ETYT or Earlier Than You Think...
It is often the way, that it is not the person who thinks something
up, or manages to do something first who gets the respect, but the one
who makes the most noise and has the money or friends needed to patent
and market it.
A lot of things were also invented a lot (and I mean a LOT) earlier
than you think...
Prime examples are the Vail Code... (which Samuel Morse took the
credit for and has his name on it) or the Fax machine, Transistors,
Microwave radio and the Electric light (a full 80 years before
Eddison)...
Question: When was the Transistor invented (workable example first used
in a Microwave receiver)??? Read on.
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A Fax machine was invented by Alexander Bain (1843)
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A Scot named Alexander Bain patented a primitive FAX machine in 1843,
only six years after Morse's telegraph. By 1865 a commercial FAX
system was operating between Lyons and Paris. Those systems were
cumbersome. You couldn't just copy from paper. You had first to create
an image on some form of metal block or sheet.
German scientist Arthur Korn built the forerunner of modern FAX
machines in 1902. Korn's device used a light-sensitive scanner to read
images from regular paper. Five years later he had a commercial system
running. In 1925 AT&T began public FAX service in the United States.
They called it Wirephoto. The technology has changed, but you still
see AP Wirephoto images in your newspapers.
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1433.htm
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Morse Code was invented by Albert Vail
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See the "Shock Horror story" an article titled "British Army
Deliberately gave its Signals Operators Wrong Morse Code Training." in
the Royal Signals Newsletter for March 2003.
http://www.royal-signals.org.uk/mar_2003.php
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The 1876 Bell Telephone (Invented in 1860 by a German called Philipp Reis)
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Philipp Reis imagined that electricity could be propagated through
space, as light can, without the aid of a material conductor, and he
performed some experiments on the subject. The results were described
in a paper, "On the Radiation of Electricity," which, in 1859, he
posted to Professor Poggendorff; for insertion in the then well-known
periodical, Annalen der Physik. The manuscript was declined, to the
great disappointment of the sensitive young teacher.
Philipp Reis had studied the organs of hearing, and the idea of an
apparatus for transmitting sound by means of electricity had been
floating in his mind for years. Incited by his lessons on physics, he
attacked the problem, and was rewarded with success. In 1860, he
constructed the first prototype of a telephone, covering a distance of
100 m. He was not able to get people interested in his invention,
however, and it was largely forgotten, except by Alexander Graham Bell.
Alexander Graham Bell ( March 3, 1847 August 2, 1922) was a scientist,
inventor, and founder of the Bell telephone company. In addition to
his work in telecommunications technology, he also was responsible for
important advances in aviation and hydrofoil, who demonstrated and
patented an improved version of Philipp Reis' apparatus in 1876.
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STOP! BUT THAT 1860 Reis Telephone was Invented in 1854 by a Frenchman
called Charles Bourseul...
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Previous experimenters
Since the invention of the telephone, attention has been called to the
fact that, in 1854, M. Charles Bourseul, a French telegraphist, had
conceived a plan for conveying sounds and even speech by electricity.
"Suppose," he explained, "that a man speaks near a movable disc
sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice;
that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents from a
battery: you may have at a distance another disc which will
simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... It is certain that, in
a more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by
electricity. I have made experiments in this direction; they are
delicate and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained
promise a favourable result."
Bourseul deserves the credit of being perhaps the first to devise an
electric telephone and try to make it; but Philipp Reis deserves the
honour of first realising the idea as a practical device.
Bourseul's idea seems to have attracted little notice at the time, and
was soon forgotten. Even the Count du Moncel, who was ever ready to
welcome a promising invention, evidently regarded it as a fantastic
notion. It is very doubtful if Philipp Reis had ever heard of it. He
was led to conceive a similar apparatus by a study of the mechanism of
the human ear, which he knew to contain a membrane vibrating due to
sound waves, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone
behind it to the auditory nerve. It therefore occurred to him, that if
he made a diaphragm to imitate this membrane and caused it, by
vibrating, to make and break the circuit of an electric current, he
would be able through the magnetic power of the interrupted current to
reproduce the original sounds at a distance.
Source: http://www.masterliness.com/a/Philip.Reis.htm
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The Sony Walkman was not invented by a Japanese, but by a German in
and patented in the mid 1970s.
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The biography of Sony founder Akio Morita credits him with the concept
of the portable music player, a device better known to Sony customers
around the world as the Walkman.
But the Japanese consumer electronics giant has just paid several
million euros to a German inventor who patented the idea in 1977.
After more than 20 years of court battles, 59-year-old Andreas Pavel
agreed to a settlement that, in return for the payment, suspends all
legal procedures he had set in motion against the company, according
to German weekly Der Spiegel, which obtained confirmation from Sony's
head office in Tokyo.
In 1977, Pavel, then living in Italy, registered for several patents
relating to a portable stereo device named the Stereobelt (literally,
the "belt stereo"). In 1979, Sony launched its famous Walkman, which
went on to sell more than 200 million units in its first two years.
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The Electric Telegraph was not invented by SFB Morse in 1837,
but by an Englishman in the late 1740s.
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Morse did put together a telegraph system in 1837. But it was probably
his invention of an early version of what we call the "Morse code"
that got him credited with inventing the telegraph.
The seed for the telegraph was sown 90 years earlier, in 1747, when
the Englishman William Watson showed that electrostatically generated
signals could be sent a long way through a single wire with the
circuit being completed through the earth.
In 1753 an anonymous writer published a magazine article showing how
it was possible to use an array of 26 such wires -- one for each
letter of the alphabet -- to send messages over long distances.
Various forms of this multiple-wire system were built in Switzerland
in 1774, in France in 1787, and in Spain in 1798.
The notion of sending all the letters on a single wire -- of using a
code to distinguish them -- was introduced in 1774, about 60 years
before Morse, by a French inventor named Lesage.
Still, multiple-wire systems weren't completely abandoned for several
decades.
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Transistors and Microwave Radio
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In December 1947, J. Bardeen and W. H. Brattain invent the transistor
at Bell Telephone Laboratories. But the transistor was already
invented and used in India in 1886 (some 61 years earlier).
The Microwave Radio system (up to SHF frequencies of 8 GHz) was
invented in 1880s and successfully presented in 1895 to the Royal
Society by a Indian called Dr. Jagadis Chunder Bose.
Although he failed to find a real practical use for his Invisible
light Dr. Bose invented what today is the mainstay of point to point
telecommunications, and invented the Transistor (made a PNP device),
prisimic wedge filters, wave tubes, travelling wave tube amplifiers,
and microwave dishes and antennea that later were re-"invented" and
are used so extensivly especially in satellites, communication and
broadcast link technologies.
He also invented (a year before Marconi invented wireless) and
demonstrated radio controlled bombs and defence systems, a remote
controlled bell, etc., and also proved that plants were affected by
radio waves, light and touch, and responded to sound...
Quote:
While Marconi in Bologna was still trying to transmit electric signals
through space without wires, a race he was to win officially against
similar efforts by Lodge in England, Muirhead in the United States,
and Popov in Russia, Bose had already succeeded. In 1895, the year
before Marconi's patent was issued, at a meeting in the Calcutta town
hall, presided over by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, the lieutenant
governor of Bengal, Bose transmitted electric waves from the lecture
hall through three intervening walls and Mackenzie's portly body to a
room seventy-five feet away, where they tripped a relay which threw a
heavy iron ball, fired off a pistol, and blew up a small mine.
End-Quote:
Source: http://perso.wanadoo.es/paspas/x/iplant06.html
Another extract about him...
Radio research
In November 1894 J.C. Bose ignited gunpowder and rang a bell at a
distance using electromagnetic waves, confirming that communication
signals can be sent without using wires. This was one year after
Nikola Tesla made the first public demonstration of radio
communication in 1893. Bose went to London on a lecture tour in 1896
and met Marconi, who was conducting wireless experiments for the
British post office. In an interview, Bose said he was not interested
in commercial telegraphy and others can use his research work. Later
in 1899 Bose announced his invention of the "iron-mercury-iron coherer
with telephone detector" in a paper presented at Royal Society, London.
It appears that Bose's demonstration of remote wireless signalling has
priority over Marconi. He was the first to use a semiconductor
junction to detect radio waves, and he invented various now
commonplace microwave components. In 1954 Pearson and Brattain gave
priority to Bose for the use of a semi-conducting crystal as a
detector of radio waves. Further work at millimeter wavelengths was
almost nonexistent for nearly 50 years. J.C. Bose was at least this
much ahead of his time. Just one hundred years ago, J.C. Bose
described to the Royal Institution in London his research carried out
in Calcutta at millimeter wavelengths. He used waveguides, horn
antennas, dielectric lenses, various polarizers and even
semiconductors at frequencies as high as 60 GHz; much of his original
equipment is still in existence, now at the Bose Institute in
Calcutta. Some concepts from his original 1897 papers have been
incorporated into a new 1.3-mm multi-beam receiver now in use on the
NRAO 12 Meter Telescope, Arizona, U.S.A.
Neville Francis Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977 for his own contributions
to solid-state electronics, remarked that "J.C. Bose was at least 60
years ahead of his time" and "In fact, he had anticipated the
existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors."
Source: http://tinyurl.com/2fpq22 (full link follows)
http://www.goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=NEWS&template=wiki&text=Jagdish_Chandra_Bose
Here a more detailed report of his work on radio....
McClure's Magazine, March, 1897, pages 383-392:
TELEGRAPHING WITHOUT WIRES.
A POSSIBILITY OF ELECTRICAL SCIENCE.
BY H. J. W. DAM.
I.
THE MYSTERIES OF THE ETHER.--AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. BOSE.
A YEAR has elapsed since Röntgen gave us the new photography. Today
(1897), on the same general lines, we are confronted with something
more wonderful, more important, and more revolutionary still--the new
telegraphy. Two gentlemen have come to London at the same time from
different countries to tell the same story, namely, that telegraphy
needs no wires, and that through walls, through houses, through towns,
through mountains, and, it may possibly happen, even through the
earth, we can send dispatches to any distance with no other apparatus
than a sender and a receiver, the communication taking place by means
of electric waves in the ether.
(I cut out a major part here and jump to the main part, link to full
story below)
Electric waves were discovered by an American, Joseph Henry, in
Washington, D. C., in the year 1842. He did not use the phrase
"electric waves"; but he discovered that when he threw an electric
spark an inch long on a wire circuit in a room at the top of his
house, electrical action was instantly set up in another wire circuit
in his cellar. There was no visible means of communication between the
two circuits, and after studying the matter he saw and announced that
the electric spark set up some kind of an action in the ether, which
passed through two floors and ceilings each fourteen inches thick, and
caused induction--set up what is called an induced current--in the
wires in the cellar. This fact of induction is now one of the simplest
and most commonplace phenomena in the work of electricians. Edison has
already used it in telegraphing to a flying train. Hertz, the great
German investigator, developed the study of these waves, and announced
that they penetrated wood and brick but not metal. Strange to say,
however, considering the number of brilliant electricians in the more
western countries to-day, and the enormous amount of interest in and
experimental investigation of electrical phenomena therein, it has
been left to a young Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, to frame the largest
conception of what might be done with electric waves and to invent
instruments for doing it.
Marconi's story will be told with the utmost simplicity and care. But
it sounds like a fairy tale, and if it had not for a background four
grave and eager committees representing the British Army, the British
Navy, the British Post-Office, and the British Lighthouse Service,
which are now investigating it, it might well be doubted. Dr. Bose
Before introducing Marconi, however, the attention of the reader is
called, for several good reasons, to his immediate predecessor in
London, Dr. Jagadis Chunder Bose. Dr. Bose is a Hindoo, and is at
present the Professor of Physics in the Presidency College, Calcutta.
He is a graduate of Cambridge, with the degree of Master of Arts, and
has been honored with the degree of Doctor of Science by the
University of London, as a recognition of certain inventions regarding
electric waves which have won him the highest praise in the Royal
Society, the British Association, and elsewhere. It should be said at
once that Dr. Bose has no interest in the new telegraphy. Though he
has been named as its discoverer, he has done little more in it than
was announced by Hertz in 1888. He has done great work in his own
field, but it is that kind of detail work which is only understood and
appreciated by other investigators, and in the matter of telegraphy
his statements are here given largely as a preparation for and
corroboration of those of Marconi.
Dr. Bose, as he sits in the drawing-room of his temporary London
home in Maida Vale, is a man of medium height, thirty-six years old.
His father was a distinguished scholar and mathematician. His manner
is modest and very reserved. He dislikes publicity in the extreme. To
be interviewed for publication, and to have his delicate, complex, and
ultra-technical work described in the non-technical language of a
popular magazine is something from which he shrinks visibly.
Consequently, though he submits to the ordeal of an interview, he
disclaims all responsibility for the statements made in it and the
language in which these statements are expressed. If any man of
science, therefore, reads this article, it is understood that he is to
base no opinion or criticism upon it; but if he is interested in Dr.
Bose's work, he is requested to refer to the Journal of the Royal
Society for December, 1895, and June, 1896, and the Journal of the
British Association meeting of this year. The ethereal waves of
courtesy between speaker and writer having vibrated to the conclusion
of this happy understanding, Dr. Bose says:
"My special work for the last three years has been the study of
electric radiation; more particularly the comparatively slow electric
waves, varying between about one-quarter and about one-half an inch in
length. My results were represented in the complete apparatus which I
had the honor of describing before the British Association, an
apparatus for the verification of the laws of reflection, refraction,
selective absorption, interference, double refraction, and
polarization of these waves. I also contributed a paper to the Royal
Society in December, 1895, on the determination of the indices of
refraction of various substances for the electric ray, and another in
June of this year [1896] on the determination of the wave length of
electric radiation by means of a diffraction grating. These have been
duly reported and discussed in the scientific journals, and I fear
would not be appreciated or understood outside of their circle."
This is too evident a fact to be disputed, and the conversation is
turned to the wave-telegraphing in Calcutta.
"That," said Dr. Bose, "was simply an incident in the course of a
popular lecture, an illustration of the ability of electric rays to
penetrate wood and brick. My radiator was a small platinum ball
between two small platinum beads, connected with a two-volt storage
battery. By pressing a key the ball was made to spark and start an
electric wave which progressed outward through the ether in the air.
Popularly speaking, an electric wave in the ether, though it moves in
all directions, progresses outward like a wave produced by dropping a
stone in a pond. The water wave can be seen. An electric wave is, of
course, invisible. Supposing a cork on the surface of the pond at any
distance from the place where the stone was dropped, the cork, when
the wave reaches it, will bob up and down. Now, though we cannot see
the electric wave, we can devise an arrangement which indicates the
presence of the wave as the cork does. This mechanical arrangement
detects and records the passage of the wave.
"This is the whole idea simply expressed; an electric radiator and
a receiver for the waves. My receiver was in a room seventy-five feet
distant from the radiator, with three walls of brick and mortar;
eighteen inches thick, between them. The electric wave thus induced
penetrated the walls and traversed this distance with sufficient
energy, when it was converted, to fire a pistol and ring a bell, these
being the simplest and best evidences of its reception that I could
devise." Bose apparatus
"Do you mean to say that the wave, outgoing in all directions, had
this effect when a very small part of it reached the receiver?"
"No. A large portion of it was concentrated, as rays of light are
concentrated, by a lens placed close to the radiator. This received a
large portion of the wave and bent all the rays which fell upon it
into parallel lines, thus making a beam proceeding outward in a
straight line through the walls to the receiver. I have made and used
various concentrating lenses, the best materials being sulphur,
ebonite, and pitch."
"Instead of ringing a bell or firing a pistol, could a telegraph
message have been sent with it and received through the walls?"
"Certainly; there would be no difficulty about that."
"What is the law describing the intensity or power of the wave at
any given distance?"
"Exactly the same as the law of light. Generally speaking, these
electric waves act like rays of light."
"Do you mean to say, then, that you could telegraph in this way
through houses as far as you could send a beam of light, say with a
search-light?"
"I would not like to say it in these terms, but, generally
speaking, such is the fact."
"How far could this ether dispatch, so to speak, be sent?"
"Indefinitely. That depends on the exciting energy. At Salisbury
Plain, I am told, electric rays were sent with a parabolic reflector a
quarter of a mile through the ether in the air, and then reproduced as
Morse signals by a relay."
"But in telegraphing through houses--across a block of houses, for
instance--supposing the lens and reflector properly aimed at the
receiver, what would stop the rays?"
"Metal stops the waves I have been working with. Also water. They
will penetrate wood, brick, glass, granite, rock, earth, and retain
their properties."
"How far have they been successfully sent?"
"Through the air? I believe a mile. Through three walls? A
distance of seventy-five feet, so far as I know."
"What is their relation with the Röntgen rays?"
This brought up the whole question of the differences in rays.
Without committing Dr. Bose to exact language it may be said that the
rays with which he is working are of comparatively slow vibrations,
representing about fifty billion oscillations per second. Those ether
vibrations which lie between 200 trillions and 400 trillions of
vibrations in a second are heat rays producing the sensation of
warmth. Above 400 trillions and as far as 800 trillions per second the
vibrations are light rays, producing the sensation of light. According
to their rapidity, these light rays produce a gradation of colors. The
lowest numbers of light vibrations give our eyes the sensation of red,
and the scale mounts through the yellows, greens, and blues, to the
violets. When the number of vibrations passes 800 trillions per second
they become invisible. The human eye is limited in its perceptive
power to vibrations between 400 trillions and 800 trillions. Below and
above these numbers lie the regions of what are called "invisible
light rays." The same is true of the ear. Sound is conducted by air
vibrations. When these vibrations are below sixteen per second or
above 32,000 per second, they make no impression on our ear drums and
our consciousness. These are the so-called regions of "inaudible
sound." Bose houseboat
"I think the Röntgen rays," said the doctor, "lie above 800
trillions of vibrations per second."
"And what other unknown forces also lie in that upper region?"
"That remains for the future to develop. It is impossible to
forecast what new facts the study of the ether is destined to give us.
It is a tremendous field, from which we may expect new facts and new
forces."
"New forces?"
"That is merely a phrase. Force is a confusing word. Say new forms
of energy, enabling us to accomplish results now impossible--results
now unthought of and unthinkable."
"Then the ether--"
"Is the great field of the future, a field whose products no one
can imagine or attempt to conceive."
"Have you ever considered thought impulses generated by the brain,
with reference to their radiation and reception by other brains, over
small or great distances?"
"I have."
"What is your opinion with reference to thought transference?"
"I must decline to express it. There is no experimental basis upon
which to make a satisfactory statement."
Dr. Bose would say no more for publication. Opinions and
convictions as to the unexplored regions of physical phenomena are the
luxury of every scientific thinker, but he does not express them
except under the seal of confidence. It was a delight, however, to
hear this wise man of the East, thinking and speaking the language of
exact science, discuss the region of the occult. That Theosophy and
Christian Science will shortly hug the ether to their breasts as the
undoubted vehicle of their claimed marvels is entirely certain. The
present difficulty with regard to thought phenomena is that the human
body is not a machine and cannot be used in an exact way to exact ends
in experiments. That some one ingenious enough to accomplish this will
ultimately appear is highly probable, however, and that the silent
influence of brain on brain will in time be measured under
mathematical conditions is as reasonable to expect as it would be rash
to deny.
Extract from: http://earlyradiohistory.us/1897tele.htm
See also http://banglapedia.search.com.bd/HT/B_0584.htm
and Wikipedia page on Jagdish Chandra Bose
Regards
Petra