[CW] Fake or Real? MGY

[Richard Knoppow]

    A couple of things to keep in mind: At the time sound 
recording was done by purely mechanical means mostly by coupling 
a horn to a diaphragm which actuated the cutting stylus which, in 
turn, engraved its motion on a wax disc or cylinder. Secondly, 
the detectors used at the time were on the order of the Marconi 
magnetic detector. Their output has been described as an audio 
buzzing. They were used with magnetic headphones. While a friend 
built a rotary spark transmitter for a museum many years ago he 
did not build a detector of the time so I don't have first hand 
experience with what that sounded like. The transmitter was very 
noisy acoustically. It demonstrated the reason for the name "rock 
crusher". The tone of a rotary arc is determined by the speed or 
rotation and number of teeth. Evidently, Marconi used rotary 
spark transmitters on the Titanic.
     Commercial recording was certainly well established by 1912. 
One wonders if there is any historical evidence of such 
recordings being made of telegraph signals.
    Valdamar Poulsen invented his Telegraphone, the earliest 
magnetic recorder, in 1898 so its remotely possible one was used.
    Poulsen also invented (1908) the "arc converter", a much 
superior transmitter to the spark rigs. This was adopted in a 
modified form by the U.S. Navy (built by Federal Telegraph and 
Radio) probably too early for Marconi and definitely not used on 
the Titanic.
    I found what appears to be a good description of the Titanic 
wireless installation at:
http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/articles/Titanic_wireless.pdf
     My judgement, as something of a historian of both wireless 
and sound recording is that the signal in the link is not 
genuine. That is also due to the seeming lack of provenance and 
detail of how the recording was made.
     I have not attempted to read the signal but will give it a 
go again.


On 2/9/2020 5:54 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> Fake or real? MGY recording. I have my answer, but listen to this, is
> this a bare faced scam, or is it real? There is lots of information. I
> think people will go over to create make believe when it comes to
> TITANIC/MGY. Here's the recording:
> http://qsl.net/n1ea/mgy_real_or_fake.mp3
>
> 73
> DR
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> =30=

-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL