[CW] Continuous Wave much better than spark

Fri May 7 22:02:03 EDT 2021

    Just looked at Archive, its the same book.

On 5/6/2021 3:43 PM, D.J.J. Ring, Jr. wrote:
> I wasn't there, but if you have any citations, I'm in 
> Marshfield, MA and some (but not most) of the Fessenden 
> collection is here, the rest if I remembeer correctly is in 
> North Carolina.
> Unless I'm totally wrong, his wife, Helen wrote in her 
> biography of her husband, Reginald Fessenden, that Westinghouse 
> was unable to produce a very high frequency alternator and it 
> was the work of her husband's engineers in Washington DC that 
> perfected the alternator and resulted in its use in Brant Rock 
> in 1906.
>
> Here's what Helen Fessenden says in Empiries of Tomorrow, in 
> 1940. https://archive.org/details/fessendenbuilder00fessrich 
> <https://archive.org/details/fessendenbuilder00fessrich>
>
> Mr. Kintner[Genera; Manager of National Electric Signaling 
> Company - NES Co.] vividly describes the development of this
> final method.
>
> " how to make the continuous waves was not so apparent.
>
> Fessenden boldly said, "Take a high-frequency alternator of
> 100,000 cycles per second, connect one terminal to the
> antenna and the other to the ground, then tune to reso-
> nance. ." That looks simple now, but it wasn't then I
> assure you.
>
> I remember very distinctly the impression I formed when
> Fessenden told me of his plan. First I asked him how he
> could get sufficient voltage and he said, "Several hundred
> volts will be ample, as by resonance I can raise the voltage
> in the antenna one hundred times, which will be all that
> I require." Even then I was sceptical because I didn't know
> of any 100,000 cycle machines neither did he, but he was
> already working on it and after about five years of strenuous
> effort and considerable expense, his first machine was de-
> livered to him at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, in September
>
>
>
> WIRELESS TELEPHONY 149
>
> 1906. From this machine he was able to get 750 watts at
> 80,000 cycles." (Pittsburgh's Contributions to Radio)
>
> But it wasn't so simple as that; there were difficulties and
> intermediate stages of which Mr. Kintner did not know. It
> was a far cry between the high-frequency alternator as re-
> ceived from the manufacturers and the transformation it
> had to undergo before it was capable of giving the 80,000
> cycles required for telephonic transmission. The high-fre-
> quency alternator that was delivered in 1906 by the General
> Electric Company which had been doing the work on it,
> came with the statement that in the Company's opinion it
> was not possible to operate it above 10,000 cycles.
>
> Thereupon Reg scrapped everything but the pole pieces-
> designed a new armature and had it built at his Washing-
> ton shop. After this rebuilding by Fessenden machinists
> under Fessenden supervision the alternator gave from 70,
> to 80,000 cycles and about one-half kilowatt of electric wave
> radiation.
>
> A second dynamo built to a different type in the Wash-
> ington shop with an 8 inch armature gave the same power
> but 100,000 cycles and operated as reliably as any other dy-
> namo until 1911.
>
> To his own engineers, Mr. Stein, Captain Hill and Mr.
> Mansbendel, Reg always felt profoundly grateful for splen-
> did cooperation in this difficult work. To the General Elec-
> tric Company engineers Messrs. Steinmetz, Alexanderson,
> Dempster and others, he also felt a debt of thanks for their
> very earnest efforts to fulfill his admittedly unusual speci-
> fications. They did their best but that best could give only
> 10,000 cycles as against the 80 to 100,000 cycles that he de-
> manded.
>
> When Fessenden had showed the way with his two home-
> built, high-frequency alternators, the General Electric Co.
> began to see light and went seriously to work. As the
> world knows, under Dr. Alexanderson the high-frequency
> alternator was carried to great perfection and Fessenden
> was generous with enthusiastic praise for what he accom-
>
>
>
> 150 FESSENDEN BUILDER OF TOMORROWS
>
> plished. But as far as the world is permitted to know Alex-
> anderson is given sole credit for the invention. It is a good
> instance of what big organizations can do in the way of
> manipulating History, by blotting out here and building up
> there till the desired impression is indelibly etched on the
> public mind.
>
> Many years later Reg in a letter to Mr. Albert G. Davis
> at that time Vice-President and head of the Patent Depart-
> ment of the General Electric Company, wrote.
>
> ". . . Of course for business reasons your company has never
> given me credit for this (High Frequency Alternator), but
> if you will look at the back correspondence you will see
> that I built the first one after the G. E. engineers had said
> that nothing above 10,000 was possible: and that Alexander-
> son, who is a splendid engineer) did not come in until after
> three months running at 100,000."
>
> In his reply of November 15, 1924 Mr. Davis said:
>
> ". . . As far as concerns the high frequency alternator, I
> thought that we had always given you credit for the work
> which you did in this connection. Alexanderson never
> claimed to have invented the high frequency alternator,
> as such, but merely to have invented certain structural fea-
> tures which worked very well in practice. His patents were
> limited to what he invented." (in testimony, Federal Trade
> Commission, Docket 1115, p. 4433. Library of Congress.)
>
> Surely a disingenuous statement. For even though Alex-
> anderson himself may not have claimed the invention, the
> General Electric Company has sedulously permitted and
> encouraged the attribution of it to him, so that even in pub-
> lications such as "The Radio Octopus" (American Mercury,
> August 1931) written to reveal the iniquities of the Radio
> Trust, the writer, Dane Yorke, accepts implicitly the Alex-
> anderson Myth, in regard to conception and reduction to
> practice of this invention.
>
> ". . . During the war, it seems, the General Electric Com-
> pany put into use a very valuable wireless device known as
> the Alexanderson alternator. After the war, impressed by the
>
>
>
> WIRELESS TELEPHONY 151
>
> device, the British Marconi Company offered General Elec-
> tric a $5,000,000 contract provided it were given exclusive
> rights. The deal was nearly closed when President Wilson,
> then in Paris at the Peace Conference, sent two high officers
> of the Navy to protest against the granting of exclusive rights
> to the British Marconi Company. So fundamentally impor-
> tant was the Alexanderson device to wireless transmission
> that without its use the United States would be effectively
> barred from the radio field. The cable systems of the world,
> argued President Wilson's representatives, were already
> under complete foreign control; to surrender air communi-
> cation also would be a tragic mistake.
>
> But Owen D. Young and his associates of the General Electric
> Company pointed out that much money had been spent in
> developing the Alexanderson apparatus. Save for the Mar-
> coni Company there was no real market for it, and thus
> no seeming hope of any return on General Electric's invest-
> ment. Here the official story grows vague. . . ."
>
> Another group of investigators out to tell the truth as
> they see it "Empire of the Air" Ventura Free Press, Ven-
> tura, California, while attributing the invention to Fessen-
> den and referring to the early abortive efforts of the Gen-
> eral Electric Company to build a high-frequency alternator
> for him, appear nevertheless not to know of the two per-
> fectly operative, high-frequency dynamos built by Fessenden
> with which he accomplished regular wireless telephonic
> transmission up to several hundred miles (exclusive of
> freak transmission) between 1906 and the close of 1910.
>
> In the fall of 1906 wireless telephone work went on be-
> tween Brant Rock and Plymouth a distance of eleven miles,
> also between Brant Rock and a small fishing schooner. A
> well known technical journal November 10, 1906 alluded
> rather incredulously to this latter feat. It is headed "A New
> Fish Story" and reads as follows:
>
> "It is stated from Massachusetts that the wireless tele-
> phone has successfully entered the deep sea fishing industry.
> For the last week experiments have been conducted by the
> wireless telegraph station at Brant Rock which is equipped
> with a wireless telephone, with a small vessel stationed in
>
>
>
> 152 FESSENDEN BUILDER OF TOMORROWS
>
> the fleet of the South Shore Fishermen, twelve miles out of
> Massachusetts Bay. Recently it is asserted, the fishermen
> wished to learn the prices ruling in the Boston market. The
> operator on the wireless fitted boat called up Brant Rock
> and telephoned the fishermen's request. The land operator
> asked Boston by Wire and the answer was forwarded back
> to the fishermen. This is a rather fishy fish story."
>
> It was realized that the use of the wireless telephone
> would be seriously curtailed unless it could operate in con-
> junction with wire lines, so relays were invented both for
> the transmitting and receiving ends. Transmission itself
> was more perfect than over wire lines. Since development
> was so far advanced, it was decided on the heels of the
> Machrihanish disaster to issue formal invitations to a demon-
> stration of the wireless telephone. The invitation to the
> American Telephone Journal of New York City follows:
>
> Brant Rock,
> Dec. 11, 1906.
> "Dear Sirs:
>
> A limited number of invitations have been issued to wit-
> ness the operation of the National Electric Signaling Co.'s
> wireless telephone system between Brant Rock and Ply-
> mouth, Mass, over a distance of between ten and eleven
> miles.
>
> The tests will be as follows:
>
> 1. Transmission of ordinary speech, and also transmission
> of phonographic talking and music by wireless telephone
> between Brant Rock and Plymouth.
>
> 2. Transmission of speech over ordinary wire line to wire-
> less station at Brant Rock relaying the speech there auto-
> matically by telephone relay and automatically transmitting
> the speech by wireless to Plymouth, transmitting same at
> Plymouth automatically directly or by telephone relay over
> regular wire lines. Invitations have been issued to the fol-
> lowing gentlemen, " (here follows a list of the guests,
> including Dr. A.E.Kennelly, Professor Elihu Thompson
> etc. and a request to the Telephone Journal to send a
> representative.)
>
> Yours very truly
>
> (signed) National Electric Signaling Co."
>
>
>
> WIRELESS TELEPHONY 153
>
> A report of these tests appeared in the American Telephone
> Journal of January 26, and February 2, 1907, the Editor
> having attended the tests in person.
>
> This article unequivocally confirms the success of this
> demonstration of the wireless telephone and is in the nature
> of a landmark and an historical record; so much so that on
> the occasion of a formal meeting of the Radio Institute in
> New York City, at which Fessenden gave a talk on "In-
> venting the Wireless Telephone and the Future," (Jan. 19,
> 1926) he presented a Photostat and Certified copy of the
> article to the Library of the Radio Institute.
>
> 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 Sta-
> tion 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.
>
>
>
> 154 FESSENDEN BUILDER OF TOMORROWS
>
> 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, prac-
> tically everyone was infringing the liquid barreter. When
> the broadcast was made, practically every ship along the
> coast was equipped to receive it."
>
> One other happening of this period of the wireless tele-
> phone was a private communication about November 1906
> from one of the Machrihanish operators to Fessenden. He
> wrote that he had been listening at the Scottish station and
> had heard a voice which he recognized as Mr. Stein's voice,
> quoted what he had said and gave the time at which he
> heard him, but so astounding did it seem to him that he re-
> frained from discussing it with anyone until Professor Fes-
> senden should advise him in regard to it.
>
> The matter was at once investigated and without giving
> any hint as to the reason for finding out, it was established
> that on the specified date and hour the words quoted were
> spoken by Mr. Stein in the Brant Rock-Plymouth transmis-
> sion.
>
> The operator's theory to explain the occurrence was that
> Mr. Stein must have been standing near the rotary gap and
> that the arc had been the medium of transmission of speech,
> which was, as Reg said, an ingenius explanation and could
> under certain conditions produce such results.
>
> What the operator did not know was that the high-fre-
> quency dynamo had just been received at Brant Rock from
> the Washington shop and was being tested on the Brant
> Rock-Plymouth transmission. A second time he wrote that
> he had heard talking from Brant Rock and Reg was just
> preparing a schedule of telephonic tests between Brant
>
>
>
> WIRELESS TELEPHONY 155
>
> Rock and Machrihanish when the disaster to the tower cut
> the work short.
>
> In July 1907 the range of our commercial wireless tele-
> phone was considerably extended; speech was successfully
> transmitted between Brant Rock and Jamaica, Long Island,
> a distance of nearly 200 miles, in daylight and mostly over
> land; the mast at Jamaica being approximately 180 feet high.
> 73
>
> DR
> N1EA
>
>
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-- 
Richard Knoppow
1oldlens1 at ix.netcom.com
WB6KBL