were inscribed the words: His mind illuminated the past And the future And wrought greatly For the Present Beneath the scribed words, in the picture-writing of the ancient Egyptians was I am yesterday and I know tomorrow. His son summarized his greatest achievements in one sentence: "By his genius, distant lands converse and men sail unafraid upon the deep." During his brief tenure as principalship of the Whitney Institute in Bermuda, Fessenden met his future wife, Helen May Trott, in 1885. They were married in 1890 in New York City. Helen must certainly have provided support for her husband in his work, and she must have had a considerable knowledge about his accomplishments. After his death she wrote the book Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows22, and she must clearly have been responsible for seeing to the granting of seven patents after Fessenden's death. Helen Fessenden died in 1941, and established by her will a Fessenden-Trott Trust, administered by the Bank of Bermuda Limited, Hamilton, Bermuda. This trust, in memory of Professor Fessenden, provides funds for scholarships awarded annually to Canadian students, US students from Purdue and Pittsburgh Universities, and Bermudan students and family members studying at Canadian, UK or US universities. There are no direct descendants of Reginald from his side of the family, but the Fessenden family name is still maintained by descendants from other branches of the family. Fessenden's only son, Reginald Kennelly Fessenden, died in 1944 in a boating accident off the coast of Bermuda. The Trott name is still maintained by descendants living in Bermuda. Most of Fessenden's inventions are taken for granted as a part of our everyday life, and few know, particularly the general public in his home country Canada, of the Canadian born genius who provided the world with manifold benefits. History, through the effort of a few, will begin to remember Fessenden. On 3 June, 1990, Brome County Historical Museum and Archives, Knowlton, Quebec opened a small permanent exhibit and unveiled a plaque honouring Reginald Aubrey Fessenden and commemorating the 90th Anniversary of the first transmission of voice by radio on 23 December, 1900. The Wellington County Museum and Archives, Fergus, Ontario, has just recently mounted the first of a series of exhibits entitled "Marks of Distinction - Celebrating the Achievements and Skills of Wellington County Residents." This first exhibit, opened by the Minister of Communications Canada on 5 February 1993, focuses on the life and work of R. A. Fessenden. The Department of Communications, in collaboration with the Department of Industry, Science and Technology and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada, in recognition of the life and heritage of Prof. Fessenden in the fields of radio sciences and communications, has just recently announced an undergraduate and postgraduate scholarship program to encourage students to continue with university studies in this field of science. The first of these scholarships will be awarded in the spring of 1993. In the past we have lauded Marconi's successes. In the future we should also pay tribute to Reginald Aubrey Fessenden. That concludes my lecture. Finally, I would like to tell you about a CBC-Shell Oil Company 1979 drama on Fessenden. This drama was one of a series entitled The Winners, and the particular drama was entitled The Forgotten Genius. While the chronological sequence of events is not quite right, the story is factually correct. References and bibliography 1. Van Steen, M., "Alexander Graham Bell -- The Journey of a Mind," Beaver, Jun/July 1992 42-50. 2. Raby, 0., "Canada's Great Radio Pioneer, " Electron, July 1967 18-20. 3. Raby, 0., "The Wireless Telephone," Electron, August 1968, 21. 4. Raby, 0., Radio's First Voice -- The Story of Reginald Fessenden, Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1970. 5. Quinby, E.J., "Builder of Tomorrows: Part I," Proc IEEE, 52, no 1, October 1978. 6. lbid, Part 2, 53, no 2, March 1979. 7. Geddes, L .A., "Fessenden and the Birth of Radiotelephony", Proc of the Radio Club of America Inc, November 1992, 20-24. 8. Elliott, G., "Who was Fessenden?", Proc of the Radio Club of America Inc, November 1992 25-37. 9. Susskind, C., "The early history of Electronics, Pt I: Electromagnetics before Hertz," IEEE Spectrum, August 1968, 90-98; "Pt II: The experiments of Hertz" Ibid, December 1968, 57-60; "Pt III: Prehistory of radiotelegraphy," Ibid, April 1969,69-74; "Pt IV: First radiotelegraphy experiments," Ibid, August 1969 66-70; "Pt V: Commercial beginnings," Ibid, April 1970, 78-83. 10. Squires, W., "Fessenden before Radio," ARFS Bulletin, No 27, published by the Amateur Radio Fessenden Society, PO Box 737, Picton, ON, K0K 2T0, February 1989. 11. Vosper, G.W., Private communications, 1992. 12. Geddes. L .A., The History of Electrical Engineering at Purdue (1888-1988), Purdue Research Foundation, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, 1988. 13. Ratcliffe, J.A., "Scientists' reactions to Marconi's transatlantic radio experiment," Proc IEEE, 121, 1033-1038, September 1974. 14. New York Herald Tribune, editorial at the time of Fessenden's death on 22 July, 1932. 15. Kintner, S.M., "Some Recollections of Early Radio Days," QST, July 1932, 31-33, 90. 16. Quinby, E.J., "Nikola Tesla, World's Greatest Engineer," A History of the Radio Club of America, Inc. 1909- 1984, 54, no 3, The Radio Club of America, Fall 1984, 223-228. 17. Watt, A.D., Radio Engineering, Pergamon Press, 1967,130. 18. Geddes, L .A., K.S. Foster, J. Reilly, W.D. Voorhees, J.D. Bourland, T. Ragheb and N.E. Fearnot, "The Rectification Properties of an Electrode-Electrolyte Interface Operated at High Sinusoidal Current Density", IEEE Trans Biorned Eng, BME-34, September 1987, 669-672. 19. Fessenden, R.A.,"Wireless Telephony," paper presented at 25th annual convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Atlantic City, NJ, 20 June 1908. 20. Ruhmer, E., Wireless Telephony, translated from German by J. Erskine-Murray, with an Appendix about R.A. Fessenden by the Translator, Crosby Lockwood and Son, Ludgate Hill, 1908. Author's Preface is dated 15 February 1907. 21. Fessenden, R.A., The inventions of Reginald A Fessenden -- part 1, Radio News, January 1925 (Parts II to XII were published in the February through November issues of Radio News). 22. Zenneck, J., Translated from German by A.E. Seelig, Wireless Telegraphy, McGraw Hill, New York, 1915. 23. Elliott, G., "Fessenden’s Work with Sonic Frequencies," ARFS Bulletin, no 54, Jan/Feb 1993; and no 55, Mar/ Apr 1993, published by the Amateur Radio Fessenden Society, PO Box 737, Picton, ON, K0K 2T0. 24. Fessenden, Helen M., Fessenden Builder of Tomorrows, Coward-McCann, NY, 1940 (reprinted by Arno Press, NY, 1974). The fruits of scientific discovery over the centuries became a part of our everyday lives as a result of decades of work by inventors and entrepreneurs scattered across the world. Many scientists were not inventors, and many inventors were not entrepreneurs, either because they were not capable of or were not interested in attempting to fill more than one role. The history of the development of the radio industry from which today's high-tech entrepreneurs may draw some lessons illustrates that a new, technologically-based industry is like a coral reef. The top, living layer of coral rests on a large body of material laid down over the eons. Likewise, the technologically-based industry rests upon a large body of scientific and technological knowledge accumulated over the centuries. As had been true of an earlier high-tech industries such as the telegraph and electric lighting in their formative years, what was accomplished early years in the radio industry was primarily brought about by inventor/entrepreneurs. The early history of radio is a story of individual inventors and entrepreneurs, many of whom were both inventors and entrepreneurs. However, after 1920 this industry's history is largely one of organizations. Of the four chief players in American radio's early years, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor/entrepreneur, and American inventor/entrepreneurs Fessenden, deForest, and John Stone Stone [sic], only Marconi "grasped and exploited the interdependence among technology, business strategy, and the press." [G. Douglas 100] Only Marconi had an adequate business strategy. Only Marconi and deForest took full advantage of the press. However, deForest seems to have used the press more to sell stock than apparatus. Marconi was also more astute in his patent dealings than were his American competitors. For example, to protect himself from a possible patent suit, he purchased from Thomas A. Edison his patent on a system of wireless telegraphy (transmitting dots and dashes through the air) that Edison had never used. Marconi never used it either because it was inferior to one he had developed. The inventor/entrepreneur did not cease to be an important figure in the radio industry until after World War II. The last of inventor/entrepreneurs to play a major role in the radio industry was Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM. In the face of fierce opposition from the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) with which he had previously been associated and at the cost of both most of the fortune he had made in radio and, apparently, his life (suicide), he was eventually able to establish a frequency-modulated (FM) radio industry. FM represented a great improvement over amplitude-modulation (AM) radio because of its greater fidelity. RCA's unwillingness to continue to assist Armstrong was due to the fact that its head, David Sarnoff, believed that more money was to be made by putting RCA's money into television. Even as early as the 1920s many were convinced that corporate research laboratories had made individual inventors like Marconi and Armstrong obsolete, but Idaho farm boy Philo Farnsworth proved then wrong. He was just a high school student in 1922 when he outlined for his amazed physics teacher his idea for an electronic television system. (Up to that time experiments had utilized unsatisfactory mechanical methods for transmitting a wireless image. Charles Jenkins first publicly demonstrated this type of television in 1923.) As a college student Farnsworth convinced a professional fund raiser that he could produce a commercially viable television system, and to the surprise of many, Farnsworth, rather than one of the large radio manufacturers, became RCA's strongest rival in the race to produce a commercially viable electronic television system. Farnsworth's widow claims that when her husband turned down David Sarnoff's offer for his company that Sarnoff decided to do what he had done to others who held key radio patents and would not cooperate with him: try to "break him in court." [Schwartz] In the short run Farnsworth won, for the court ruled in his favor. In the long run he lost, and he died broke, depressed, and largely forgotten. [Schwartz] The Creation of the Radio Industry For the turn of the twentieth century generation, the first transmission of a Morse code message through the air was an awe-inspiring, near miracle. Ultimately this new medium, radio waves, was to have a huge effect on what people thought, the way they talked, and what they bought. However, as was later to be true of television and, perhaps, will be true of the internet, radio failed to live up to the early, highly visionary hopes for it. It did not end war or dramatically raise the general cultural and educational level as some visionaries forecast. Nonetheless, its achievements were impressive. At the start of the twentieth century, the American telegraph and telephone industries were dominated, respectively, by Western Union and Postal Telegraph and Bell Telephone Company. Both the telegraph and telephone industries had their origins in the work of inventor/entrepreneurs. The most important electric utility, the Edison Electric Illuminating Company was founded by Thomas Edison, an inventor/entrepreneur. The largest electrical manufacturers were General Electric (GE), a successor company to one founded by Edison; Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, which was founded by George Westinghouse, an inventor/entrepreneur; and Western Electric, which had been purchased by telephone inventor/entrepreneur Alexander Graham Bell in 1881. Just as many many decades later the International Business Machine Company (IBM) would fail to create a new, closely related industry, personal computers, these companies played no a role in the early years of radio. A possible explanation for their failure to do so may be that the resources available to them could be profitably utilized in the exploitation of their existing markets, as when wireless experiments began, the products and services these firms produced were still in the early, high growth part of their life cycles. Another possible explanation is that they may have preferred to let others, who had less to lose, take the risk involved in developing this new service. (The first Westinghouse employee to be engaged in broadcasting, Frank Conrad, did it on his own time as a hobby.) When radio burst upon the scene GE and its smaller competitor, Westinghouse, were circling each other like boxers looking for an opening. There were two ways one of them could "knock out" the other. One was painful, price competition. The other and more commonly resorted to was either to invalidate their competitor's patents or convict him of infringing on theirs. By 1896, there were over 300 patent suits pending between GE and Westinghouse. Ultimately these companies decided to "throw in the towel" and collude via a patent pool that achieved the same end that illegal collusion would have. Most of the scientific discoveries necessary for the invention the radio and television industries were made well before the twentieth century commenced. Most of them were made by Europeans. Radio and television, like all the other electrically-based industries, can trace their ancestry all the way back to 699 B.C., when the Greek philosopher Thales observed that after it is rubbed, amber (elektron in Greek) attracts small objects. Discoveries that led to sending pictures via radio waves were made simultaneously with those that led to sending sound by them. As early as 1267, Giovanni Battista della Porta, also an Italian, conceived of sending messages via magnetism. Hundreds of years later an Englishman, Roger Bacon, and an American, Benjamin Franklin, speculated that electricity could be used to transmit messages. The theory of light and electric waves was developed by an Englishman, Michael Faraday (1791-1867). In 1831, an American, Joseph Henry, developed the first efficient electromagnet and used it to tap out messages between buildings on Princeton's campus. Inspired by this unpatened work, an American, Samuel F. B. Morse, developed and patented a successful telegraph. An art professor, the lure of the wealth to be made by developing the telegraph led Morse to become an inventor. The government's refusal to pay him for his invention and develop it caused him to become an entrepreneur. Morse he knew the value of publicity and was good at obtaining it. Faraday's theory led to the discovery in 1877 by Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, a German, of the electromagnetic waves now called radio waves that were originally called Hertzian waves. In 1885, an American inventor/entrepreneur, Thomas Alva Edison, took out a patent on a system of long-distance telegraphy without wires. Before the end of the nineteenth century, Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor/entrepreneur, using a much superior system, transmitted Morse code through the air over a modest distance over land in Italy. Then he duplicated this feat between Canada and Great Britain. Thus was the seed of an industry planted. Because it had obvious commercial and military value, in Marconi's day a number of men throughout the world were seeking to develop wireless communications. Many governments promoted wireless experiments by their citizens. In Russia, Aleksandr Popov, who developed the first true antenna, demonstrated a wireless receiving set in 1895. Marconi's great discovery was that an antenna could also be used to transmit electromagnetic radiation, that is, it could also be used to transmit Hertzian waves (radio waves). Prior to this discovery, a wireless (radio) signal could only be sent a short distance. Like American pioneers Lee deForest and Edwin H. Armstrong, Marconi decided to become an inventor at an early age. Marconi's obsession with utilizing Hertizian waves as a communications medium began in 1894. Marconi, whose inherited wealth and connections gave him a big advantage over others experimenting with radio waves, is, despite his many inventions, generally considered to have been more of an entrepreneur than an inventor. The son of a wealthy Italian and the daughter of a wealthy, Irish-whiskey-distilling, Scots-Irish family, Marconi never attended college. However, his mother used her influence to have him tutored by a physics professor working on Hertzian waves. Aided by his mastery of the English language and the influence of his mother's family, he was able to gain backing for his experiments in England. As Marconi was later to explain, "I first offered wireless to Italy, but it was suggested, since wireless was allied with the sea, it might be best that I go to England, where there was greater shipping activity, and, of course, that was a logical place from which to attempt transatlantic signaling. Also my mother's relatives in England were helpful to me." [Dunlap 48] (Early radio signals could travel great distances only over water, and the telegraph could not compete with it there as it did on land.) Armed with a letter of introduction, Marconi approached the British Post Office's Chief Engineer and was invited to give demonstrations of his apparatus for sending dots and dashes (Morse code) to both the Post Office, which had a telegraph and telephone monopoly in Great Britain, and the British army and the navy. On 2 June 1896, Marconi applied for a British wireless telegraphy patent. Shortly thereafter he applied for and obtained a patent in the United States. He electrified the world when he succeeded in sending a wireless signal from Newfoundland to Ireland. Believing that radio waves, like light rays, on which signals had already been sent, shot out into space when they reached the horizon, some scientists did not believe his claim to have sent a signal across the Atlantic. (Only later was it learned that radio waves are reflected downward by an ionized layer of the atmosphere.) British Professor Oliver Lodge was outraged over the acclaim that soon came to Marconi because he believed that much of it should have gone to himself and other scientists. He believed that Marconi's success was due to "great spirit and enthusiasm and persevering energy" and aid from government officials that enabled him to overcome "many practical difficulties and really begin to establish on a practical basis his system of Wireless Telegraphy by Hertzian waves." [Jolley 42] While Marconi remained absorbed with transmitting dots and dashes from point to point, others began to think about broadcasting music and speech. In 1900, a talented Canadian-American physicist, Professor Reginald Aubred Fessenden, first transmitted speech by wireless. Like Marconi, he used a spark-gap-transmitter, which produces short bursts of waves, that is, discontinuous or interrupted waves. Discovering that high quality transmission of speech and music is not possible using this system, he switched to using continuous waves. Once the problem of finding a way to transmit voice and music by radio was solved by Aubrey Fessenden, the development of a viable radio broadcasting industry became possible once the triode vacuum tube was developed. As a detector of radio waves it was much superior to the coherer used by Marconi. (The coherer was invented by Oliver Lodge and improved upon by Marconi.) The story of the triode tube began when, in 1904, John Ambrose Fleming, an English electrical engineer, made use of what was called the Edison effect after its American discoverer, Thomas A. Edison, to invent the diode tube. In 1906, American inventor/entrepreneur Lee deForest added a third element to this tube; thus creating a triode tube that could both detect and transmit radio waves. He called it the Audiron. Terribly outdated well before the twentieth century's end, nonetheless, this was one of the most important inventions of the century. In 1916, U.S. courts ruled that deForest had infringed on Fleming's patent, and that Marconi had infringed on deForest's patent. This decision meant that neither deForest or Marconi, who had purchased Fleming's patent, could use the triode tube. Until the stalemate created by this and other patent conflicts could be settled, which did not take place until after World War I, a broadcasting industry could not be created. During World War I the uses to which the military put radio made governments more appreciative of its value, thereby spurring its development. Technological break throughs, too, were achieved by servicemen. For example, while serving in the U.S. Army's Signal Corps, Edwin H. Armstrong developed the super heterodyne that made it possible to replace earphones with a loudspeaker. Obviously, this was a major breakthrough. Marconi had a combination of qualities that Lodge and many others in this field of endeavor lacked. He was willing to take big risks and hire men whose scientific knowledge exceeded his. He was not deterred by frequent setbacks. He had patience, foresight, drive, ambition, dedication, financial independence, connections, government help, and the savvy to select the best markets in which to sell his messaging service. Perhaps equally important, he had an appreciation of the importance of publicity, and, therefore, the need for good press relations. Very early in his career he gained English newsmen's gratitude when he used his apparatus to transmit to their newspapers the stories they could not get out because they were trapped by a sudden snowstorm. [Baker 37] Marconi gained additional good publicity by keeping Queen Victoria informed of the condition of her injured son, who was at sea. Returning from America to England on a ship he had arranged to have equipped with a radio mast, he got news from his station ashore and printed it up with the ship's printing press for distribution to the passengers. He also got a lot of publicity by reporting the results of yacht races in both England and America. (At one race he and Lee deForest blanketed each other out because this was before tuning was developed; so radio signals flowed out in all directions.) In its January 1906 issue, Scientific American complained about "the lack of selectivity [which] has brought about a state of affairs that borders on chaos, for only one or two stations in the active zone of radiation--and this often means a radius of a thousand miles--can send at the same time." Marconi attempted to deal with this problem in two ways. One was to develop a method for reducing the spread of radiation. The other was to develop tuning, that is, confining a transmission to one frequency. That this was a possibility was known because Oliver Lodge had discovered the principle of tuned circuits in 1899. [Jolley 190] John Stone Stone (1869-1943), whose unusual name was due to the fact that his mother's maiden name was Stone, was a graduate of Johns Hopkins University who began his career as a telephone engineer with the American Bell Telephone Company of Boston. He revolutionized spark telegraphy in the United States. (Spark telegraphy is what the method for transmitting dots and dashes was called.) In 1899, he set himself up as a consultant. Wireless telegraphy soon became his chief area of work, and in 1900 he applied for and received a tuning patent. This was over a year before Marconi applied for a tuning patent. In 1901, he founded the Stone Wireless Telegraph Syndicate. In 1912, John Stone Stone and his friend, Lee deForest, demonstrated deForest's Audion tube to American Telephone and Telegraph engineers. In addition to technical problems, Marconi had to contend with competitors and hostile governments. The British government had no intention of letting him threaten the Post Office's monopoly, and it ceased being helpful to him after he allowed his cousin to form the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in 1897. Both this company and its American subsidiary lost money for many years before they turned a profit. One of the reasons his company fared relatively well is that he hired able men to manage it. Barred by law from equipping many of the world's navies and prevented in Great Britain and other countries from providing a message service ashore because this was a government monopoly, Marconi had to turn to providing communications to ships at sea and between continents. In the latter business he had formidable competition. Transatlantic communication was then the preserve of a British cable cartel that did not relish wireless competitors muscling in. For many years, in Marconi's view, wireless was simply another way to convey a message from one party to another. He assumed that if wireless could be made to send signals far enough reliably enough it would be very competitive with cable for transoceanic work. Its competitiveness lay in the fact that the cost of constructing, operating, and maintaining wireless stations was much less than the cost of laying, operating, and maintaining underwater cables. Though cheaper than cable messages, a wireless message was inferior to a cable message because it could be more readily intercepted. This significantly limited how much business wireless could take away from cable. Marconi had two "arrows" in his business "quiver." He both provided a message service and the apparatus needed to send and receive wireless messages. Marconi's first apparatus sales were to the world's navies and merchant marines. The sinking of the Republic in 1910 sparked interest in the equipping of ships with wireless, but it was the sinking of the Titanic in 1914 that resulted in "what had been a scientific curiosity" being raised "in a few tragic days to the status of a necessity." [Lyons 60] Subsequent to the Titanic disaster, the U.S. Congress made it mandatory for ships carrying more than fifty people install a radio and monitor it twenty-four hours a day. The sinking of the Titanic made a celebrity out of the young American Marconi on-shore telegraph operator who first picked up its distress signals. In the future the name of telegrapher David Sarnoff, who the publicity-conscious Marconi subsequently had ply his trade in public in a department store, was to become almost synonymous with the word radio in the U.S. Years later, as president of the RCA, General Sarnoff also proved to be adept at generating useful, favorable publicity. (He was given this rank during World War II.) Marconi gave demonstration after demonstration. He installed equipment on a speculative basis. But, despite his lead on his competitors and his tireless and difficult pursuit of an international wireless monopoly, he was unable to achieve monopoly status. The fact that this quest often required the defense of his patents and attacks on others' patents illustrates a negative side of the patent system, for while the granting of a temporary monopoly provides an incentive to invent, even the potential of resulting monopoly profits leads to sometimes huge legal costs. Conflicts over patents, which was frequent in the early days of all branches of the electric industry, retarded progress. The American Marconi Company's initial refusal to sell its apparatus, and its insistence on providing men to operate it incensed the U.S. Navy, which did not want to use equipment owned and operated by a predominantly foreign-owned company. (Later IBM would antagonize customers by refusing to sell its computers and, like Marconi, would be forced to change this policy.) The U.S. Navy became even more dissatisfied about the American Marconi company's foreign ownership after World War I broke out and the British cut America's cable connections with Germany--a country the U.S. was not yet at war with--and censored messages on still intact cables. The Navy responded by building its own shore stations, equipping them with radio transmitters and receivers purchased from Lee deForest, other Americans' firms, and a German firm. Marconi did not consider broadcasting entertainment until 1916, when his employee David Sarnoff recommended that his company engage in it in order to sell the public "radio music boxes" that it would manufacture. This proposal, like Sarnoff's plan decades later for RCA to introduce television, was shelved as the result of the outbreak of war, the First and the Second, respectively. (Television broadcasting commenced in Great Britain and Germany prior to its inauguration in the U.S. after World War II ended.) Sarnoff realized that the real money lay, not in broadcasting, but in producing sets for people to listen to broadcasts with. Marconi did not become a pioneer in broadcasting despite the fact that in his day the telephone had been used to transmit entertainment as well as messages. By 1895, for example, some opera houses in Europe were equipped with either stereo or monophonic telephonic systems. In Budapest, Hungry there was a system established in 1893 that provided regular news and music programming up to twelve hours a day. A like service did not appear in America until over a decade later. However, in 1894 the Chicago Telephone Company broadcast by wire local election returns to, it was estimated, over 15,000 persons. [Sivowitch 18] These early forerunners of today's cable television were not very satisfactory because loudspeakers had yet to be invented. Marconi may not have been visionary enough to found the broadcasting industry. Vision was required because, while there was already an established market for electronic, point-to-point communication and a theoretical and technological basis for developing a new way to serve it, there was no existing market for broadcasting, nor could the technology for transmitting speech be as easily developed as could that for transmitting dots and dashes. Due in part to the Marconi Company's purchase of competitors who had infringed on its patents, by the time World War I broke out, the American Marconi Company dominated the American radio market; so it had no overwhelming need to develop a new service. In addition, Marconi had no surplus funds to plow into a new business. Shortly after the end of World War I, the U.S. government 's hostile attitude convinced Marconi that his company had no future in America, and he agreed to sell it to GE. To make possible, it was claimed, the production of the most technologically advanced apparatus and a complete radio system, GE's Owen Young put together a patent pool consisting of GE, Westinghouse, American Telephone and Telegraph Company, United Fruit Company, and a newly-created and jointly-owned firm composed of American Marconi's assets, the Radio Corporation of America. (Subsequently, RCA would create the National Broadcasting Corporation.) Formed in 1919, RCA, which originally had a government representative on its board of directors, was supposed to become an international communications monopoly that would sell radio apparatus produced by GE and Westinghouse. Although it became the dominant company in the radio industry in the U.S., it fell short of achieving even a domestic monopoly. It took little more than a decade for the federal government's policy towards RCA to reverse, and in 1930 the Department of Justice charged RCA with using its portfolio of patents to restrain competition. This antitrust action dragged on for almost thirty years. The Contribution of Nicola Tesla Educated as an engineer at the Technical University at Graz, Austria and at the University of Prague, Nikola Tesla was failure as an entrepreneur and was nearly penniless when he died. Nicola Tesla's greatest contribution was the invention of a system for the generation of polyphase, alternating electric current. Unfortunately, this highly eccentric Serbian immigrant (1856-1943) made himself a laughing stock by claiming that he could split the Earth like an apple; had invented a death ray that could destroy 10,000 airplanes at a distance of 250 miles; would distribute free energy; and had received messages from Mars. (The mad scientist in 1940s Superman comics was patterned on him.) A pioneer in wireless communication and fluorescent lighting, in 1891 he invented the Tesla coil which was widely used in radio and television sets. In 1943, the Supreme Court reversed a decision made by a lower court decades earlier that had rejected Tesla's challenge of Marconi's basic radio patents. It invalidated Marconi's patents on the basis of their having been anticipated by Telsa's work. In 1885, he sold the patents to his alternating current system to George Westinghouse, head of the Westinghouse Electric Company, who used Tesla's system in 1893 to light the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. In 1896, Tesla installed the generating equipment that carried power from Niagara Falls to Buffalo, New York. His advocacy of alternating current for the transmission and distribution of electricity to homes and factories incensed his first American employer, Thomas Edison, who had blundered by choosing to use direct current. Edison mounted a smear campaign against Tesla and alternating current, which he said was unacceptably dangerous. To prove that alternating current was not too dangerous to use, Tesla allowed it to flow through his body and light a lamp he held in his hand. Although the nation was electrified with alternating current, this did not make Tesla a wealthy man because, when Westinghouse said that the financial burden of his contract with Tesla endangered his company, Tesla tore up the contract with his friend. His failure as an entrepreneur wasn't because he was unable to get attention, as he attracted a great deal of press coverage because even the claims that he could back up seemed very wild at the time. He backed up one claim by demonstrating a boat guided by remote control in Madison Square Garden. Photographs were taken of his man-made lightning, which included flashes as long as 135 feet. He received the highest honor that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers awarded, and among his few friends were some prominent writers, including Mark Twain. However, unlike Edison and Marconi, he was never able to obtain the financial support he needed to make his company a success. He did manage to get financier J. Pierpont Morgan to loan him $150,000 to begin building a radio tower on Long Island from which he expected to provide communications world wide. He had to abandon this project when Morgan withdrew his support. Subsequently, for lack of money, many of his ideas never got beyond his notebooks. Lee deForest, whose doctoral dissertation was about Hertzian waves, received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1896. His first job was with Western Electric. By 1902 he had started the DeForest Wireless Telegraph Company, which became insolvent in 1906. His second company, the DeForest Radio Telephone Company began to fail in 1909. In 1912 he was indicted for using the mails to defraud by promoting "a worthless device," the Audion tube. He was acquitted. The Audion tube (later known as a triode tube) was far from being a worthless device, as it was a key component of radios so long as vacuum tubes continued to be used. In 1910, he broadcast, probably rather poorly, the singing of Enrico Caruso. Possibly stimulated by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company transmitting from the Navy's Arlington, Virginia facility in 1915 radio telephone signals heard both across the Atlantic and in Honolulu, deForest resumed experimenting with broadcasting. A music lover and amateur poet, he installed a transmitter at the Columbia Gramophone building in New York and began daily broadcasts of phonograph music sponsored by Columbia. On 7 November 1916, he broadcast the results of the presidential election. [Sivowitch 14] "Of all the members of the early wireless [radio] engineering fraternity, perhaps Lee deForest, more than any other, had some vision of the broadcasting potential of the wireless telephone." [Sivowitch 11] Because in the late nineteenth century the new electrical industry had made some investors multimillionaires almost over night, Americans like deForest and his partners found easy pickings for awhile, as many people were eager to snap up the stock offered by overly optimistic inventors in this new branch of the electrical industry. The quick failure of firms whose end, rather than their means, was selling stock made life more difficult for surviving, ethical firms. DeForest was twice defrauded by his business partners. Some of deForest's associates, but not deForest, were convicted of stock fraud. However, in a revealing entry in his diary, deForest wrote that "soon, we believe, the suckers will begin to bite. Fine fishing weather, not that the oil fields have played out. 'Wireless' is the bait to use at present. May we stock our string before the wind veers and the sucker shoals are swept out to sea." [G. Douglas 100] Like Fessenden, deForest experimented with broadcasting. Unlike Fessenden, he stayed in the radio business, but his subsequent radio ventures and a later sound movie venture also failed. DeForest clashed in court, not only with Marconi, but also with Edwin Armstrong in what was the most controversial of all radio patent litigation. Although the court ruled in deForest's favor, the radio engineering fraternity continued to believe that Armstrong had been the first to discover the feedback effect. Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890-1954) decided to become an inventor when he was fourteen years old. His first major invention, the regenerative circuit, was made while he was a junior at Columbia University. He patented it in 1913 and licensed it to the Marconi Company in 1914. After obtaining a degree in engineering, he became an instructor at Columbia. Commissioned as an officer in the Army's Signal Corps, he was sent to France where he invented the superheterodyne circuit that became the basic circuit used in the great majority of radio and television sets. After returning to Columbia in 1920, he sold the rights to the two major circuits he invented to Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. Using his superheterodyne receiver, in 1920 Westinghouse started the nation's first radio station, Pittsburg's KDKA. Later, for stock, Armstrong sold his superregenerative circuit to RCA. In 1923 he married David Sarnoff's secretary. Even after he became a millionaire, he continued to serve as a professor at Columbia. In the 1920s Armstrong became entangled in a struggle to control radio patents. In a courtroom battle that lasted nearly a twenty years, deForest succeeded in overturning Armstrong's 1914 feedback patent in favor of his. The technical community attributed Armstrong's loss in the Supreme Court to the judges' failure to understand the technical data the case involved. Armstrong solved radio's last major problem, static, with frequency modulation (FM). He successfully tested it in 1933. He discovered multiplexing when he learned that a single FM carrier wave could transmit two radio programs at once. During World War II he did important research on long range radar and gave his FM patents to the government for free. (FM was important to the military because it couldn't be jammed like the AM the Germans used.) A significant characteristic of FM as compared with AM is that FM stations do not interfere with each other. Radios simply pick up whichever FM station is the stronger. This means that low-power FM stations can operate in close proximity. Because RCA refused to continue to support his FM work, he sold some of his stock and built his own FM station in New Jersey. In addition to opposition from RCA, Armstrong was hindered by a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectrum reallocation. Armstrong expected to receive royalties on every FM radio set sold and, because FM was selected for the audio portion of TV broadcasting, he also expected royalties on every TV set sold. Some television manufacturers paid Armstrong. RCA didn't. RCA also developed and patented a FM system different from Armstrong's that he claimed involved no new principle. So, in 1948, he instituted a suit against RCA and NBC, charging them "will willfully infringing and inducing others to infringe five of the basic FM patents." [Erickson 119] It was to RCA's advantage to drag the suit out. It had more money than Armstrong did, and it could make more money until the case was settled by selling sets utilizing technology Armstrong said was him. Hopefully, it could do this until his patents ran out. To finance the case and his research facility at Columbia, Armstrong had to sell many of his assets, including stock in Zenith, RCA, and Standard Oil. By 1954, the financial burden imposed on him forced him to try to settle with RCA. RCA's offer did not even cover Armstrong's remaining legal fees. Then Armstrong struck his wife, who left him, when she refused to give him some money he had given her earlier. He walked out the window of his thirteenth-floor apartment on February 1, 1954. Sarnoff denied responsibility for Armstrong's suicide. Armstrong's widow settled with RCA. Sir Robert Alexander Watson-Watt (1892--1973) Watson-Watt was the Scottish physicist who developed the radar locating of aircraft in England. He was born in Brechin, Angus, Scotland, educated at St Andrews University in Scotland, and taught at Dundee University. In 1917, he worked at the British Meteorological Office, where he designed devices to locate thunderstorms. Watson-Watt coined the phrase "ionosphere" in 1926. He was appointed as the director of radio research at the British National Physical Laboratory in 1935, where he completed his research into aircraft locating devices. Watson-Watt's other contributions include a cathode-ray direction finder used to study atmospheric phenomena, research in electromagnetic radiation, and inventions used for flight safety. - Radar was patented (British patent) in April, 1935.

Christian Andreas Doppler Doppler RADAR is named after Christian Andreas Doppler. Doppler was an Austrian physicist who first described in 1842, how the observed frequency of light and sound waves was affected by the relative motion of the source and the detector. This phenomenon became known as the Doppler effect. This is most often demonstrated by the change in the sound wave of a passing train. The sound of the train whistle will become "higher" in pitch as it approaches and "lower" in pitch as it moves away. This is explained as follows: the number of sound waves reaching the ear in a given amount of time (this is called the frequency) determines the tone, or pitch, perceived. The tone remains the same as long as you are not moving. As the train moves closer to you the number of sound waves reaching your ear in a given amount of time increases. Thus, the pitch increases. As the train moves away from you the opposite happens. Dr. Ernst Alexanderson was the General Electric engineer who built a high-frequency alternator (a device that converts direct current into alternating current) that greatly improved radio communication. Prior to Alexanderson' alternator, radio was broadcast by what was called spark machines that used dots and dashes of signals or morse code. Ernst Alexanderson's alternator allowed radio to be broadcast in a continuous wave. In 1901, Swedish-born Ernst Alexanderson emigrated to the United States and began working for the General Electric Company in Schenectady, N.Y., under Charles P. Steinmetz. Alexanderson designed his alternator to complement the work of radio pioneer Reginald A. Fessenden as part of a high-frequency generator. That led to Fessenden's 1906 Christmas Eve broadcast of the world's first radio program with voice and a violin solo using Ernst Alexanderson's high-frequency alternator for undamped oscillations. Ernst Alexanderson was issued U.S patent #1,008,577 on February 22, 1916 for a selective tuning device for radios that became an integral part of modern radio systems and led to his being honored in the Inventors Hall of Fame. He was also General Electric's most prolific inventor, receiving a total of 322 patents. Among Ernst Alexanderson's achievements: • He continued to improve the alternator and in addition made important improvements in radio antennas, electric railroads, ship propulsion, and electric motors. • On June 5, 1924, he transmitted the first facsimile (fax) message across the Atlantic. • In 1927, he staged the first home reception of television at his own home in Schenectady, New York, using high-frequency neon lamps and a perforated scanning disc. • He gave the first public demonstration of television on January 13, 1928. • From 1952 onwards, he worked for the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) as a consultant. His 321st patent granted in 1955 was for a color television receiver that he developed for RCA. (This is an excerpt from a longer article, "The Race for Radiotelephone:1900-1920" by Mike Adams, originally published in the AWA Review, Vol 10, 1996 © Antique Wireless Association) The single most important individual in the twenty year evolution (1900-1920) from two-way wireless telegraphy as a commercial business to the technical perfection and use of the radiotelephone for entertainment broadcasting was Lee de Forest. There were three major events that defined de Forest as a radiotelephone pioneer-cum-broadcaster; his equipping of the Navy Fleet in 1907, his publicized broadcasts of opera in New York City between 1907 and 1912, and his 1916-17 and 1919 broadcast demonstrations over stations in New York and San Francisco. Judging by this early performance, Lee de Forest should have won the race for the radiotelephone hands down. Arguably, there was no wireless and radio inventor who was surrounded by more controversy than Lee de Forest. He fought for decades to convince the technical community that he deserved to be known as the "Father of Radio," and he spent millions in court battles trying to validate and re-validate his patents. Still, whether you fall into the two opposite camps, whether you love him or hate him, sanctify him or vilify him, (there seems to be no middle ground) the evidence strongly suggests that more than any single individual, Lee de Forest was the first to want to use the wireless for more than two-way commercial message traffic. Throughout his early career he bordered on the edge of the activities of broadcasting, sending entertainment programs to a defined audience. In all the published reports, in all the historical analysis, it is the name of de Forest that is early and often associated with the sending of music and news using the radiotelephone. And while until 1919 he failed to establish a permanent station, failed to broadcast on a regular basis and therefore failed to gain a regular audience, his contribution to the art and science of radio is unprecedented. The evidence strongly suggests that Lee de Forest could rightfully claim to be what he struggled his entire life to be, the "Father of Radio." (36) Lee de Forest was born in the Midwest but really grew up in the South. Shortly after his birth in Council Bluffs, Iowa in 1873 young Lee’s father accepted a position as the President of a small black college (Talledega) in Alabama. But while de Forest grew up on that rural campus, his education was formal, upper class and thorough. After a local grammar school he went on to the Mt. Hermon School for Boys in Massachusetts, preparatory to his entrance into Yale University’s Sheffield Scientific School. De Forest completed his higher education and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. His 1898 dissertation was titled: "The Reflection of Hertzian Waves at the End of Parallel Wires." Well-educated, Lee de Forest as an engineering graduate worked for several Chicago companies, Western Electric among them. (37) Even though it is the purpose of this article excerpt to place de Forest into the context of the transition from radiotelephone to broadcasting, he is most known for his contributions and improvements to the basic invention of all radio and television, the vacuum tube. Thomas Edison’s electric lamp earlier had been modified by the Englishman, Ambrose Fleming, who added a second element, a plate, and called it the Fleming ValveBy 1906 de Forest had modified Fleming’s Valve by adding a grid (which amplified small signals) and called this device the Audion. (38) And while today it is believed that de Forest did not fully realize what he had invented, and while he battled Edwin Armstrong in court for decades over the regenerative or feedback principle of the Audion, it was really Lee de Forest’s work in early radiotelephone experimentation and its broadcast-like applications that proved to be the most interesting of his career. In the beginning he seemed to have followed the work of Marconi, attempting to develop better communication between ships and shore stations. And like Fessenden and Charles Herrold, de Forest first tried spark and later a Poulsen arc in an attempt to give voice to his wireless. The reality of the early radiotelephone development years did not include the broadcasting of music and information into homes using wireless. If you needed backers, if you wanted to sell stock certificates to raise money, it had to be for a wireless telephone for serious, profitable two-way communication purposes, an addition to the wired Bell telephone. And further, as de Forest and hundreds of inventors lamentably discovered, you had to be a promoter as well as an inventor, and that often meant that you found yourself allied with an unsavory, easy money crowd. De Forest himself was accused, but acquitted of stock fraud, although his backers went to prison. Controversy notwithstanding, de Forest began early and often to find public uses for his version of a Poulsen-like arc radiotelephone transmitter: "In 1906 he devoted his entire energy to the problem of wireless telephony. His first invention of importance was the use of the microphone in the earth connection, where it has been used in practically all (arc) wireless telephone transmitters ever since." (39) That Lee de Forest was both a promoter and a music lover led him and his arc radiotelephone into two areas; one is practical, a demonstration for the Navy, the other reflected his penchant for bringing culture to the masses, the use of opera music to demonstrate his wireless telephone for newspaper reporters. An early recipient of the de Forest arc radiotelephone system was the Navy: "In 1909 I was manufacturing wireless telephone sets (pictured on the left) for the US Navy; each set was tested by means of phonograph records. Much to my surprise, many wireless amateurs and professional operators intercepted and enjoyed these test transmissions. They came to look for these ‘programs.’ And quite naturally, the idea of mass communication occurred to me, whereby attractive music and interesting talks might be placed on the air, thus creating a profitable demand for wireless equipment by those desirous of listening in." (40) De Forest equipped the Navy Fleet’s lead ship Ohio and others with his arc transmitter and a wind-up phonograph for the fleet’s trip around the world between 1907 and 1908. This is a well-publicized event, and while on the West Coast, de Forest, aboard the Ohio, played music from the phonograph and communicated with Mare Island during June, 1908. Radio operator Herbert J. Meneratti of the U.S.S. Ohio documented these events well in correspondence with historian Clark in 1948: "We gave music regularly to the Mare Island Station. Our record shows that from June 1 to July 5 (1908) we did not miss a day in giving out music to the fleet in the Bay at the time." (41) Meneratti claims that on January 12, 1908, his ship, the U.S.S. Ohio, was sending out band tunes to other ships, even responding to requests, a "date he considers the beginning of broadcasting, although we didn't call it that" (42)

Another early claim of "broadcasting" by de Forest was connected to his love of opera. He had long admired this form of music, and while he realized it appealed to the upper classes who could afford the time and money with which to attend live performances, the evidence suggests that he believed that in the future even the less affluent would be exposed to opera using the wireless telephone: "It will soon be possible to distribute grand opera music from transmitters placed on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House by a Radio Telephone station on the roof to almost any dwelling in Greater New York and vicinity. . . The same applies to large cities. Church music, lectures, etc., can be spread abroad by the Radio Telephone." (43) And so between 1907 and 1912 the press was invited to a half dozen of his opera experiments using his arc transmitter. Featuring the voices of the well-known divas Mazarin and Farrar, stories of these one time only promotional events were reported in all the major papers. (44) Of course in later years, in the 1920s and 1930s when broadcasting was an established fact, all inventors, Charles Herrold and Lee de Forest included, reflected back on their radiotelephone work as broadcasting. But in those early years, their major purpose was to make a fortune either by finding a dependable wireless replacement for the wired telephone or an acceptable system that the Navy would use to equip their ships. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that in the early days de Forest, before the others, had ideas of how to use his radiotelephone for purposes other than two-way. Around the time of the Navy experiments, de Forest wrote, in an article about his radiotelephone, an early harbinger of what broadcasting might become: "still another feature of the invention . . . the supplying of music and other forms of entertainment to passengers traveling on the passenger vessels. A service of this kind, aided by a large receiver, so that all of the passengers gathered in a large salon could hear the music or operatic air. . . " (45) The radiotelephone years, 1900-1920, were known more for the competing voice transmission technologies than for broadcasting. While spark was quickly rejected as too noisy and the alternator as too costly, it was the many permutations of the Poulsen arc that clearly dominated radiotelephone inventions and early broadcasting for an audience. Even today many people apparently believe that early radiotelephone science was dominated by de Forest’s vacuum tube. The evidence suggests otherwise. De Forest himself was manufacturing, marketing and using an arc radiotelephone as late as 1915. This was not an aberration; de Forest, Charles Herrold and all other radiotelephone inventors had between 1910 and 1916 spent countless dollars perfecting the arc as a carrier of voice and music. (Of course much of that money was spent on lawyers in attempts to somehow get around the basic Poulsen patents) It is ironic that the individual responsible for bringing the Poulsen system to America, Cyril Elwell, and the company he founded based on the Poulsen patents, Federal Telegraph, had long abandoned as impractical the use of the arc for voice and instead concentrated on high power, long distance arc telegraphy. Likely because of the high current demands of a microphone in an arc circuit, only low power, limited range arc radiotelephones were ever satisfactorily developed and employed. By the beginning of 1916, de Forest had finally perfected his Audion for its most important task - that of an oscillator for the radiotelephone. Earlier in Palo Alto, he had made his tube perform as an amplifier and sold it to the telephone company as an amplifier of transcontinental wired phone calls. Returning to his home in New York City, by late 1916 de Forest had begun a series of experimental broadcasts from the Columbia Phonograph Laboratories on 38th Street, finally abandoning his version of the arc transmitter and using for one of the very first times his Audion as a transmitter (photo right) of radio: "The radio telephone equipment consists of two large Oscillion tubes, used as generators of the high frequency current." (46) One early broadcast received mixed reviews: "Columbia phonograph records played from the laboratory of the company at 102 West Thirty-Eighth Street were distinctly heard in the receiving room of the (Hotel) Astor, with the exception of a few interruptions by the powerful naval wireless apparatus at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, when the warning of a storm was heard intermittently with the music." (47) One month later, de Forest told a New York Sun reporter that he, using a ‘wave length’ of 800 meters, "will be setting another record by giving the first public concert by wireless in history." (48)

few months later, de Forest moved his tube transmitter to High Bridge, New York, where one of the most publicized pre-WWI broadcasting events took place. Just like Pittsburgh’s KDKA would attempt exactly four years later in 1920, de Forest used the most public of events for his broadcast. This time it was the Hughes-Wilson presidential election of November, 1916: "The New York American installed a private wire and bulletins were sent out every hour." (49) This time the listener reports were more positive: "Seven thousand wireless telephone operators withing a radius of 200 miles of New York City received election returns from the New York American. They heard not only election returns, but music as well. Between the bulletins, music was sent thru the clouds. The crowds heard ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ ‘Dixie,’ ‘Columbia, Gem of the Ocean,’ ‘America,’ ‘Maryland,’ ‘Yankee Doodle’ and all the other anthems, songs and hymns that American’s love." (50) Because it happened in New York, was listened to by a large audience, and received so much press attention, it was one of the single most important pre-World War I events in radio broadcasting.

Years later, de Forest wrote to Charles Herrold about how he saw the art and science of broadcasting in 1916. He discussed both his and Herrold’s early experiments in the context of the vacuum tube: "Until the 3-electrode tube had been developed sufficiently to serve as a reliable oscillator for radio telephone purposes, and the audion amplifier could be used at the receiver in connection with the detector, those early efforts at radio broadcasting were necessarily unsatisfactory. In 1916, after we had learned how to build ‘Oscillion’ tubes of 50 to 100 watts power, I began a regular nightly broadcasting service from my station at High Bridge, NY. This service was regularly maintained until the federal government caused a suspension of all non-military radio communications shortly before our nation entered the European War." (51) Were it not for the Great War and the closing down of all non essential, non defense uses of radio, de Forest, already exciting small audiences with interesting, entertaining and informing broadcasting, might have succeeded with this new service four years ahead of KDKA.

After the war Lee de Forest was anxious to return to the air. After his near-success in 1916, he was prepared to broadcast again. De Forest later told Herrold: "I resumed these operations in December, 1919, as soon as the governmental ban was lifted. The U.S. Federal Inspector in New York clamped down on me in February, 1920, however, acting on the technicality that I had voided my license by moving my station downtown without his authorization. Whereupon I promptly moved the High Bridge transmitter to San Francisco and installed it in the wings of the California Theatre, running my antenna up to the roof of the bank tower next door. This station was maintained in daily operation, broadcasting the orchestra music of the Weber Orchestra in the theater. In the fall of that year the station was moved over to Berkeley, where it was maintained in operation for perhaps a year." (52) In 1929 de Forest remembered the day that the radio inspector first shut down his post-war New York operation: "Then the Federal inspector (Arthur Batcheller) in New York, taking advantage of the technical fault that I had moved my station from High bridge downtown, peremptorily closed the service after a few weeks, with the definite statement that program broadcasting for entertainment had no place, no legitimate place, in the ether, and should be terminated, and he terminated it." (53) Beginning with his arc telephone experiments for the Navy and his transmissions of opera music, and ending with his radio stations at High Bridge in 1916 and San Francisco in 1920, the evidence strongly suggests that Lee de Forest, more than any other individual entered in the race for radiotelephone, saw a potential for voice transmission beyond just a wireless replacement for two-way communication. 36. De Forest, Lee, Father of Radio, Chicago, Wilcox and Follett, 1950 37. "The Story of Lee de Forest," Electrical Experimenter, December, 1916, p 561 38. Aitken, Hugh G.J., The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900-1932, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1985, see de Forest chapter 39. "The Story of Lee de Forest," Electrical Experimenter, December, 1916, p 561 40. De Forest, Lee, "Milestones in Radio History," Radio World, 1929 41, 42. Meneratti, Herbert J., Letters to GH Clark, Clark Collection, Smithsonian, 1948 43. "Prospectus of the Radio Telephone Co, de Forest System," company advertisement, May, 1907, p 5 44. New York Globe, New York Times, New York Commercial, Modern Electrics, all January, 1910, de Forest sends out the opera from the Metropolitan 45. "De Forest Music on Shipboard to Entertain Passengers," Electrical World, January, 1907 46, 47. "Election Returns Flashed by Radio to 7,000 Amateurs," Electrical Experimenter, Jan, 1917, p 650 48, 49. "Air Will Be Full of Music Tonight," New York Sun, Nov 6, 1916 50. "Election Returns Flashed by Radio to 7,000 Amateurs," Electrical Experimenter, Jan, 1917, p 650 51, 52. De Forest, Lee, Letter to Charles Herrold, Mar 22, 1940, Herrold papers, Perham Foundation, San Jose 53. De Forest, Lee New York World radio edition , 1929 Charles David Herrold, 1875 - 1948 Herrold was a broadcasting pioneer whose most significant work took place between 1912 and 1917. Herrold was the first to broadcast radio entertainment and information for an audience on a regularly scheduled, pre-announced basis. In 1921 he received a license as KQW. In 1949 KQW became KCBS in San Francisco Herrold was a pre-Silicon Valley electronics pioneer. Born in 1875 in the Midwest, he grew up in San Jose, California and attended Stanford University. In 1900 he set up an electrical manufacturing company in San Francisco, but when the 1906 earthquake destroyed everything, he moved to Stockton and taught at a technical college. He returned in 1909 to San Jose and opened the Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering.

Like Lee de Forest, Reginald Fessenden and other better known inventors, Herrold was interested in inventing a radiotelephone system that would make him rich and famous. And while his contributions to the technology of the radiotelephone were lacking in scientific originality, his device did allow him to broadcast, and he received six U.S. patents for the system he and his students used to broadcast. His technolgy used DC arcs burning in liquid, modulated by a water-cooled carbon microphone1921, RCA historian George Clark dismissed all first broadcaster claims prior to 1920 because "ordinary citizens" could not buy radios until KDKA and therefore men like Herrold and de Forest were not really broadcasters because their audiences were amateurs, not "citizens." Nevertheless, Herrold was the first to use radio to broadcast entertainment programming to an audience on a regular basis. He was not the first to broadcast pre-announced to an audience, that was Fessenden in 1906; he was not the first to broadcast election returns, that was de Forest in 1916; he was not the first to get a broadcast license, that was Conrad in 1920. Herrold returned to the air in 1921 licensed as KQW, ran the station until 1925, and later specialized in radio advertising. He died in 1948, unknown and forgotten. KQW became KCBS in 1949.

The question, "Who was the first radio broadcaster, and where and when did broadcasting as we understand it first take place?" has been asked since 1920. For almost 80 years, the answer appearing in the history books was, "Frank Conrad of KDKA(AM) in Pittsburgh in 1920." And when I was a DJ on legendary top-40 powerhouse WCOL(AM) in Columbus in the 1960s, I believed it, too. But while I was spinning the hits in Ohio, a story was slowly unfolding thousands of miles away in San Jose, California - a story that would forever change the way I looked at broadcasting. Early show A young university professor, Gordon Greb, had uncovered evidence showing that a local wireless experimenter named Charles Herrold was really the first individual to broadcast entertainment programming to an audience, as early as 1910 - 10 years before Conrad and KDKA. Herrold had a technical school in downtown San Jose called Herrold College of Wireless and Engineering. His students served as its DJs and newsreaders, broadcasting music and news via a phonograph and microphone. Greb further learned that Herrold received a license in 1921 using the call letters KQW, and that KQW was bought by CBS in 1949 and moved to San Francisco to become KCBS. This was truly a find, for KCBS management was unaware of its historical significance as the first station. In my small world of radio, it was earth-shattering news. Years later, as fellow university professors at San Jose State, Gordon told me of his 1950s discovery. I got excited, and he and I agreed to collaborate in retelling the story. Our book, "Charles Herrold, Inventor of Radio Broadcasting," was recently published by McFarland and Co. It finally tells the complete Herrold story, 45 years after the initial discovery. What took so long? Piece by piece As Greb continued to compile information in the form of letters, press clippings and other documents with dates and program information, he began to see a solid confirmation that the broadcasting of entertainment programming as early as 1909 did take place. He also found early technology used in the broadcasts, and most important, he found living witnesses from the Herrold broadcast days. One such individual was Herrold's wife Sybil, who had a weekly show beginning in 1912. She called it the "Little Hams" program, for the audience members were primarily young people interested in radio. After a year-long research effort, Professor Greb detailed the Herrold story in an article he wrote for the Winter 1958 issue of the Broadcast Education Association's Journal of Broadcasting (JOB). It was the first time a national academic audience had heard about Charles Herrold. Greb also organized a major promotion with KCBS in San Francisco to make the announcement public in the Bay Area of Northern California, using the station's 50,000-watt signal to make the point that they were first. Because of this article, important post-1960 broadcast history books included Herrold, such as Barnouw's "Tower in Babel" and Sterling's "Stay Tuned." More scholarly articles followed that further discussed the "first station" theme, and compared Herrold with Lee de Forest and KDKA, among others. The answer to the question of "Who was the first broadcaster?" gradually was becoming more complex. In fact, the discovery and promotion of the Herrold story lead to a decades-long feud between the two major contenders, KDKA and KCBS, both of which claimed in their promotional advertising to be "the first station." However, once the original 1958 story grew stale, nothing new appeared. By the 1980s, the academic community had lost interest. Awareness of the Herrold story outside of Northern California waned. I joined Gordon in 1988 in an effort to revive the story. Our initial research resulted in the PBS video, "Broadcasting's Forgotten Father: The Charles Herrold Story." But more important, we became friends and colleagues in historical research with a common goal. We agreed that the only way for the Herrold story to gain national credibility was through the publication of a well-researched, clearly documented book. We made trips east, to the Smithsonian History Center in Washington, the New York Public Library and Antique Wireless Association archives in Rochester. Our goal was to find other examples, if any, of pre-1920 broadcasting, similar to that of Herrold in San Jose. Important documents surfaced describing Herrold's broadcasting of entertainment programming to an audience pre-1912. This evidence was not in the original Herrold papers, and not available during the production of the video. After reviewing and processing this new information, several major articles and our book were written. Burden of proof First, there is what I call the "smoking gun" of broadcasting: an ad in the 1910 catalogue of Electro-Importing, a New York mail-order company that sold radio parts to experimenters. It included a printed notarized endorsement from Herrold: "We have given wireless phone concerts to amateur wireless men throughout the Santa Clara Valley." Herrold was referring to the crude process of playing records on a windup acoustical phonograph, and aiming the sound at a microphone to be played over the air. Between records, Herrold and his students would announce what they were playing. Second, a 1912 news story in the San Jose Mercury Herald detailed a radio call -- in format not unlike the present -- day process. An excerpt from the story reads, "For more than two hours they conducted a concert in Mr. Herrold's office, which was heard for many miles around ... (a Herrold student) gave the names of the records he had on hand and asked those listening to signify their choice. One asked for 'My Old Kentucky Home,' which was furnished." Herrold was taking requests from listeners and facilitating phone-request radio in 1912. I ask readers to look at the context in which the question of the first broadcaster has been asked since 1920. All previous claims to being the "first station" used RCA in-house historian George Clark's 1920 criteria. It had to (1) include entertainment programming, (2) include regularly scheduled broadcast times, (3) be pre-announced/advertised ahead of time in the press and (4) be intended for a known "citizen" audience. Clark defined "citizen" as a non-amateur, non-hobbyist listener, as opposed to someone with technical skills. It was this distinction that caused Clark to say, and early historians to write, that all pre-KDKA, 1920 broadcasts were invalid because their audiences were largely amateurs, which is simply not true. Professor Greb and I have determined through our research that many pre-1920 "citizen" listeners heard the de Forest and Herrold broadcasts at "public" listening posts in record stores, at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibition and on crude homemade crystal sets. The Herrold experiments came to an abrupt halt when the entry of the United States into the World War caused all radio transmitters and receivers to be shut down and sealed until 1919. In 1920, when the Commerce Department began issuing commercial licenses, KDKA was first. Six months later, Herrold received his license for KQW. As mentioned, that station would go through a series of owners, ultimately ending up with CBS in 1949. Today there is no real agreement as to a single "first station." Most historians credit KDKA for the first "commercial" license in 1920, de Forest for his 1916 broadcast of the Hughes -- Wilson presidential election and Herrold for broadcasting pre -- announced entertainment to an audience on a regularly scheduled basis from 1909-1917. We, the authors, have found evidence in the form of primary documents - some by Herrold, others by print journalists - indicating that Herrold was the first to do so. Charles Herrold invented the radio station. Engineering, January 18, 1907, page 89:

TRANS-ATLANTIC WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

IN 1904 the National Electric Signalling Company decided to erect two stations for trans-Atlantic working, the antennæ to consist of cylindrical steel tubes, 400 ft. high, with the National Electric Signalling Company's patent umbrella capacity at the top, each tube to rest at the bottom on a pivoted insulated base, and to be supported by sectionally insulated wire-rope guys of the company's standard type. This type of antennæ, which was invented and designed by the National Electric Signalling Company, and patented by it, has proved quite successful, and has been copied in Germany at the Nauen wireless station, a lattice-work, however, being used instead of a steel cylinder. The sites selected were Brant Rock, 30 miles south of Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., and Machrihanish, on the far side of the Mull of Cantyre from Campbelltown, Scotland. These two points were selected because the great circle joining them passes up the Bay of Fundy, over the Isthmus of Chignecto, and across Newfoundland at a point where it is comparatively low. The contract for the steelwork and erection of these towers was let to the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company, of Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A., and for the insulators to the Locke Insulator Company, of Victor, N.Y., U.S.A. Owing to delays on the part of the contractors, the towers were not completed until December 28, 1905. On Friday, December 29, 1905, Brant Rock sent to Machrihanish, but nothing was received, owing, as it was afterwards learned, to a miscalculation in the wave-length. On January 2, 1906, Brant Rock sent again, and Machrihanish received the messages. Communication was maintained one way until about the middle of January, when, the sending apparatus at Machrihanish having been completed, Machrihanish sent, and Brant Rock received messages from there at the first trial. Very satisfactory communication was then maintained for some time, and code Messages containing as many as forty cipher words were received without a single error, or the necessity of any repetitions. It was found that the amount of atmospheric absorption had been miscalculated. From tests made on shipboard at distances of 1500 miles, the atmospheric absorption had been found to be about 90 per cent.--i.e., 10 per cent. of the radiation got through. It was considered that, by assuming the atmospheric absorption to be 99 per cent.--i.e., that 1 per cent. of the radiation got through--a sufficient factor of safety would be provided. As the design was conservative, it was found that in practice the factor of safety was larger than this, and equivalent to an absorption of 99.8 per cent.--i.e., that messages could be received although only one-fifth of per cent. got through. Over this distance of 3000 miles, partly over land, it was found that the absorption was considerably greater than this, and that as a matter of fact, during daylight, not more than one-tenth of 1 per cent. of the energy got through, and that a factor of safety of at least 100,000 must be provided. As an illustration, with the same sending power, on some nights messages were received 480 times stronger than was necessary for audibility, and the messages could be read with the receiver 6 in. away from the ear. On other nights with the same sending power the messages were so faint that they could not be read. A number of tests were made, which were witnessed by scientific experts from the General Electric Company in America, and Mr. Shields, the technical expert of Messrs. Abel and Imray, and others; but as it was evident that the stations were not sufficiently powerful for commercial work, they were shut down early in 1906, for reconstruction. Owing to the impossibility of getting aluminium for the compressed-air condensers the stations were not opened again until October, 1906, when they were operated at a factor of safety of 2000, only half of the condensers being in place. With the full amount of condensers the factor of safety would have been 4000, and a new form of receiving apparatus, which it was intended to use, would have brought up the factor of safety to 400,000. The stations operated continuously, barring shut-downs for a couple of nights for mechanical reasons, until December 5, when the tower at Machrihanish blew down. This accident came at a very unfortunate time, as work had just been begun on a new method for eliminating the atmospheric absorption, which had given very promising results, the absorption having been already reduced to one-tenth of what it was formerly. Moreover, the new receiving apparatus had only been partly installed, and no opportunity had been afforded of trying it between the trans-Atlantic stations. The specifications on which the contractors bid called for the tower to stand a wind-pressure of 50 lb. per square foot on a flat surface, and for the tower to be capable of being extended to a height of 500 ft. later, if desired, and to be capable of standing a pressure of 50 lb. per square foot on a flat surface even if one set of guys broke. The design was carried out in a very creditable manner by the Brown Hoisting Machinery Company. In a future issue we shall illustrate the installation and describe the jointing of the guy-ropes, to the failure of which the fall of the mast is attributed. This jointing was carried out by a subcontractor.

The American Telephone Journal, January 26, 1907, page 1: Experiments and Results in Wireless Telephony BY JOHN GRANT

WIRELESS transmission of speech over a distance somewhat greater than ten miles was satisfactorily accomplished in the presence of a number of persons invited to witness demonstration of a new system of wireless telephony at the experimental station of the National Electric Signaling Company, Brant Rock, Mass., on Dec. 21st, 1906. The representative of THE AMERICAN TELEPHONE JOURNAL who was present at these tests was furnished by Professor Reginald A. Fessenden, the inventor of the system, with many facts which have made it possible to trace in the present article the development of his work. For this purpose abstracts without quotation will be freely made from an article which has been furnished by him for publication in Electrical Review, London, and from descriptions embodied in United States patents which have already been issued. Speaking broadly, wireless telephony by this system is accomplished by generating a practically continuous succession of electromagnetic waves, modifying the character of the emitted impulses by means of sound waves without interrupting their continuity, and receiving them in a constantly operative receiver of suitable form which controls a local circuit containing a battery and a telephone receiver. The apparatus which was seen in successful use at the time of the recent tests is the result of a series of diligent investigations in which a large amount of work was done to show the necessity of rejecting plans which did not lead to the required quality of transmission. Beginning his work on the subject in 1898, Professor Fessenden made some experiments which were entirely unsuccessful. At this time the only recognized means for the practically continuous generation of electromagnetic waves capable of being propagated through space to affect a distant receiving instrument were: (a) The plain aerial with spark gap used by Marconi. (b) The plain aerial heavily loaded with inductance, used by Lodge. (c) The plain aerial in conjunction with a local oscillatory circuit having a period of a different order of magnitude from the period of the antenna, used by Braun. Lodge's method was found to be the only one adapted to produce prolonged trains of waves. Tietz at an early date had used Leyden jars connected across the spark gap, and later Braun described and used a Leyden jar and antenna sending circuit in which the natural period of the Leyden jar circuit was specified as of a different and lower order than that of the antenna circuit. [Braun, English patent No. 1,862, A. D. 1899] None of these methods, however, gave the results desired. Professor Fessenden conceived the idea that good results could be obtained in conjunction with a local circuit tuned to the same frequency as the aerial. [U. S. Patent No. 706,735] This method, used by him in association with Professor Kintner, proved to give a fairly satisfactory means of producing a long train of waves, and is now extensively used. After making various tests with a Wehnelt interrupter and other devices with which more or less encouraging results were obtained, an induction coil and commutator were settled upon as a make and break mechanism for the tuned circuit. With this circuit, and apparatus giving 10,000 sparks per second, the experiments in wireless telephony led to the transmission of speech, which was first accomplished in the Fall of 1900. The antennae were two masts, 50 feet high, set up one mile apart at Rock Point, Md. A commutator making 10,000 breaks per second in circuit with an induction coil was used for generating waves.

In these experiments the articulation was of a sort which left considerable room for improvement, and there was a noise, due to the irregularity of the spark, which was disagreeable and at times overpowering. This lead to the invention of the compressed gas spark gap, [U. S. Patent No. 706, 741] which gave a steadier spark. This device is essentially a spark gap having its terminals, 4, 5 (Fig. 1), enclosed in a chamber in which the gas may be subjected to a pressure produced by the pump 8. This spark gap is connected between the ground and the antenna, shunting the source of energy, the circuit of which contains a make and break device. In practice the chamber was filled with compressed air, from which the oxygen was absorbed by lime in the bottom of the chamber, leaving compressed nitrogen. The appearance of the exterior of the apparatus is shown in Fig. 2. Later a mercury gap of the Cooper-Hewitt type was used, but with this the results obtained were not quite as good as with the compressed gas gap, even when the spark was localized as much as possible by small points of platinum-iridium wire projecting to the surface of the mercury. With these types of apparatus high speed breaks of various kinds were used. In 1901 and 1902 experiments were made, using Elihu Thomson's method of producing rapid oscillations by means of an arc and shunted resonant circuit. Better results were obtained by a modification of this method, using regulating resistance, compressed gas gaps and governing circuits for the purpose of making it more applicable to practical working, but there was still a very considerable amount of foreign noise in the telephone circuit. Work on high frequency alternating current dynamos had been begun in 1900, and in 1902 an alternator giving 10,000 cycles per second was completed at the works of the General Electric Co. and delivered to Professor Fessenden. This was a 1 kilowatt machine, delivering about 10 amperes at 100 volts. With it was used an air core transformer giving about 10,000 volts, and an interrupter producing 20,000 sparks per second. It was necessary to use the spark gap, as the frequency of the machine was not high enough for the direct production of electromagnetic waves. This combination, however, on account of the regularity of its action, gave much better results than the rotating break, and measurements made in Washington in 1904 led to the belief that transmission could be effected over a distance of 25 miles. Continued experiments were made with spark gap apparatus of various types, and in many cases fairly good articulation was obtained. With all these types of apparatus, using a spark gap however, while radiation was sufficiently continuous for the transmission of speech, it became more and more evident that the quality of articulation demanded for commercial telephony could not be obtained without a source of power which would give completely continuous radiation. Among the many methods for obtaining this which were tried was the very interesting method of producing high frequency oscillations commonly known as the musical arc, using a continuous current arc shunted by a condenser and inductance in connection with a magnetic blow out, invented by Professor Elihu Thomson. Professor Fessenden as early as 1898 had by his experiments verified the statement made by its inventor [In U. S. Patent No. 500,630] that frequencies as high as 50,000 or more can be obtained in this way. This statement, it is interesting to note, was controverted as late as 1903 by Duddell, [London Electrician, Vol. 51, Page 902] who seems to have not fully grasped the method of operation of the device, although many European scientists have even incorrectly attributed its invention to him.

The experiments made with this method of producing oscillations showed it to be hardly satisfactory. By the use of properly cooled electrodes and an air blast and magnetic blow out, very high frequencies were obtained, but it was found that neither frequency nor intensity was constant. The fact that a key could not be used to make and break the circuit, since the arc would not start itself, made it impracticable in its original shape. In order to overcome the difficulties arising from irregularity, the plan was modified by the substitution for a pure inductance in series with the arc of a coil having a considerable resistance with only a moderate amount of self-induction. This resistance was so adjusted and proportioned to the shunt resonant circuit as to maintain the frequency almost absolutely constant. [U. S. patent No. 730,753.] In Fig. 3 the coil 59 is shown in series with the arc in the sending circuit. It is so designed as to have a high resistance but low inductance, and any suitable means, such as a plug, 60, may be provided for shunting out more or less of the resistance. In operation, when condenser 12a has been charged to a sufficient potential, there will occur a discharge across the spark gap, discharging the condenser and setting up oscillations in the sending conductor. On account of the high resistance, 59, some time is required to recharge the condenser to sparking potential. The discharge is therefore intermittent, and may be made to occur many times per second as is desired, within recognizable limits, by plugging out more or less of the resistance. With this apparatus the periodicity depends upon the discharge voltage, which is not liable to fluctuate. To overcome the difficulty arising from the inability of the arc to start itself, a method of working was devised in which the arc operated continuously, and emitted radiation continuously, and the signaling was done by altering the frequency of the emitted waves. [U. S. patent No. 706,742]. Numerous experiments looking to the adaptation of this plan to telephony were made, but it was found that by none of the arrangements tried could the scratching and hissing noises in the receiver be eliminated. While these experiments were being carried on, work on the development of a new high frequency dynamo was making good progress. In the only patent which has yet been granted on this machine [U. S. Patent No. 706,737] its general characteristics are described as follows: It is necessary that it should give a pure sine wave, as such a form is the only one adapted to give perfect resonance. With a dynamo giving such a curve forming a part of a suitably constructed sending conductor, Professor Fessenden asserts that if the machine be wound to give a thousand volts on open circuit, it is possible by means of resonance effects to obtain a voltage of 100,000 volts on the sending conductor. These resonance effects are obtained by using a dynamo of low internal resistance as a portion of the sending conductor of large capacity or self-induction, or both, having these electrical constants suitably proportioned to give to the sending conductor, that is, to the whole conductor from the top of the antenna to the ground, including the armature of the dynamo itself a natural period identical with the periodicity of the dynamo. If the frequency of the dynamo were to be made lower than the periodicity of the radiating circuit the chief effects would be electrostatic and magnetic in their nature, and there would be practically no electromagnetic radiation. As it is only energy in the form of electromagnetic waves which may be transmitted to a great distance through the atmosphere, it is highly important that this effect should be predominant. The armature must have a low resistance, because if of a high resistance the oscillations will be dampened, making it impossible to produce high resonance voltages. Ventilation must be good, as the current may run up to a very high figure. The length of wire in the armature must be as small as possible, compared with the length of the sending conductor. If this relation were not maintained, the electrical constants of the entire sending conductor would be determined too largely by that part of the circuit between the armature terminals, and the amount of radiation would be much less than would be the case if the armature had a relatively small length of wire. Another way of stating this requirement is that the self-induction and capacity of the armature must be as small a fraction as possible of the self-induction and capacity of the entire sending conductor in order to secure the highest radiating efficiency. It is also essential that all iron magnetically influenced by currents in the conductor should be so proportioned and distributed as not to affect the shape of the curve of voltage, or to cause loss of power by hysteresis, as in such a case there would be too much dampening. For these reasons the dynamo may be constructed with a fixed armature containing no iron, having the air gap as long as possible, consistent with a high magnetic flux density, and revolving pole pieces so shaped as to produce sine waves as closely as possible. The revolving parts may be formed of magnetic material of high tensile strength, such as nickel steel. A peripheral speed of five miles per minute, which can be safely maintained with properly constructed moving parts of nickel steel, would allow the machine to be arranged to give one hundred thousand cycles per second. Such a speed can be obtained with a steam turbine to drive the dynamo. The alternator which is at present in use is constructed along those lines, but embodies many ingenious mechanical arrangements due to the skill of several of the engineers of the General Electric Company, notably Dr. Steinmetz, Mr. Haskins, Mr. Alexanderson, Mr. Dempster, and Mr. Geisenhoner. This machine (Fig. 4) was originally designed for a frequency of 100,000 cycles, at an output of one kilowatt. It is now being driven by belting, the construction of a type to be driven by a De Laval turbine connected through gearing, and, on account of belt slipping, is never run at a speed to give more than 80,000 cycles. For most work it is run at 60,000 cycles, at which speed it has an output of about one-quarter of a kilowatt. The internal resistance of the armature is approximately six ohms, and the inductive drop at full load is about equal to the ohmic drop. At 60,000 cycles the voltage is about 60 volts. The armature makes 10,000 revolutions per minute, bearings being kept at a low temperature by lubrication controlled by oil pumps. The operation of the machine is said to be extremely satisfactory, it having been run daily for six or seven hours at a time with practically no attention. The design, and the method in which it has been worked out by the engineers and mechanics of the General Electric Company, mark a notable advance in dynamo-electric machinery, for which the highest credit is due those who have developed this machine, accomplishing what has been declared by Fleming, in his latest published work in wireless telegraphy, to be an impossibility. (To be continued.)

February 2, 1907, page 1:

MODIFICATION of the character of the electromagnetic waves to impart the fluctuations characteristic of the current in a circuit containing an ordinary telephone transmitter has been the object of an exhaustive series of experiments by Professor Fessenden, second only in importance to those which led to his development of a satisfactory system for radiating energy. It is evident that the forms of the electromagnetic waves must be varied exactly in correspondence with the sound waves of spoken words at the transmitting station, and at the receiving station the apparatus must be capable of transforming the energy into sound waves of like character to those originated at the distant end of system. An early arrangement tried at the transmitting end of the line was of the form indicated in Fig. 5. [U. S. Patent No. 706,747] Here the conductor from the aerial passes through a winding 2 of the transformer 3 to the source of energy (here represented by induction coil the other terminal of which is connected by induction coil 6), the other terminal of which is connected to ground. Capacity 18 and in inductance 19 in series shunt spark gap 4-5 for the purpose of maintaining constant frequency, as previously described with referenced to Fig. 3. Transmitter 9 and battery 8 are serially included with a second winding 7, on transformer 3. Capacity 18 and inductance 19 are arranged to have the same period of oscillation as the sending conductor 1, and also as the receiving conductor. Advantage of the fact that if the resistance of a transformer secondary be changed it alters the inductance of the primary is taken to produce the required modifications the waves emitted. Thus by speaking into the transmitter the permeability of the core 3 is correspondingly modified, producing a change in the self-inductance of the winding 2. This in turn affects the natural period of vibration of the sending conductor, throwing it out of resonance with resonating circuit 18-19. Owing to this variable failure of resonance there is produced a series of corresponding changes in the intensity of the waves given off by the conductor 1, and these variations are reproduced in the circuit of the receiving conductor. It is to be noted that the essential point in the operation of this method of transmission is the throwing of the aerial out of tune with the resonant circuit 18-19, and an alternative method of doing this is to alter the capacity of conductor 1, instead of its inductance. To affect this type of variation, conductor 1 was connected to a fixed condenser plate 13 (Fig. 6), while plate 14 is formed by or connected to a diaphragm capable of vibrating in unison with sound waves, produced by words spoken into a transmitter mouthpiece. The latter arrangement has been termed by Professor Fessenden a "condenser transmitter." Relating the practical results obtained with this type of apparatus in conjunction with the high frequency dynamo for generating waves he states that with a diaphragm two centimetres in diameter a movement of 1-100 of an inch inwards reduced the current from 3.1 amps. to 2.5 amps. This result was obtained on a circuit used for telephoning from Brant Rock to Plymouth, a distance of about ten miles. The dynamo was connected to the aerial through a transformer with 10 and 100 turns respectively, stepping up the voltage from 45 volts to approximately 3,000 volts, with a frequency of 50,000 cycles. This result was obtained without a resonant circuit between the movable terminal of the condenser transmitter and ground.

In Fig. 9 is shown a third arrangement using a carbon microphone transmitter, 16-17, in circuit between the sending generator 15 and aerial 1. A proper type of transmitter for this purpose should be capable of carrying from 10 to 100 amperes. In the practical instrument which has been developed the metal enclosing the carbon chamber is made with two deep circumferential grooves, visible in Fig 11, permitting the rapid radiation of such heat as may be produced. In operation, the sending conductor has its natural period in resonance with the period of the dynamo, and the amount of resonant voltage depends upon the resistance of the microphonic contact. Speaking against the diaphragm therefore causes the voltage at the aerial terminal to change in correspondence with the sound waves. This microphonic contact may be substituted for the variable inductance or variable capacity in conjunction with the resonant circuit 18, 19 as shown in Figs. 5 and 6. While the condenser transmitter has given the best results, the carbon transmitter works very well in practice. The instruments as now constructed have platinum-iridium electrodes, and carry three amperes without injurious heating. To get the best results the ohmic resistance of the carbon transmitter should be equal to the radiation resistance of the aerial. In practice the carbon transmitter is usually placed between the exciting source and ground, as shown in Figs. 12, 14, for the purpose of preventing possible shocks. A carbon transmitter may also be placed in the field of the high frequency alternator. Still another method is to use the armature winding differentially, with a second field, to shift the position of the field. Many other forms of transmitting devices for varying the natural period of the sending aerial circuit through the action of a transmitter upon a spark gap, etc., were experimented upon, but were laid aside on account of the objectionable noises which they produced in the receiving circuits.

Receiving apparatus at the time Professor Fessenden began his work was in an unsatisfactory state, all known forms of receiver being of the "imperfect contact" type. These were not considered satisfactory, as it is well established that a receiver adapted to reproduce speech must be constantly operative. Moreover the known types were all voltage operated devices, and the thing required was recognized to be a current operated receiver. Forms of current operated receivers were devised, to the number of more than one hundred. In all these the fundamental principle is that all constants are electrically good contacts, and the devices are capable of being operated by electromagnetic waves. [U. S. Patent No. 706,736] They are broadly distinguished from devices depending for their operation upon the varying of contact resistance, as in the "coherer" types of receiver. Amongst these types of receiver which have become known may be mentioned the hot wire barreter, the liquid barreter, the eddy current receiver, the mircobaric receiver, the repulsive disk, etc. Of these the most satisfactory for telephone work was found to be the liquid barreter. The type of instrument consists of a small vessel containing a liquid in which is immersed a diaphragm perforated with a minute hole, before which is placed a fine point connected with the antenna. Under the action of the electromagnetic waves the stratum of liquid contained in the perforation of the diaphragm becomes heated, its resistance is varied, and if the terminals be shunted by a battery and receiver sounds will be produced corresponding to such fluctuations in resistance. The inventor of these various forms of receivers believes, however, that they are all surpassed by what he terms his "heterodyne" receiver. Although this cannot be fully described on account of the condition of patents, the following data are available: All forms of voltage operated receivers, and most forms of current operated receivers are very inefficient. Even the liquid barreter, which is recognized as an exceptional sensitivity instrument has an efficiency of only about 1-10 of one per cent for weak signals. The magnetic receiver of the types developed for wireless telegraphy is in the same class. While a liquid barreter or magnetic receiver will give an indication between 1/100 and 1/1000 of an erg., an ordinary telephone will indicate the passage of less than 1/1,000,000 of an erg. From this it is evident that a proper method for directly using an ordinary telephone receiver would increase the efficiency enormously. This has been accomplished in the heterodyne receiver, which is a combination of the "beats method," [U. S. Patent No. 706,740] and the method of operating by continuously generated waves, [P. P. S. Patent No. 706,737] which has already been described. The beats method requires the use at the sending station of two or more antennae, so constructed and proportioned as to have different periods of oscillation--in practice a difference of about 5 per cent being preferred. At the receiving station two or more conductors are connected to separate windings and of a receiver magnet. Separate alternators are used, tuned to frequencies corresponding with the periods of the aerials to which they are respectively connected. As the device is operated waves of different periodicities are generated by the respective sending conductors, and these waves produce in the corresponding receiving conductors correspondingly varying oscillations in potential. As the oscillations persist there follows a varying difference of potential at the receiver terminals, and corresponding signals caused by the electric "beats," analogous to sound "beats" will be heard. The heterodyne receiver (Fig 8) is built up of a telephone having a fixed magnetic core formed of iron wires .001 inch in diameter, and this core is excited by a high frequency current. A small coil, with or without a core, is cemented to a thin mica diaphragm, and this coil is arranged to be excited by the oscillations produced by the received electromagnetic waves. While it is impossible to make the frequency of waves generated at the sending station exactly equal to the oscillations generated at the receiving station, it is believed that regulation sufficient for all practical purposes may be obtained by automatic means. This gives an extremely efficient form of receiver. Advantages pointed out by the inventor of this type of receiver are that it is unaffected by atmospheric disturbances, or by disturbances from nearby stations, and that it is adapted to the reception of a message on the same aerial which is being used to transmit a message to another station. The apparatus as set up for experiments in talking from Brant Rock to Plymouth at the time of the recent test referred to at the opening of this article was set up in conformity with the circuits shown in Figs. 12 and 15. The armature in the transmitting circuit Fig. 12 is in series with a resistance and the primary of a variable transformer. This latter piece of apparatus consists of a pair of non-inductive cores, about which are wound a number of turns of wire, the number of turns on each core being varied to suit the requirements of transformation by the simple device of rotating the core with a crank. Examples of this type of transformer are visible at the front of the right hand table in Figs 7, 10, and in Fig. 13. A similar transformer is used in the receiving circuit, Fig. 15. The receiver and battery are connected across the terminals of the barreter in the manner indicated, a simple potentiometer arrangement being used to regulate the normal voltage at the receiver terminals. Inductances, not shown in these diagrams, were inserted between the aerial and the transformer winding for the purpose of tuning. With this arrangement of apparatus speech was clearly transmitted from Brant Rock to Plymouth by some of the men present at the tests made on December 21. These tests also included experiments in transmission from a phonograph and nearly all speech, as well as music was distinctly intelligible. All tests made were apparently satisfactory. Articulation was distinct, the quality of reproduced tones good, and the efficiency of transmission was high. An expert stated that he believed efficiency to be on that day rather better than transmission through twenty-five miles of standard cable, this judgement being of course, based on his estimation unassisted by any of the devices for comparison which are available in laboratories for transmission testing. A modification of the circuit which is shown in Fig 12 is effected by the introduction of a telephone in Figure 14. For this purpose Professor Fessenden has designed a highly ingenious type of relay, using differential windings on the cores of magnets, between the poles of which is mounted an armature attached to the electrode of a microphonic transmitter chamber. Variation in the current traversing the windings causes a shifting of the magnetic field one side or the other, producing a corresponding series of changes in the position of the plate controlling the movable transmitter electrode. This relay has shown itself to be very sensitive in practice, but improvements made within the past few weeks are expected to materially improve its efficiency. As a call a double differential relay of this type has been used to operate either a loud-speaking transmitter, a bell or a Morse writer. In the system shown it is necessary, as in the early Bell telephone system, to throw a switch to change from talking to listening. At the tests a method of overcoming this defect was explained. Although patent considerations prevent the publication of the method of accomplishing this at the present time, it has been in successful operation. In general, Professor has found that where no spark is used for transmitting and a carbon transmitter is used for modifying the strength of waves the speech is as distinct as over a short open wire and rather more distinct than over cables, owing to the absence of any capacity effect, and there is a total absence of extraneous noise. With the present methods of transmission, there appears to be no distortion of sounds with increase of distance, as is found in all wire lines. Although this might have anticipated, it has been experimentally demonstrated by comparison of the relative intensities of notes of different frequencies at different distances. These characteristics have led to the prediction that wireless telephony may operate over longer distances than is possible with wire lines. The difficult problem in increasing the range of transmission is at present the modulation of the large amount of energy given out by the antenna. Where an ordinary granular carbon transmitter is used about one-half ampere of current is all that can successfully be modulated and even with special transmitter buttons 2½ amperes seems to be about the limit. With multiple buttons the limit is reached at about 10 amperes. For currents larger than ten amperes a number of telephone relays may be placed in series and operated by a single transmitter. The practical limits for this method have not as yet been determined. Much depends upon the possible improvements in the efficiency of the relays.

Possible uses of wireless telephony cover a variety of important fields. At sea the wireless telephone may be used as a safeguard in foggy weather. On land it is doubtful if wireless transmission will ever supplant the local exchanges with wires. So far as the subscriber is concerned, the simplicity of present systems is an advantage which is not likely to be overcome. For trunking however, it apparently has a field, owing to its comparatively low first cost, faculty of working multiplex for the transmission of several conversations simultaneously by methods which are now being developed, and to its lack of susceptibility to the foreign influences which produce disagreeable noises in open wire lines. Its ultimate adaptability to long distance transmission and its comparative low cost is a factor which should not be overlooked. For supplanting submarine cables the system has an obvious advantage in transmission owing to the absence of capacity effects. A practical application along this line which has been suggested is the use of the wireless system for transmitting speech across the English Channel. It is admirably adapted to the transmission of news, music, etc. as, owing to the fact that no wires are needed, simultaneous transmission to many subscribers can be effected as easily as to a few. Methods of automatic relaying from ordinary telephone lines to wireless transmitting lines and from a wireless receiving station to a wire line are obviously simple and have already been tested with success. On sea and on land wireless telephony has the immense advantage over telegraphy that no expert operator is required either for transmission or for sending.

Unfortunately for Fessenden and his backers, AT&T decided -- correctly -- that Fessenden's system, while revolutionary, was not yet refined enough for commercial telephone service, and so did not purchase the patents. It would not be until 1920 that the first U.S. telephone link by radio would be installed, at Catalina Island, California. And although the equipment used by the Catalina link was based on the same basic principles -- continuous-wave AM signals -- first developed by Fessenden's 1906 Brant Rock station, instead of alternator-transmitters and liquid barreter receivers, the Catalina link would employ vacuum-tube transmitters and receivers, which had been developed in the interim and were much more efficient.

Fessenden had a falling-out with his backers, and eventually left radio work. But the alternator-transmitter continued to be developed by General Electric, under the supervision of Alexanderson's Alternator-transmitters, because of their complexity, high cost, and limited range of frequencies, would never be employed by broadcasting stations, but they did make superb longwave radiotelegraph transmitters, and would be used for transoceanic service through the nineteen-forties. In fact, by 1919 the alternator-transmitter patents, with their application for international radiotelegraph service, would be considered so valuable that the question of their ownership triggered the formation of the Radio Corporation of America, because for national security reasons the U.S. government didn't want the British-owned Marconi company to gain control of the alternator-transmitter rights.

ref: Fessenden, Builder of Tomorrows by Helen Fessenden, Coward McCann, 1940 Radio's First Voice by Ormond Raby, MacMillan of Canada, 1970 The Chronicle's and pot bellied stove yarns of Harold Mansfield, late of Plymouth

The lovely voice of his maid lady of many years, 95 years young and very nice

Reg's Chief Engineer's son, Wor. Adam Stein, III of Kingston now passed The Inception of Wireless. Let us, then, begin with the first electrical arrangement for wire-less telegraphy. It was not long before Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted (May 24, 1844) his famous first message, “What hath God wrought!” over the experimental telegraph wire line from Washington to Baltimore -- indeed, quite soon after he built his earliest wire telegraph -- that he began trying to telegraph without complete wire circuits. In 1842 he succeeded in sending messages across a canal at Washington, using the slight conducting power of the water to carry the electric telegraph current from one side to the other. The same plan was tried out by others in the decade following; but although distances of nearly one mile were covered by the use of large amounts of power, it seems never to have passed beyond the experimental stage. More than thirty years later, in 1875, Alexander Graham Bell built his first telephone. This surprisingly sensitive instrument could reproduce musical signal sounds from comparatively feeble currents of electricity, and was in many ways far superior to the receivers used by earlier investigators of the telegraph. John Trowbridge, of Harvard University, in 1880 applied the Bell telephone to the study of Morse's scheme of wireless telegraphy by diffused electrical conduction through rivers or moist earth. He found that if he interrupted the signaling current rapidly, so that its variations could produce a musical tone, messages could be transmitted through earth or water much more effectively than Morse had thought possible. In 1882 Bell succeeded in sending messages about a mile and a half to a boat on the Potomac River, using his telephone receiver connected to plates submerged below the water surface. Developments in England. Contemporaneously with Trowbridge and Bell, Sir William H. Preece applied to wireless signaling his knowledge of “cross talk” between neighboring circuits carrying telephone and telegraph messages by wire. Perhaps his first practical installation was that between Hampshire, England, and the Isle of Wight when in 1882 the submarine cable across The Solent (averaging a little over one mile in width), broke down. Preece got good results in much the same way as did Morse and Bell. Preece also experimented with the magnetic effects between circuits having no interconnection by wire, earth, or water; and with the assistance of A. W. Heaviside succeeded in transmitting both telegraph and telephone messages by wireless in this way as early as 1885. However, by combining the two arrangements and taking advantage of both magnetic induction between the circuits and diffused conduction between their terminals, he was able to increase working distances to more than six miles. This magnetic induction between completely closed circuits was only one of the actions suggested for, and practically applied to, electric signaling without connecting wires, during these early years. In 1885 Thomas A. Edisonand his associates devised a different sort of wireless telegraph, which bore a closer resemblance to the radio of to-day. Edison's proposal was to support, high above the earth's surface and at some distance from each other, two metallic plates. At the sending station one of these was connected to earth through a coil that would produce a high electrical pressure; the other, at the receiving station, was connected through a Bell telephone to the ground. In operation, the intense electric strains produced in space about the sending plate (by reason of its high voltage) were supposed to extend outward as far as the receiving plate and to produce currents of sufficient strength to give off signal tones from the telephone. A modification of this system, by which the receiving plate was mounted on the roof of a railway car and the telegraph wires beside the tracks were utilized to help out the transmission, was used on the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1887. It operated satisfactorily, and this was probably the first instance on record of telegraphing to a moving train. Signaling with Electric Waves: A New Kind of Wireless. So much for the several types of electrical signaling, without connecting wires, which preceded radio-telegraphy and radio-telephony. There were other suggestions, notably those of Mahlon Loomis (1872), Professor Amos Dolbear (1886), and Isidor Kitsee (1895); but so far as is known, none of them attained even the degree of practical success achieved by Morse in 1842. However that may be, all these plans dependent upon electrical conduction or induction were utterly eclipsed soon after Guglielmo Marconi's experimental demonstrations of electric-wave telegraphy in 1896 and 1897. This new form of wireless signaling, depending upon radiated electromagnetic waves, showed so much promise and made such rapid development that interest in the earlier types soon vanished. The new wireless art quickly gained an importance so great that it required a characteristic name to distinguish it from the earlier conduction and induction systems. The name given to it is “radio communication.” Radio, therefore, is only one part of the subject of wireless electrical signaling. It is, however, by so much the largest and most important part that “radio” has become practically synonymous with “wireless”, and sight has largely been lost of the fact that, strictly speaking, radio includes electro-magnetic wave transmission and nothing else. The Work upon Which Radio Is Founded. Curiously enough, although radio did not reach practical success until about 1896, its underlying principles had been matters of scientific development for many years before. In 1842, the same year that Morse telegraphed through the canal at Washington, Professor Joseph Henry at Princeton University showed that the magnetic effects of an electric spark could be detected some thirty feet away. In 1867 Professor James Clerk Maxwell the University of Edinburgh, propounded a radically new conception of electricity and magnetism, outlined theoretically the exact type of electro-magnetic wave that is used in radio to-day, and predicted its behavior. Twelve years later Professor David E. Hughes discovered the sensitiveness of a loose electrical contact, both to sounds and to electrical spark effects which he suspected might be waves. He found it possible to indicate the passage of electric sparks nearly one third of a mile away. But it was not until 1886 that the existence of veritable electromagnetic waves was demonstrated beyond the possibility of misunderstanding or criticism. In that year, Heinrich Hertzworking at Karlsruhe, Germany, confirmed Maxwell's theory by creating and detecting these electric waves. With the instruments he devised, it was possible to reflect and to focus the new waves. Their similarity to the waves of light and heat was clearly shown.

Hertz's electric-wave generator consisted of a spark gap to which was attached a pair of outwardly extending conductors, corresponding in a miniature way to the aerial and earth wires of a modern radio transmitter. His receiver was a wire ring having a minute opening across which, when electro-magnetic waves arrived, tiny sparks would pass. This wire ring was in some respects like the loop receiver of today; with it Hertz was able not only to indicate the receipt of waves, but also to determine their intensity and direction of travel. Heinrich Hertz, despite the fact that his work was limited to laboratory distances and that he did not suggest the use of his waves for telegraphy, is the pioneer whose experiments laid the foundation for radio as we now know it. A few years after Hertz's first work with invisible electro-magnetic waves, Elihu Thomson, of Lynn, Massachusetts, proposed (1889) their use for signaling through fogs or even through solid bodies that would shut off light waves. Sir William Crookes in 1892 made a startling prophecy of electric-wave telegraphy and telephony. Meanwhile, Hertz's experiments had been taken up and extended by a number of scientists, chief among whom were Professor Edouard Branly, of Paris; Sir Oliver Lodge, of London; and Professor Augusto Righi, of Bologna, Italy. Branly and Lodge devised numerous forms of “radio conductors”, or receivers utilizing some of the phenomena also discovered by Hughes, for the delicate reception of electric waves; Righi invented various types of wave producers and con-firmed and added to Hertz's observations. The Earliest Experiments with Radio. Guglielmo Marconi, who is justly called the inventor of radio-telegraphy, was a pupil of Righi's. To him came not merely the idea that invisible electric waves could be used for telegraphic signaling, but also the inspiration that led to practical solutions of the many problems involved in producing a set of sending and receiving instruments capable of reasonably reliable operation. As early as 1894 he recognized the defects in the indicators previously used to show the arrival of electric waves. He applied himself to the building of a sensitive and, for those days, dependable device that would receive and record a message in the dots and dashes of the Morse code. Such a receiver was made; and, having come to England, Marconi carried on the famous Salisbury Plain demonstration in 1896. There he telegraphed by radio a distance of nearly two miles. This spectacular performance resulted from the sensitiveness of Marconi's new receiver, but perhaps no less depended upon his idea of connecting one side of his spark gap to the ground and upon his use of comparatively large elevated or aerial conductors at both the sending and the receiving station. Before the end of the next year (1897), Marconi had sent radio messages to and from ships at sea over distances as great as ten miles, and between land stations at Salisbury and at Bath, 24 miles apart, in England. This was sufficient to settle beyond cavil the economic importance of radio-telegraphy, and to bring to bear upon its puzzles the best scientific minds of Europe and America. The earlier systems of wireless, none of which utilized electric radiation, had never been capable of such results as these. Later Developments. In the quarter-century that has passed since Marconi sent the first messages by radio, the complexion of the art has changed in great measure; yet one has no difficulty in recognizing many of Marconi’s fundamentals as they reappear in the instruments now used. The high aerial wires at the transmitter, the ground connection, either direct or through a wire network, as suggested by Lodge in 1898, and the invention of “tuning” (dating from 1900) all persist in the apparatus of to-day. Marconi's original transmitter was simply an enlarged wave-producer of the sort used by Hertz. Very soon, however, Marconi found that greater distances could be covered by connecting one side of the generating spark gap to an earth wire and the other to a high vertical aerial wire or antenna. Even this form was limited in power; and the next important step seems to have been made by dividing the sending assembly into two parts, -- a driving circuit and a radiating circuit. Sir Oliver Lodge, in 1897, partially applied to radio the idea of electrical tuning, the principles of which had been stated by Professor M. I. Pupin, of Columbia University, in 1894; but his method was greatly improved upon in 1900 by carefully adjusting the two divisions of the transmitter to work harmoniously together. This advance in powerful and non-interfering transmission appears to have been made independently by Marconi and by Professor R. A. Fessenden, The Improvement of Receiving Apparatus. Turning to the development of receivers, we find that the delicate instrument used by Marconi in 1896 was the subject of much investigation and that many other forms of “loose contacts” were invented up to 1900 or thereabout. The erratic action of these devices, however, forced the investigators into other channels. By I902 Marconi had produced a magnetic detector that was entirely dependable but not exceptionally sensitive. In the same year Fessenden patented a uniformly operating thermal receiver of about the same sensitiveness. In 1903 Fessenden brought forward his liquid receiver, which had such great responsiveness and stability that it was generally adopted in practical radio and became the U. S. Navy's standard of sensitiveness. Fleming's incandescent-lamp receiver came out in 1904, but in its original form could not compete with the simple liquid detector. Of the “crystal” detectors, now so common, one of the first to attain practical use was the electric-furnace product, carborundum, which General Henry H. C. Dunwoody, of the U.S. Army, applied to radio in 1906. Contemporaneously, G. W. Pickard found that silicon and other substances might be utilized in the same way, and lead ore (galena) and iron pyrites were also much used. The best of these so-called crystal receivers were nearly equivalent in sensitiveness to the earlier liquid type, and because of their ease of manipulation they almost entirely superseded the older devices. In 1906 and 1907 de Forest introduced the grid audion, which proved to be a substantially improved form of Fleming's incandescent-lamp receiver. This vacuum-tube detector showed surprisingly great sensitiveness from the very first; its earlier forms were unstable, however, and it was not accepted practically until about 1912. With the structural improvements that followed -- the addition of the Armstrong feed-back circuit, and the discovery (about 1913) that the same three-electrode bulb could be used as a delicate but powerful magnifier of signal strength -- the vacuum tube has now replaced all other receivers at stations where extreme sensitiveness is desired. The modern forms do not closely resemble the designs of 1906; and in special types of tube, such as those named the “magnetron” and the “dynatron”, there is also a departure from the earlier operating principles. All of these tubes are, however, incandescent-lamp detectors or amplifiers. Improvements at the receiving end of radio were by no means confined to the sensitive wave-detecting elements. The Pupin-Lodge-Fessenden-Marconi tuning improvements were applied to receiving systems as well as to transmitters. There was also an effort to replace the ink recorder used in Marconi's first work. Lodge in 1897 adopted the siphon recorder, which Lord Kelvin had devised for cable working; while other investigators (and notably those in the United States) put the Bell telephone into use as a signal indicator as early as 1899. In l902 Fessenden showed how the ordinary detector could be replaced by a special telephone receiver operated by two simultaneously transmitted streams of continuous waves. Not long thereafter he invented the strikingly novel and ingenious “heterodyne” receiver which, with later improvements, is well-nigh universally used in modern radio-telegraphy. The Field of Practical Operation. To conclude this necessarily rather sketchy historical review, a glance at progress in the application of radio to operations, rather than its scientific growth, may be interesting. After Marconi's demonstrations in 1897, a number of commercial installations were made on both ship and shore. The first instance of reporting a marine accident by radio was in Mach, l899, when the s. s. R. F. Matthews collided with the East Goodwin light vessel. In the same year British naval vessels communicated over distances as great as 85 miles, and the international yacht races between the Shamrock and the Co1umbia in America, were reported to the press by wireless. In 1901 radio stations on the Isle of Wight and the Lizard, 196 miles apart, intercommunicated successfully; and construction of the Poldhu (England) and Newfoundland stations for trans-Atlantic signaling was well under way. December, 1901, marked the first transoceanic radio signaling, for then Marconi succeeded in intercepting repetitions of the single letter "S", in the Morse code, sent from Poldhu to an experimental receiver at St. John's, Newfoundland The next year, 19O2, Poldhu's signals were heard aboard the s. s. Philadelphia over more than 2,000 miles, complete messages having been received up to more than 1,500 miles. In January, 1903, a trans-Atlantic radio message was sent from President Roosevelt to King Edward VII by way of the stations at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Poldhu, England; but it is not generally known whether this message was relayed by ships on the Atlantic or whether it was received directly from Cape Cod in complete form. A station even larger than that at Poldhu was begun in 1905, at Clifden, Ireland, and in 1907 this plant and a twin station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, were opened for a limited commercial trans-Atlantic radio service. January 23, 1909, was the date of the collision between the steamships Florida and Republic, which was reported to neighboring ships by radio in time to save all the passengers and crew of the Republic before she sank. In 1910 messages from the powerful Clifden station were heard aboard the S. S Principessa Mafalda over more than 6,500 miles. On the morning of April 15, 1912, over seven hundred passengers of the S. S. Titanic were rescued through the aid of radio when the vessel was sunk by striking an iceberg. During the next year, radio messages were successfully sent from and received on moving trains of the De!aware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad. In 1914 commercial trans-Pacific radio-telegraphy was inaugurated between San Francisco and Honolulu, and direct radio communication between the United States and Germany was made available over the Tuckerton-Hannover and Sayville-Nauen channels. In 1915 the United States Government took over the operation of the Sayville and Tuckerton stations to prevent their unneutral use. Commercial service between the United States and Japan was begun in 1916, but development of American-European commercial communication was prevented by the World War until after the armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. Wartime applications of radio on aircraft, in long-distance service, for location of ships' positions, etc., were rapidly adapted to peaceful public uses in 1919 and 1920; the trans-Atlantic fliers in the “NC-4” succeeded (1919) in sending messages 1,800 miles from the plane while in the air. During 1920 and 1921 radio services with Europe were recommenced from the newly equipped, powerful stations along the Atlantic coast of the United States, and 1922 saw the opening and commercial use of the largest plant in the world, located at Port Jefferson, Long Island. In the past few years the ship-and-shore services of radio have reached a new degree of perfection. It is now uncommon for a well-equipped vessel to be out of communication with land at any point of the trans-Atlantic voyage.

Communications: Telegraph, Telephones, and Television in Salem

Telegraph: Earliest Communication Salem briefly had telegraphic communication of a sort before Oregon attained statehood. On April 17, 1863, messages from Portland were received here over a line that was built to address a specific business need. Demand by a Portland newspaper and the Oregon Statesman newspaper for fresh news about the Civil War encouraged rapid development of a reliable telegraph system. But loss of the ship Noonday off San Francisco with wire aboard delayed the line's extension from Salem to the Yreka, California, termi-nal of the transcontinental communication system on the Pacific Coast. Stages delivered dispatches from Yreka to Portland in about six days. But that was not fast enough for the Oregonian newspaper. For a time, that newspaper employed its own pony express riders who got the news through from Yreka to Salem in about 36 hours. From here the telegraph transmitted dispatches to Portland. On March 9, 1864, Oregon's Governor A. C. Gibbs wired President Lincoln in Washington to say that the transcontinental line was completed and open. By consolidations, Western Union gained control of various telegraph systems before 1870. In that year the Salem office was associated with Wells Fargo located in the Chemeketa House (Marion Hotel). Fred Zimmerman, a retired Capital Journal newspaper staff and telegrapher, recalls that, in 1910, he received press dispatches by telegraph for the Capital Journal newspaper. Then this newspaper was located in the Old Post Office Building, westward across Commercial Street from the Marion Hotel. News was received into the paper's own office by wire until 1928. Telephone In 1877, Oregon State fairgoers were invited to see two of the latest inventions, Thomas Edison’s gramophone and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. A very limited telephone service was introduced to Salem during May, 1884, when the phone was first used by the Capital Journal newspaper about the business of collecting news. Likely, it was around 1890, when the exchange was in Lee Steiner's drug store. Demonstration of the Collins wireless telephone was reported in Salem on March 17, 1910. The Capital Journal newspaper acquired membership in the Associated Press in 1896, when Hofer Brothers owned the Salem newspaper. In 1927, United Press service was acquired. Both Associations used telephone wires to trans-mit images and news. Television Television was first seen in Salem at the Oregon State Fair on September 30, 1932. Tests reported here on September 18, 1952, indicated that local ow-ners of television sets might hear and see the 1952 World Series baseball games through Portland's new ultra-high frequency station. The article which follows seems to be the first documented Oregon broadcast as we know radio today. From the location, one can only presume that other tests occurred previous this event.

The Oregon Journal, Tuesday August 12, 1919, page 1.

Article titled: "Wireless Telephone On Hood"

"C.C. can you hear me?" Elijah Coalman on the summit of Mt. Hood stood Saturday [8-9-19] 11,125 feet above sea level, [now measured at 11,240 feet] spoke eagerly into a small black instrument. G.C. Maroney his assistant waited impatiently by his side. The 80 pound, 47 foot bamboo pole [antenna] swung in the wind above them. [No mention of the apparatus and how much it weighed.]

"Yes, go on." Clay M. Allen, Telephone Engineer for the U.S. Forest Service stood 8 miles away and held a wireless telephone receiver in his hand. He was 7,225 feet below. For the first time probably in the world, a wireless telephone instrument had been installed successfully on the top of a large mountain for communications with stations below. [The idea was to have Forest Service personnel at the summit to spot forest fires. Then to use the wireless telephone to call for assistants.]

More tests will be made of the wireless telephone Wednesday [8-13-19]. The lower station will be moved from place to place. A fire on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation was reported during the test. Power for the station will be supplied for the time being by storage batteries. Later, windmills will be erected to utilize the powerful wind always present on the mountain top.

W I R E L E S S T E L E P H O N E F O R E V E R Y B O D Y

B y

W I L L I A M T. P R O S S E R A WIRELESS telephone outfit in a suit-case--or in any other convenient carrying receptacle--complete, and requiring only connection at any ordinary electric-light socket to make it capable of operating over a distance of fifty miles, is the latest product of invention in this wonderful field. To William Dubilier, a California youth of twenty-two years, belongs credit for perfecting an instrument to such a degree of nicety that it is of readily portable bulk and yet of high efficiency. With a range of something like three hundred keys and escaping many of the problems of interference, such an instrument can accomplish wonders for the individual user. Wherever sufficient current is available for lights, there the little wireless set may be put readily to work for communication over areas of trackless forest, desert or sea. That it will be the means of saving lives, when nothing else will avail is at once apparent. That it will be invaluable in new country, ahead of the wires or the regular wireless installations, in military activities and in all times and places when ordinary means of message-sending are interrupted or unestablished is easily recognizable. Young Dubilier, inventor and electrical engineer, has made a specialty of the wireless telephone and his success in this specialty has attracted wide attention. Most of his experiments have been carried on in Seattle. He is a product of Cooper Institute, New York, where he studied while supporting himself by hard work. So he deserves, every bit, the harvest he is reaping now. His achievement is the result of scientific method and close application through a long period of experimentation and, despite his youth he has won a veritable triumph. The Dubilier instruments are not noticeably different in principle from the wireless telephone devices of the past, but they are compact. Instead of great coils of wire and oscillators as big as a dining-room table, the Dubilier apparatus is reduced to marvelously small dimensions, while any commercial lighting circuit gives all the power that is necessary. Mr. Dubilier is not particularly keen in exploiting his invention, his explanation being as compact as his instruments. He merely says that the electric light current passing through the new type of oscillator is rendered into electrical waves to the number of 100,000 a second, and that these affect instruments attuned to the same key within a wide radius. Simple, isn't it?

"Influential men believe in my invention as much as I do, and we plan to build a factory and manufacture my machines upon a large scale," said Mr. Dubilier in Seattle recently. "This will be, I believe, the first wireless telephone factory ever opened in America--or the world, for that matter. The machines are not costly to turn out, and we will be able to supply them so cheaply in large lots that they may be used extensively in cities, much more cheaply in rural communities than the present wire systems, for marine and coastwise work, and for special uses such as by forest rangers on the great reservations of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast. "The machines will be of particular advantage in sparsely settled districts, as in the gold-camps of Alaska. Prospectors within a radius of thirty or forty miles of civilization, for instance, will be enabled by the use of one of these light sets to keep in continual touch with what is going on, and undoubtedly many lives will be saved by the practical application of the device." Wireless, and especially the wireless telephone, has been what might almost be called an obsession with young Dubilier ever since he was old enough to know anything about the subject at all. Born in New York in 1888 he received his early education in the public schools. His parents were not able to keep him in school through the high school course, and he left high school to secure employment. He saved his money, and later, by doing odd jobs through the course, gave himself the benefit of three years study of electrical engineering. It was in 1904 that he began his own experimenting with the wireless telephone, and after many disappointments and discouragements he perfected one of the first pieces of apparatus of that kind. Graduating from his technical course at the eighteen he became an inspector for the Western Electric Company in New York. But wireless continued to fascinate him, and he determined to take a course in the Cooper Institute. The hours of the institute were from 9:30 until 3:30. Hurrying each day from the lecture-room to a telegraph office he delivered messages from 4 o'clock in the afternoon until midnight. After his course was over he became chief electrician of a wireless concern, and then technical director of another. All the time he was experimenting with his own telephone, and he invented a number of minor wireless instruments. He is the author of the "Wireless Telephony" chapter in Prof. H. L. Twining's book on wireless, one of the few works of the kind in existence. His lectures on wireless attracted favorable comment. With some of the best known experts in the country his technical testimony has been sought by the law courts.

It was just a few months ago that he completed the telephone apparatus that is his great work so far. Sensitive and delicate, it yet seems to be practical in every respect. A cabinet ten inches each way, and six inches deep will hold the mechanism. Most of the experiments with the new device have been carried on at Seattle and between Seattle and Tacoma, a distance of thirty-five miles. Conversation carries that far as clearly as on the ordinary telephone. As some of the ships of the United States navy are equipped with wireless telephones Mr. Dubilier has an excellent opportunity to compare the merits of his invention with that used by the navy department, as the Puget Sound navy yard is located about sixteen miles from Seattle. J. B. Annis, first class electrician, United States signal corps, sent this message to the inventor after one of the tests: "A good deal plainer than the telephone we use here." Which would seem to augur well for the invention. Mr. Dubilier believes he can still further perfect his receiving and transmitting devices with their control system so that much more than three hundred telephones--representing that many different attunements--can be used at the same time without interfering with each other. However, even that number is a long step forward. If Mr. Dubilier does nothing more for wireless telephony, the aerial talk-transmitting systems of the future will owe him a notable debt of gratitude. And he is only twenty-two.