May 7, 1945the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow was filled with scientists and officials of the Soviet Communist Party to celebrate the first radio demo 50 years earlier, performed by Aleksandr S. Popov. It was an opportunity to honor a son of the country and try to skew the historical record of the achievements of Guillermo Marconi, widely recognized in almost the whole world as the inventor of radio.
Later, May 7 was declared Radio Daywhich was celebrated throughout the Soviet Union and continues to be celebrated in Russia to this day.
Popov’s claim to primacy as the inventor of radio is due to his submission of an article, “On the relation of metallic powders to electrical oscillations“, and his demonstration of a radio wave detection apparatus at the University of Saint Petersburg on May 7, 1895.
Aleksandr Popov developed the first radio capable of interpreting Morse code
Popov’s device was a simple coherer or coherer: a glass tube with two electrodes separated by a few centimeters and with metal filings between them. The device was based on the works of the French physicist Edouard Branlywho described such a circuit in 1890, and the English physicist Oliver Lodgewho perfected it in 1893.
The electrodes initially had a high resistance, but when an electrical impulse was applied to them, a path of low resistance developed that allowed conductivity until the metal filings clumped together and the resistance became too pronounced. after each useyou had to hit or shake the binder to re-disperse the filings.
According to him “Central Museum of Communications AS Popov“, in St. Petersburg, Popov’s device was the world’s first radio receiver capable of distinguishing signals by their duration. It used a consistency indicator from Lodge and added a polarized telegraph relaywhich served as a direct current amplifier.
The relay allowed Popov to connect the output of the receiver to a electric bell, tape recorder or telegraph apparatus, providing an electromechanical feedback. The feedback automatically reset the binder: When the bell rang, the binder would shake simultaneously.
March 24, 1896Popov made another innovative public demonstration, this time sending Morse code by wireless telegraphy. Back at St. Petersburg University, at a meeting of the Russian Physicochemical Society, Popov sent signals between two separate buildings. by 243 meters. A teacher, standing at the blackboard in the second building, was recording the letters that Morse code spelled: Heinrich Hertz.
Designs similar to Popov’s became the basis for first generation radio communication equipment. They remained in use until 1907, when crystal receivers eclipsed them.
Popov and Marconi had very different views on radio
Popov was a contemporary of Marconi, but both developed their radio sets independently and without knowledge of the other’s work. Inadequate documentation of the events, conflicting definitions of what constitutes a radio, and the national pride of each inventor’s home country complicate the determination of who came first.
One of the reasons why Marconi gets the credit and Popov doesn’t, is that Marconi was much more skilled with intellectual property. One of the best ways to preserve your place in history is to get patents and publish the results of your research in a timely manner. Popov did neither.
He never obtained a patent for his lightning detector, and no official record of his March 24, 1896 demonstration exists. He eventually gave up radio to pursue the newly discovered roentgen wavesalso known as X-rays.
Marconi, For his part, he requested a British patent June 2, 1896, which became the first patent application in radiotelegraphy. He quickly raised capital to market his system, built a vast industrial enterprise, and became known outside of Russia as the inventor of the radio.
Although Popov never tried to market his radio as a means of sending messageshe saw the potential of its use to record disturbances in the atmosphere: a lightning detector. In July 1895installed his first lightning detector at the meteorological observatory of the St. Petersburg Forestry Institute. It was capable of detecting thunderstorms up to 50 kilometers away.
The following year, he installed a second detector at the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, some 400 km east of Moscow. After several years, the watchmaking company hoser victor of Budapest made lightning detectors based on Popov’s work.
One of Popov’s aircraft arrived in South Africa
One of those devices reached South Africa, about 13,000 km away. Today it is in the museum of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) in Johannesburg.
However, museums do not always know what is in their own collections. The origins of equipment that has long been obsolete can be especially difficult to trace. With spotty registration and personnel changes, institutional memory can lose track of what an object is or why it was important.
That might have been the fate of the South African detector Popov, were it not for the sharp gaze of Dirk Vermeulen, an electrical engineer and a long-time member of the SAIEE Historical Interest Group. During years, Vermeuelen guessed that the object was an old recording ammeter.used to measure electric current.
One day, however, he decided to take a closer look. To her delight, learned that it was probably the oldest item in the SAIEE collection and the only instrument that survives from the Johannesburg Weather Station.
in 1903the colonial government had commissioned the popov detector as part of the equipment of the newly created station, located on a hill at the eastern end of the city. The station’s detector is similar to Popov’s original design, except that the tremor used to shake the filings also deflected a recording plume.
The registration card was wrapped in an aluminum drum that rotated once an hour. With each revolution of the drum, a separate screw advanced the chart 2 millimeters, allowing activity to be recorded over the days.
Vermeulen wrote his discovery, unfortunately he passed away in 2019, but his colleague Max Clarke was in charge of sending a photo of the South African detector. Vermeulen was a tireless advocate for the creation of a museum to house the SAIEE’s collection of artifacts, which finally happened in 2014.
And what about Nikola Tesla? Was he the one who invented the radio?
Tesla was not only a true success in electrical fields, but also a terrible failure in many respects. And one of those failures was his inability to gain recognition for inventing the radio during his lifetime.
Nikola Tesla was born in the Serbian part of Croatia in 1856.. Tesla trained at various European universities in mechanical and electrical engineering, physics, and languages. At the end of the 19th century worked for Thomas Edison’s European Telephone Company in Budapest and Paris.
He immigrated to the United States in 1884.. He worked for Edison in New York for a while, but went on to invent his own at his own expense with great success. After endless disputes with Edison over the merits of direct versus alternating current, Tesla struck out on his behalf and invented and patented a whole series of electrical “things.” Some of them were telegraph improvements, arc lights and all kinds of electrical machines like generators and motors. One of his best inventions was the induction motorwhich he sold to George Westinghouse.
“If you want to discover the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration”
Nicholas Tesla
Tesla went to work for Westinghouse and it helped him to end up winning the battle for the distribution of electrical energy in the United States and other countries. Edison insisted on electrifying everything with DCbut found that it was highly inefficient and required more generating stations over shorter distances.
Instead, alternating currentwith its ability to step up the voltage via a transformer, could be effectively transmitted over great distances and then stepped down to usable levels where it was to be used.
Tesla was one of the main architects of the construction of the first large power generation plant in Niagara Falls (New York). In any case, he was one of the main people responsible for alternating current becoming the preferred electrical power. And despite his pivotal role and his success, he never made a fortune like the Westinghouses and Edisons of his day.
His inventions and patents number in the thousands., but very few, if any, brought him great benefits. For years he was able to live comfortably in New York hotels thanks to royalties from him and occasional funding of his research by a series of wealthy benefactors.
In general, Tesla was too distracted with his active mind to patent or otherwise protect everything he invented. And for that, more or less, he was never credited with inventing the radio, despite the fact that he patented it in the United States the same year that Marconi obtained his first British patents. Tesla was very good at getting press coverage for his work, but Marconi came along and captured all the glory and credit before Tesla realized what was happening.
In fact, Tesla invented the idea of the radio in 1892.not long after Heinrich Hertz demonstrated UHF wireless transmissions in Germany in 1885. in 1898, developed a radio-controlled robotic boat which he demonstrated remotely driving the boat through the waters of Manhattan from a control complex in Madison Square Garden. But despite this amazing feat, he tried for years to sell the idea to the US Navy without success.
Once he realized the importance of radio, Tesla went so far as to build a huge transmission tower in Wardenclyffe, on Long Island, in 1900., to develop radio transmission services worldwide. He ran out of money and was unable to raise the necessary capital to continue. In fact, declared bankruptcywhich ended his formal research and development of radio.
Marconi was born in Italy but lived in England. He received British patents for his radio inventions. In 1901, he demonstrated the first transatlantic radio transmission. Next, created a wireless telegraphy business for the British.
Although all early patents…
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