Bits of History - from the Big Bang to Now (eBook)

HISTORY OF RADIO AND TELEVISION

Few inventions have had as much impact on contemporary society as radio and television. However, neither radio nor television were invented by a single inventor, instead many people working together and alone over the years contributed to the evolution of radio and television.

Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857 – 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of electromagnetic waves theorized by James Clerk Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory of light. Hertz proved the theory by engineering instruments to transmit and receive radio pulses using experimental procedures that ruled out all other known wireless phenomena. He laid the groundwork for the vacuum tube, which became the foundation for the future development of radio, telephone, telegraph, and even television. He was one of the first people to demonstrate the existence of electric waves.

The scientific SI unit of frequency – one per second – was named the “hertz” (Hz) in his honor.

Guglielmo Marconi (1874 – 1937) was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer who from the age of 21 mainly worked in England. He is known for his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi’s law, and a radio telegraph system. He is often credited as the inventor of radio, and in 1904 The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio.

Although the title “inventor of radio” is popularly attributed to Marconi, his was just the practical application of 80 years of scientific advancement in the field, including the predictions of Michael Faraday, the theoretical work of James Clerk Maxwell, and the experimental demonstrations of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. In 1910, the first public radio broadcast was an experimental transmission of a live Metropolitan Opera House performance of several famous opera singers.

When it comes to television, early inventors attempted to build a mechanical television system that was invented in 1884 by the German technician and inventor Paul Nipkow (1860 – 1940) using a rotating-disc technology to transmit pictures over wire. Paul Nipkow was the first person to discover television’s scanning principle, in which the light intensities of small portions of an image are successively analyzed and transmitted.

Other scientists attempted to build an electronic television system using a cathode ray tube developed independently in 1907 by the English inventor A.A. Campbell-Swinton (1863 – 1930) and Russian scientist Boris Rosing (1869 – 1933). Electronic television systems worked better and eventually replaced mechanical systems. They are based on the development of the cathode ray tube, which is the picture tube found in classical TV sets. Karl F. Braun (1850 – 1918) a German inventor and physicist invented the cathode ray tube oscilloscope (CRT) in 1897, which contributed significantly to the development of radio and television technology. Braun shared with Marconi the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.”

Electronic television was first successfully demonstrated in San Francisco in 1927. The system was designed by Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906 – 1971), a 21-year-old inventor who had lived in a house without electricity until he was 14. While still in high school, Farnsworth had begun to conceive of a system that could capture moving images in a form that could be coded onto radio waves and then transformed back into a picture on a screen. Boris Rosing in Russia had conducted some crude experiments in transmitting images 16 years before Farnsworth’s first success. Farnsworth’s invention, which scanned images with a beam of electrons, is the direct ancestor of modern television. The first image he transmitted on it was a simple line. Soon he aimed his primitive camera at a dollar sign because an investor had asked, “When are we going to see some dollars in this thing, Farnsworth?”

RCA, the company that dominated the radio business in the United States with its two NBC networks, invested a lot in the development of electronic television. To direct the effort, the company hired a Russian-born scientist, who had participated in Rosing’s experiments. In 1939 RCA televised the opening of the New York World’s Fair, including a speech by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the first president to appear on television. Later that year RCA paid for a license to use Farnsworth’s television patents.

Since then the television set has become larger, thinner and better. In 1964 color broadcasting began on prime-time television.

HISTORY OF RADAR

The history of radar technology began with experiments made by the German physicist Heinrich R. Hertz at the end of the 19th century, based on James Clerk Maxwell’s research on electro-magnetism and light. The experiments used short-wave radio waves, that is, electromagnetic radiation, in order to identify the distance to various objects. A signal is sent out, reflected, and then detected by the sender. The first radar-related design was patented in 1904 by the German engineer Christian Hülsmeyer (1881 – 1957). His so-called “Telemobiloskop” was primarily designed to avoid collisions between vessels and other things in reduced visibility.

The foundations of the modern, and today very effective, radar technology was laid in 1935, when the Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt (1892 – 1973) designed a system where electromagnetic radio waves reflected from solid objects, and achieved an echo that was depicted on a monitor. The military took advantage of the discovery and engaged in secret development work to improve the efficiency. A chain of radar stations was quickly built up along the south coast of England, which became a decisive factor in the “Battle for England” at the start of the World War II.

The word radar comes from the U.S. Navy and stands for Radio Detection And Ranging”.

Wolfgang E. Pauli (1900 – 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics. After having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945 for his “decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of nature, the exclusion principle or Pauli principle.” The discovery involved spin theory, which is the basis of a theory of the structure of matter.

Linus C. Pauling (1901 – 1994) was an American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, and educator. He was one of the most influential chemists in history, and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century. Pauling was one of the founders of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 “for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances.”

In 1962, for his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This makes him the only person to be awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes. He is one of only four individuals to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen, and Frederick Sanger). Pauling is also one of only two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie.

However, his promotion of orthomolecular medicine, megavitamin therapy, dietary supplements, and vitamin C has been criticized, and by one of his many critics he has been called, “arguably the world’s greatest quack.” Recently, a 2009 review suggested that Pauling’s views on high dose vitamin C as an effective anticancer agent might have some merit, but only when it is administered intravenously, in order to achieve high enough plasma saturation levels. (See also page →).

Max Born (1882 – 1970) was a German-born British physicist and mathematician who contributed to the development of quantum mechanics. He received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics for his “fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave function.” Born was proposed by Albert Einstein for a Nobel Prize already in 1928, but was, at that time, passed over. (See page →)

Willis E. Lamb (1913 – 2008) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955 together with Polykarp Kusch “for his discoveries concerning the fine structure of the hydrogen spectrum.” Lamb and Kusch were able to precisely determine certain electromagnetic properties of the electron (The Lamb shift).

Polykarp Kusch (1911 – 1993) was a German-American physicist. In 1955 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics jointly with Willis Lamb, for his accurate determination that the magnetic moment of the electron was greater than its theoretical value, thus leading to reconsideration of, and innovations in, quantum electro dynamics.

HISTORY OF THE SI-SYSTEM (METRIC)

The metric system was designed by a team of researchers and among them was earlier mentioned Antoine Lavoisier...