Also, sparks and lightning create broadband interference while other things that light up don't have this property because they're on a different frequency that does not coincide with AM radio. Broadband interference (lightning, sparks) is all over the spectrum so it interferes with everything. hope that makes it a bit more clear!
Thank you for uploading this show. No one I knew had ever heard of it let alone seen it. Now i can prove that this was a great series and I am not making it up.
Yep totally right Tesla always gets left out the "story" Nikola Tesla the real father of radio and many other things that that were suppressed by the "people in power"
You might think that a vacuum would be ideal and more efficient to make a spark in, but its not the case, you need something slightly conductive like a gas, so in a way its sort of has a semiconductor quality: somewhere inbetween a vacuum and metal conductors.
@CraigTube Got ya wasnt sure if it was TLC that cut it out for time or ??? Created a small continuity problem where it picked up. There is another missing segment in part 2 with them playing a bit with a crystal set and cats whisker. Thanks for putting them up, still a fun show to watch even after seeing them so many times.
I Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Very Like This Movie. Especial the old spark transmitter and old BBC valve transmitting with bright filament. Wish in future someone build This transmitter and broacast the romatic relax slow song like old days.
No he did not discover radio waves. They were already known to exist and some of their properties were demonstated by Heinrich Hertz in Germany in 1886. Even before that, in 1879 the prolific inventor David Edward Hughes made crude demonstrations of wireless telegraphy in London with a range of 500 metres. At the time, this was thought to be induction which Edison also tried in 1880.
The potential of Hertzian waves as a signalling system was predicted in Melboune, Australia in 1890 by Professor Richard Threlfall at a meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, a year before Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transmission and about 3 years before he is recorded as having spoken of signal transmission. Henry Jackson, a British Royal Navy officer began wireless telegraphy experiments in 1890. Now who was first?
When Marconi arrived in the UK in 1896 he was told by his patent attorney that his overall invention had already been patented, maybe by Oliver Lodge. But the guts of Marconi's improved system was the improved mercury doped coherer, which had been originally invented by Branly in France between 1884 and 1886 (without mercury) and in turn based on work by Calzecchi-Onesti about the same time.
US patents are only so much paper in any other country, and so are the decisions of the decisions of the US Supreme Court. They do not matter anywhere else. The US patent system is the "first to invent" which is in practice often impossible to determine when several people are working on the same thing at the same time. The UK and most other patent system are the first to file - the first to get to the patent office, and to one who is too slow, tough luck. See also submarine patents.
Actually, EM radiation can be produced in several different ways. What distinguishes light from radio is the wavelength. So the wavelength/frequency which is the rate of oscillation has to be taken into account when we talk about reception and interference. It's an additive process where 2 waves of similar wavelengths collide and depending on their phase, either reinforce or cancel each other. Different wavelengths don't see each other and pass right through...
That's essentially right. The breakdown voltage when sufficient will break down the dielectric turning it into a conductor. The accelerated charge is just excited electrons that jumped into a higher orbit. They release photons as they lose their energy and fall into a lower orbit if they're bound to an atom. They produce EM fields whenever they change direction (Think A.C. and magnetism, or when a wire cuts through a magnetic field.)
Simple. When a spark ionizes the surrounding air through electrostatic discharge the air becomes a conductor. Accelerated charges radiate EM (electromagnetic) energy. The type of radiation (in this case radio) depends upon the frequency of oscillation. EM radiation propagates by means of oscillating EM fields that pass through the air and the vacuum. The oscillating fields induce AC current by resonance in another conductor (the antenna) proportional to the source.
Say what you like. This guy wet my apetite for science and technology when I was a kid, and I went on to become an engineer as a result. A good one, too. If you expect TV to educate our kids for us, then you might be expecting a little too much. The purpose of this stuff is to get them interested enough and give them the intellectual curiosity to learn and personally seek more knowledge. Tim won't teach a kid to be an engineer, but he's damned good at pointing them in the right direction.
Over course the Brits and their limited education didn't teach them about Nikola Tesla who had the Radio and Radio Control Years before Marconi, which the Supreme Court upheld Tesla as the Inventor of Both.
Wow that really was Marconi's original setup at 5:30. If you go to the wikipedia page for coherer you can see a picture of it in the Oxford Museum of the History of Science.
@bobhhoffmann The delightfully named "popefucker" used to have full versions of every episode on google video. These were the ones that Tim Hunkin himself linked to on his website, but they seem to have disappeared now, sadly.
I grew up on this show, god i miss those days. i like Tim's style, he gets down and dirty. it doesn't matter what he's talking about but he manages to make it interesting and fun to watch. thx for posting this.
I always loved the odd blink-and-you'll-miss-it directorial touches to these programmes, like at the start when they both slide down the ladders simultaneously and then carry on about their business.
Hi! Great video! Just wondering if you knew the date it was made? I am a researcher looking into the history of radio, so it would be really helpful! Thanks :-)
