Collaborate Disseminate
I found myself in Milton Keynes, UK, a little while ago, with a few hours to spare. What could I do but rock over to the National Museum of Computing …read more Continue reading Walking and Talking Through the UK National Museum of Computing
[Thomas] picked up a Marconi TF1245 with dents and dings. We have to admit that we had not heard of a “circuit magnification meter,” but apparently, this was a thing …read more Continue reading Marconi Circuit Magnification Meter Gives Up Secrets
We’re saddened to learn of the passing of Gershon Kingsley in December 2019 at the age of 97. The composer and electronic music pioneer was not exactly a household name, but the things he did with the Moog synthesizer, especially the surprise hit “Pop Corn”, which he wrote in 1969, …read more
For some reason, of all the ships that have sailed the oceans, it’s the unlucky ones that capture our imagination. Few ships have been as unlucky as the RMS Titanic, sinking as she did on the night of April 15, 1912 after raking across an iceberg on her maiden …read more
When you think of an old radio it’s possible you imagine a wooden-cased tube radio receiver as clustered around by a 1940s family anxious for news from the front, or maybe even a hefty 19-inch rack casing for a “boat anchor” ham radio transmitter. But neither of those are really …read more
The place is the historic lecture theater of the Royal Institution in London. The date is the 4th of June 1903, and the inventor, Guglielmo Marconi, is about to demonstrate his new wireless system, which he claims can securely send messages over a long distance, without interference by tuning the signal.
The inventor himself was over 300 miles away in Cornwall, preparing to send the messages to his colleague Professor Fleming in the theater. Towards the end of Professor Flemings lecture, the receiver sparks into life, and the morse code printer started printing out one word repeatedly: “Rats”. It then …read more
Continue reading Origin of Wireless Security: the Marconi Radio Hack of 1903
The pioneering years in the history of capacitors was a time when capacitors were used primarily for gaining an early understanding of electricity, predating the discovery even of the electron. It was also a time for doing parlor demonstrations, such as having a line of people holding hands and discharging a capacitor through them. The modern era of capacitors begins in the late 1800s with the dawning of the age of the practical application of electricity, requiring reliable capacitors with specific properties.
One such practical use was in Marconi’s wireless spark-gap transmitters starting just before 1900 and into …read more
