Tag: Fessenden
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Fessenden’s alternators
Now that I’ve described the alternator itself, back to Fessenden’s unique way of using alternators. In each of these I’m using an unrealistic miniature alternator for convenience. There were some relatively small alternators, but most were huge beasts used as high-power transmitters. These three circuits weren’t among Fessenden’s patents. They were described and diagrammed in…
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Fessenden’s coherer
A few years ago I did some features on Coherers, including a test of a real coherer. Fessenden tried his hand at a different form of coherer. The usual coherer was a tube of powdered metal which cohered into a semi-solid and conducted more current when RF was applied. Coherers served as a sort of…
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Just for a bit of beauty
This Fessenden antenna isn’t especially interesting. Mostly I needed to make a little beauty after previous item reminded me of the duty of living things. Value is an increase in order. Value is an increase in life and beauty. This is from patent 793651 in 1905. Here’s the antenna in the Machrahanish scene with Fessenden’s…
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Alexanderson alternators
This month’s Fessenden focus leads to a sidetrack. Several of Fessenden’s big innovations used high-frequency alternators instead of spark gaps. His first voice broadcast in 1906 used an alternator. The alternator deserves its own description before I dig into his most interesting use of it. Before the vacuum tube there was only one way to…
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Switch of purpose by purpose
I noticed that Fessenden’s patents for aiding plant growth with electric charge are classified by the patent office as: A01M21/046 – Apparatus for destruction by steam, chemicals, burning, or electricity by electricity He was trying to grow plants with electricity by electricity. He wasn’t trying to destroy plants with electricity by electricity. Why is this…
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More on Fessenden’s electrifier
I mentioned that Fessenden’s crop electrifier was basically a repeat of earlier experiments around 1900. Found some of those experiments, reported in California Climate Review for 1891. The details verify that Fessenden was following the same method. The results were remarkable and consistent when this setup was used. Other researchers tried passing a current through…
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Not so random
Writing about Fessenden’s static irrigator caused an old popup memory. A chemical called Gibberellin was a big deal in the 50s and 60s, advertised as a universal helper for plants. Science mags wrote about it, and house and garden catalogs featured it. I wasn’t interested in gardening so didn’t really explore the subject. I haven’t…
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Fessenden the farmer
Well, not really. Fessenden had a wide-ranging vision and tried his hand in many different areas. Around 1914 he got into agriculture. In one patent he wrote a treatise on improving agriculture, showing the tech optimism of the time. Mass production will solve all problems. He developed a sort of super-greenhouse system where everything could…
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Fessenden’s radio steganography
Before Fessenden developed underground and underwater sonar equipment, he went to work for an early radiotelegraph company. There he developed a unique system of private broadcasting, steganography for radio, the audio equivalent of invisible ink. Privacy was felt to be needed because radio had lost the innate self-contained privacy of a telegraph wire. Most of…
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Fessenden’s practical side
Reginald Fessenden is famous as the Canadian who claimed the first invention of radio. The first is hard to determine. Many people were working on wireless from different angles. Fessenden later made one of the first voice broadcasts in 1906, using a high-freq alternator instead of a spark-gap transmitter. Around 1912 he moved into a…
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Stupid question now worth reasking
Wandering through 1918 stuff, came on this trivial stupid question from 2017. = = = = = START REPRINT: Stupid random thought. I was downloading some ’50s TV shows to watch later. Most of the systematic Youtubers list old TV shows with numbers like S03E18 for Season 3, Episode 18. A few shows lasted long…
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