Re: REFERENCES ON RADIO, WIRELESS, AND THE TIME IN WHICH TESLA WORKED

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Gav D" <gdingley@xxxxxxxxx>

Ed,
thanks for the references! Certainly there was allot of interesting
research at the beginning of radio, and some characters more
controversial than Tesla, like Stubbelfield. Today things are quite
different, allot of old stuff keeps getting churned up in radio, and
greater emphasis is on information theory. Also Maxwell's equations
are difficult to apply to all situations leading to extensive use of
finite element theory where antenna systems are developed in computer
simulations. Add to all this is the fat that universities are driven
by paper publication and so there is allot of repeated stuff and only
small advances here and there.
For instance there was all that commotion over wireless power by
magnetic induction, and was presented as a great new idea, along with
a nice colourful simulation; this has been done so many times before -
nothing new, but it was branded a new technology an advancement of the
modern age. Meanwhile there are half a dozen websites were people have
built such a system (I had a few years ago) and Tesla said it was no
good, all this without the nice colourful simulation.
I think the Marconies, Teslas, Edisons and de Forests have long gone;
people are just plain scared to pick-up a soldering iron, but rather
sit in front of their PCs considering the "possibilities."

Sorry to go on.

Gavin

On 1/24/07, Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>    Some people (and authors too) seem to view Tesla's work as if it
> were conducted in a vacuum and that he was working in a completely
> new field.  They don't seem to realize that the latter part of the
> 19th century was a time of very vigorous study, experiment, and
> exploitation of electricity and its applications and that he was but
> one (a preminent one to be sure) of many men working the field.  This
> started in the days of Ampere, Faraday, Henry, Morse and continues
> unabated today.  There were plenty of books published during the
> period which give a pretty good idea of the technical state of the
> world in which Tesla lived but most are hard to find today.  I'm
> fortunate enough to have acquired a few early references but others
> may not have the interest and want to invest the effort to access
> some of them.  I believe any real student of Tesla history, at least
> in relation to wireless and radio, would benefit from studying the
> following references which are still available:
>
> More or less current references on early days of radio and wireless:
> "THE DEVELOPMENT OF WIRELESS TO 1920"
>
> edited by George Shiers
>
> Arno Press (NY Times) 1977
>
> Covers work by Lummis/Ward and Stubbelfield on from conduction and induction
>
> systems through "Hertzian" systems.  Good and thorough discussion of
> the subject,
>
> giving a good picture of the work before Tesla and the "state of the
> art" of the late 19th
>
> century and later.
>
> <>"Syntony and Spark
>
> The Origins of Radio"
>
> Hugh G. Aitken [professor of economics at Amherst and student of technology]
>
> Wiley Interscience, J.Wiley, 1976
>
> Discusses the same general subject with emphasis on the requirements 
> for tuning
>
> and of the various researchers who recognized it.
>
> "The Continuous Wave
>
> Technology and American Radio 1900-1932"
>
> Hugh G. Aitken
>
> Princeton University Press, 1985
>
> Excellent presentation on the subject.  He places Tesla in historical
> perspective and
>
> treats him realistically and very sympathetically.
>
> Ed