[Milsurplus] Re: [The WS No19] Walkie-Talkie inventor

[Hue Miller]

Actually, once developments in radio electronics provided the necessary 
elements, it was not very difficult to package all these elements together
to create a portable 2-way radio. By elements, i think:

Battery-voltage vacuum tubes ( 1.5 or 2 volt filament )
Dry B batteries (yes, i am aware that by WW2, some manpacked radios
were using wetcells and vibrator supplies, but not in the mid 1930s. )
Superregen receiver-transmitter circuit ( At least in the first generation,
it was too difficult to provide enuff stability, or to compact the radio
enough, to use the superhet circuit. )

Once these elements were there, it was *No Big Deal* to "invent" the
walkie-talkie, no matter what Hings or Gross claimed for themselves.
Frankly, i don't see Hings as having created anything original at all.
Yes, he did design a nice walkie talkie, but that was not a breakthrough
or invention, it was just doing his job well.
Al Gross, at least in the wartime developments, came up the the 
very compact vhf handie talkie, but this was still less than an amazing
new breakthrough.

Kind of like the earliest days of radio. Marconi didn't invent anything
either: he united existing elements, applied them to a practical product.

Now re foresight:

"What about the future? Well, there is no doubt the day will come,
maybe when you and I are forgotten, when copper wires, gutta-
percha coverings [wire insulation], and iron sheathings will be
relegated to the Museum of Antiquities. Then, when a person 
wants to telegraph a friend, he knows not where, he will call in an
electro-magnetic voice, which will be heard by him who has the
electro-magnetic ear, but will be silent to everyone else. He will
call, 'Where are you?', and the reply will come, 'I am at the bottom
of the coal-mine', or 'Crossing the Andes', or 'In the middle of the
Pacific'; or perhaps no answer will come at all, and he may then
conclude his friend is dead." [ Or has his cellphone turned off ]
-J. J. Fahie, "History of Wireless Telegraphy", 1899

-via Hue Miller