[Milsurplus] "1917"

[Richard Brunner]

Yes, they had radio, also telegraph running everywhere, which the 
Germans were reading via ground conduction with two iron stakes in the 
ground connected to an audio amplifier using the new vacuum tubes.  They 
had the whole front covered.  This security weakness led to development 
of the "Fullerphone" by Captain Algernon Clement Fuller in 1916.  It 
used weak currents, 2 microamps worked fine, with filters to round the 
clicks, making them undetectable by ground conduction.  We had the TG-5A 
and B which worked on the same principle.

Ancillary:  In their detection amplifiers the Germans were the first to 
hear Whistlers, an ultra-low radio emission in the range 300 to 15,000 
cycles, generated by lightning discharges bouncing around the 
ionosphere.  They sound like a whistle falling from 10 kc to 1 kc in 
about one second.  This was reported in Zeitschrift für Physik in 1919, 
"Pfeiftõne aus der Erde."  Whistlers were also heard in long telephone 
lines and were first recorded by a Bell Telephone scientist named Burton 
in 1931.

Richard, AA1P

On 3/8/2020 3:44 PM, Gene Smar via Milsurplus wrote:
> SPOILER ALERT!
>
> SPOILER ALERT!
>
> If you haven't seen the movie "1917" and intend to, read no further.  Hit
> DELETE immediately.
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> Gents:
>
>       My YF and I went to the local theater to see "1917" last evening.  It
> was riveting and an edge-of-the-seat experience.
>
>       However, being an experienced Ham radio operator and one who also
> collects milrads and is, therefore, familiar with the evolution of RF
> technologies over the past century-plus, the basic plot of the movie
> disturbed me a bit.  Weren't there wireless sets of appropriate capability
> extant during the spring of 1917 (the period during which the movie's action
> occurred) to enable one British HQ field office to contact another only a
> day's walk away and warm the remote forces of the trap being set for them by
> the Kaiser's forces?  Would it have been unnecessary to send two Brits on a
> march across No Man's Land to deliver a written message to the forces in
> danger?
>
>       I didn't mention anything about this conundrum to my YF who paid the
> $20 for the tickets until we were in the car after the movie.  Might the
> state-of-the-art at the time have made this movie plot more of a fantasy
> than it was portrayed?
>
>
> 73 de
> Gene Smar  AD3F
>
>
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