How We Went From Tapping Code to Radio Shows

riese-k3djc at juno.com riese-k3djc at juno.com
Tue Jan 29 21:04:40 CST 2008


I believe he used a high speed sync spark,, the Alternator wasnt up to
100 Khz anywhere that early
and some state he never did it,, the story came about 30 years after the
fact when he mentioned
that he did it

so did he ,,or is a an urban legion

Bob K3DJC


On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:48:39 -0500 "Robert E. Seastrom" <rs at seastrom.com>
writes:
> 
> I've often wondered if the coherer is wholly incapable of 
> demodulating
> an AM signal, or simply incapable of demodulating an AM signal that
> anyone would actually want to listen to.  It's not hard to imagine 
> a
> Fessenden transmission with a coherer-demodulated signal that 
> sounded
> raspy and barely intelligible, but obviously not a spark 
> transmission
> either.  The wonder would not be what the dog said, but rather the
> novelty of a talking dog.
> 
>                                         ---rob
> 
> "Karl W4KRL" <W4KRL at arrl.net> writes:
> 
> > Tom,
> >
> > I also wondered how the AM signal could be demodulated. According 
> to
> > Wikipedia, Fessenden invented the hot wire barretter in 1902 so it 
> is
> > possible that some stations were equipped with this demodulator 
> prior to his
> > 1906 transmission. Presumably there was at least one other station 
> equipped
> > to receive his signal but it strains credulity to claim that 
> stations "up
> > and down the coast" heard his transmission.
> >
> > 73 Karl W4KRL
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: tacos-bounces+w4krl=arrl.net at amrad.org
> > [mailto:tacos-bounces+w4krl=arrl.net at amrad.org] On Behalf Of Tom 
> Azlin,
> > N4ZPT
> > Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:34 PM
> > To: W4KRL at arrl.net
> > Cc: tacos at amrad.org
> > Subject: Re: How We Went From Tapping Code to Radio Shows
> >
> > Hi Karl,
> >
> > What kind of receiver did the young United Fruit Company operator 
> use to 
> > listen the the 1906 Fessenden broadcast? Would they have had a 
> coherer 
> > detector since that was the common detector? Doesn't a coherer 
> require a 
> > vibrator to decoherer so that the circuit can be broken.   
> Wouldn't a 
> > standard ship board receiver thus be incapable of receiving AM 
> audio 
> > signals?   why would one of those ship board stations have had the 
> type 
> > of receiver that that could demodulate Fessenden's signal?  Is 
> there any 
> > evidence that the United Fruit Company standard Spark station had 
> a Hot 
> > wire barretter detector?
> >
> > 73, Tom n4zpt
> >
> > Karl W4KRL wrote:
> >>         
> >>         
> >> 
> >> Famous Engineers > How We Went From Tapping Code to Radio Shows
> >> 
> >>  
> >> 
> >> It’s Christmas Eve, 1906. A Morse code operator on a United Fruit 
> ship in
> >> the Atlantic Ocean moves closer to his receiver. Instead of the 
> usual,
> >> primitive taps of Morse code, he hears a man speaking over the 
> receiver,
> >> followed by music. And so began the world’s first long distance 
> radio
> >> transmission.
> >> 
> >>  
> >> 
> >> The man’s voice heard up and down the Eastern seaboard that night 
> was
> >> Professor Reginald Fessenden. But, that historic night was made 
> possible
> > by
> >> an alternator developed by a young engineer who had recently 
> emigrated to
> >> the U.S. from Sweden.
> >>
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> >
> >
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