1980 Newsletter
Completion of Steam Building. Installation of Corliss safe. Arrival of Vance Phillips collection and Terry turbine. →
Author: Robert Merriam
Edwin H. Armstrong
Edwin Howard Armstrong was a giant in many respects. That picture was given to us by the gentleman on the left, who was Mr. Charles R. Underhill. He started Armstrong on his distinguished career because Armstrong lived in the neighborhood of Mount Vernon, in New York. And Underhill lived a couple houses away… and very quickly, young Armstrong found out that Underhill was the man to go to find the answers to questions that bothered him. → Karl Ferdinand Braun
Braun shared the Nobel Prize in 1909 "in recognition of contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy", and later invented the cathode ray tube. He went on to be one of the founders of the Telefunken Company. And Telefunken was, of course, a giant competitor of Marconi. → Cable Equipment
This is cable equipment, and Cyrus Field, of course, is the guy who started the cable business, stretching the first cable across the Atlantic…in 1858. → Commercial Receivers
In the North Room, here, are broadcast receivers of the period 1920 to 1925, starting with the Atwater-Kent down at the far end, and running down to Zenith on this end, alphabetically arranged. → Communications Receivers
What we have beyond here are communications receivers of various kinds made by various manufacturers. → Crystal Receivers
Moving ahead to the early 1920’s when the broadcast radio boom began, here are some examples of early crystal sets. → Amos Emerson Dolbear
Dolbear had an elevated antenna, and essentially what he was doing was exciting the area around his antenna electrostatically, and the electrostatic field went out. → Earphones
Jumping from crystal sets, one has to realize there were no such things as loudspeakers. So, when you listened you used earphones, of which there were many varieties. → Thomas A. Edison
Now we come to Edison, who was the most remarkable guy, with over a thousand patents. I don’t know if anybody else has that many… → Electrical Experiments Before 1900
Looking at the South side of the North Room, the length of the counter is arranged chronologically, starting with the earliest devices, the Benjamin Franklin period, and so forth. → Reginald A. Fessenden
Reginald Fessenden, very, very early, was experimenting with electrostatic effects… wireless, if you will. And he was doing it really before Marconi started doing it. → Hugo Gernsback & Electro Importing Co.
Hugo Gernsback, to me, was a giant, and to many other radio bugs he was a giant, also. He was a most imaginative individual. → History of the De La Vergne Oil Engine
The history of the 25 HP Hornsby-Ackroyd oil engine in the museum's collections starts with its manufacture at the De La Vergne Refrigerating Machine Company's plant in the Bronx, New York, sometime after 1895. → Induction Coils
Straight spark gaps…there’s a variety of them in here…there are also induction coils…and this is a Crooke’s tube. And here is the first example of a cathode-ray tube, a Braun tube. → Loose Couplers
Jumping ahead to wireless, the early receivers were frequently referred to as loose couplers. → Guglielmo Marconi
Moving, now, over to this stiff aristocrat, Bill Marconi. What Marconi was, was a powerful organizer and a business man, and a pretty grabby guy, if you come right down to it, and he succeeded in building giant wireless stations all over the world… tremendous stations… → Meters
This is a window of various kinds of electrical measuring instruments. → Murdock & Clapp-Eastham
Clapp-Eastham and Murdock were two noted Boston area manufacturers before World War I. → Vance Phillips Collection
This is a collection of detectors made by Vance Phillips, who is the gentleman in the picture on the right. He was a W6GH. → Ship Radio Room from the 1920’s
This is a replica of a 1920’s ship radio room, or wireless cabin. The transmitter is a World War I Navy Standard, 1 Kilowatt Kilbourne & Clark Quenched-Gap spark transmitter. → Spark Transmitters
Here is a wireless receiver…these are the antennas…this is the coherer right here, and the bell is the tapper. The transmitter is over there…a spark coil connects to it. This is a very early Marconi Jigger…Marconi used the term “Jigger” to describe an induction coil. It has taps for different amounts of induction. And it’s … Continue reading "Spark Transmitters" → Telegraphy
Going down the central hall in the wireless building, there are twelve display cases dealing with electrical communication. The first, naturally, is the telegraph, and in it are examples of telegraph instruments going as far back as Samuel Morse’s first days. → Television
Now we come to television. This is a scanning-wheel television, where there’s a pinhole here. The size of the picture is about an inch-and-a-quarter by an inch-and-a-quarter. → The Torpedo of St. Yvon
How the only Nazi bomb to hit North America in WW II nearly got me. → Tubes
Going here, this is the beginning of the vacuum tube era. Now, there are some very significant things in this particular window. → Wireless Building: South Side of North Room
Fred – “So, this is still spark-gap transmission?” Absolutely…World War I. Here’s the key, and there’s the quenched gap up there. These are the tuning coils for the transmitter. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in getting the receiver, which connected to those contacts in that section. The receiver was here. Fred – “Now, how tight … Continue reading "Wireless Building: South Side of North Room" →