by Ciro Santilli (@cirosantilli, 32)
Video 1. Radio Wave Properties: Electric and Magnetic Dipole Antennae by Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations (2020) Source. The dude lights bulbs on an antenna made of a single piece of copper, powered with EM radiation. Amazing.
Figure 1. Dipole antenna receiver animation. Source.
Figure 2. Dipole antenna transmitter animation. Source.
As well put by Wikipedia, a radio raceiver has to perform three functions on the signal from the antenna:
  • filtering, so you can tune the the station you care about. This filters based on the frequency of the carrier wave you want. I.e. you use a bandpass filter.
  • amplification: otherwise you won't be able to hear anything if the emitter is too far away
  • demodulation: this means decoding the signal based on whatever way it was encoded, notably e.g. AM/FM
The first type of device that allowed sending Morse code without wires, as opposed to the wired electrical telegraph that previously existed.
Naval communications was one of the first major applications, as you can't have wires on boats!
Wireless voice transmission came about with modulation.
Video 1. Spark-gap transmitter at the at the The Museum of Radio and Technology Jeri Ellsworth (2017) Source.
Video 2. Marconi Spark Gap Transmitter Demonstration by Canada Science and Technology Museum (2012) Source.

Ancestors

  1. Radio
  2. Wireless
  3. Telecommunication system
  4. Telecommunication
  5. Information technology
  6. Area of technology
  7. Technology
  8. Index

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