[Lowfer] Marconi...now Bell
Ed Phillips
evp at pacbell.net
Fri Feb 20 17:29:16 EST 2009
Re: Communications Lore Debunked
Fellows,
Some years back the issue of Inventor of Radio was grist for the List.
Think it was left - among us devotees - that Marconi did send/receive
early wireless telegraph, but some years later Reginald Fessinden and
Ernst Alexanderson developed what became known as Radio. Okay, one Hero
down from school history books learnin. Now another...
This is today’s news from NPR and was unknown to me. Bell didn't invent
the telephone. According to author Seth Tillman and "The Bell Telephone
Gambit," Bell is a plagiarist, who with the help of a Patten Office
clerk, took the previously patented concept of a "transmitter" of one
Mr. (?) Grey and attached it as a drawing in the margin of his
application. Seems like a worthy book to read. Plus, er Big Plus, Bell
was sparking the daughter of a rich paten attorney, who was his
financial backer. Bell wisely marries said woman. As they say, "The rest
is history"!
So what does it matter now 100 years later? It's interesting to note,
think and talk about, that's about it. Ha, what are we gunna find out
about, say Ford?
Peter
Post Script - TheTransmiter or the "mouth piece" was nothing more than a
needle with a diaphram and sitting in some liquid. The resistance of
this item varied with speech."
My personal thoughts. Some fact, some fiction, some confusion as to what terms mean. As reported in Anderson's publication Tesla apparently did work with radiated signals around 1890 but didn't follow through with specific patents OR make any public announcement or public demonstration of what he had done. The only information is anecdotal from him at a somewhat later time but in spite of some inconsistencies in it I think the evidence is compelling. I personally am convinced he did something but not a bit sure as to what he really accomplished. He also invented and patented a high-frequency alternator, almost certainly with some sort of wireless work in mind. In this he anticipated other "continuous wave" generators by about a decade. With this background I think he could have demonstrated practical long-distance communication but, for whatever reasons, HE NEVER DID! Whatever happened, I'm convinced the evidence supports my belief that his work wasn't COPIED OR used by other "wireless telegraph" experimenters such as Popoff, Lodge, Marconi, Meissner, Fessenden, etc. As to "who is the true father of RADIO", I think that is a meaningless question and the best answer is that there were many fathers, whether one is speaking of wireless telegraphy, wireless telephony, or entertainment broadcasting. This is a classic case of Tesla missing opportunites which were his to exploit but miss them he did.
Hertz first demonstrated production of electromagnetic waves in classic experiments in 1887. His work was widely distributed and many different guys, some of whom were already working on similar ideas, went on and demonstrated "wireless" communication in the next few years. Marconi was a very young man who heard of Hertz's work and became interested in using it for communications. He studied what he could of Hertz and then sought to learn more from a couple of different Italian scientits. After that he went through a series of experiments, some better than others, which eventually led to him using an elevated antenna with a ground in both his transmitter and receiver. Again, others were doing the same sort of thing. What Marconi added to the field was that he became an entrepeneur who went about establishing a commercial system with the help of money from his mother's relatives who were big in the distillery business. The net result was that he was successful in his commercial work and did end up establishing the first successful commercial service. He wasn't a great inventor and never claimed to be although he and the engineers who later worked for him came up with some clever stuff. His systems ended up using tuned transmitters and receivers which the courts later held were anticipated by Tesla's patents but the designs were so much cruder than Tesla's that I can't believe as smart a guy as Marconi had copied anything from them. Others will disagree I know. Bottom line is that Marconi was the first to create a practical wireless telegraph system and set up commercial communications on a large scale.
As for the telephone things are equally murky. There had been a lot of work starting around the end of the US Civil War in the general field and both potential transmitters and receivers were in existence at the time Bell did his work and got his patents, applying just before Gray who apparently had a somewhat more practical system. I think his work was more original than Marconi's but that's a matter of debate and perhaps doesn't matter. Again the bottom line is that Bell got commercial telephone service established using both his own inventions and later those of others, most notable being the carbon microphone. Bell was indeed the "father of the telephone" in the sense that Marconi might be called the "father of wireless telegraphy" - he was a very successful entrepeneur who put all of the right stuff together at the right time and presented it to the public.
The advance of electrical technology in the last half of the 19th century was so great and so widespread that to get any real appreciation of what was going on it's necessary to study a lot of history and not just look at the work of one or two individuals. By 1890 all of the necessary ideas were available for wireless telegraphy and perhaps wireless telephony as well, and those ideas were soon exploited.
Ed
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