Posts tagged invention
Marconi: Pioneer of radio communications
Italian inventor Bill Marconi established himself in Chelmsford to launch his trans-Atlantic wireless communications enterprise. The exhibits show the evolution of wireless radio signals broadcast from wide-spectrum spark generators, the signal being received by a cat’s whisker tickling a crystal. Subsequent exhibits show television, radar, and my god-parents’ enterprise, infrared engineering.
Marconi chose Chelmsford to launch his enterprise because it had a reliable supply of electricity and skilled technical workers already engaged in manufacturing electrical equipment.
- The First Two-Way Transatlantic Wireless Message (oup.com)
- Progressive Era Hacker Griefed Marconi Demonstration (it.slashdot.org)
- Hacking the Wireless Telegraph, 1903 (adafruit.com)
- December 12th: The First Wireless Radio Signal to Span the Atlantic is Recieved (todayifoundout.com)
- Dec. 12, 1896: Marconi Demos Radio - Dec. 12, 1901: Marconi Transmits Across Atlantic (wired.com)
- Complicated Simplicity: A Marconi Wireless Graph of Connections at Sea, 1907 (longstreet.typepad.com)
- Anniversary of Marconi’s achievement marked (cbc.ca)
- Nineteen Ought Lulz (infosecurity.us)
- Nov. 7, 1905: Remote Control Wows Public (wired.com)
Image via Wikipedia
In February, 1858, British naturalist Alfred Wallace faced a severe attack of malaria at Ternate in the Moluccas. While thinking about human evolution, he recalled the essay on Population by the economist Thomas Malthus. … ‘There suddenly flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the fittest.’
The theory was thought out, drafted in a single evening, written out in full over the next two evenings, and sent to Charles Darwin by the first mail. Darwin in England admitted that he at once recognised his own theory in the manuscript essay sent by the young naturalist, ‘I never saw a more striking coincidence if Wallace had my manuscript sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his own terms now stand as heads of my chapters.’
Darwin and Wallace presented a joint paper to the Linnaen Society soon after. (p. 80)
Alfred Wallace. Image via Wikipedia
Marchant, J. (1916). Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and reminiscences. London: Cassell.
- The Myth of Over-Population (dakotavoice.com)
- Tim Flannery, “Here on Earth” (longnow.org)
- Green: Reverend Malthus and the Future of Food (green.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Traders who ‘sync up’ make more money: study (physorg.com)
- Darwin’s Method (3quarksdaily.com)
- Book Review: The Dark Side of Charles Darwin (debrakb.blogspot.com)
- Darwin meets the citizen scientists (blogs.discovermagazine.com)
