|
1.
Feature
(Excerpt
from) "The
SMART DAAF
BOYS"
Continued
from above
-
An electrical engineer and
television pioneer , he developed
a high-frequency alternator (a
device that converts direct
current into alternating current)
capable of producing continuous
radio waves and thereby
revolutionized radio
communication. He produced
inventions in such fields as
railway electrification, motors
and power transmissions,
telephone relays, and electric
ship propulsion, in addition to
his pioneer work in radio and
television.
In the
early days of wireless telephony
and telegraphy, there were no
packets of instant coffee and
Creamora laying around, where all
you had to do was add hot water.
As for
radio, television, and the terms
antenna and radio AC alternators,
the words didn't even exist when
Marconi and Stubblefield started
their wireless operations. In
fact, to make telephony talk in a
big way, it took over eighteen
years, starting in 1892, just to
get the government to patent the
first Wireless Telephone.
It took another 90 years, in 1996
-- before the first group of
Wireless Telephone
frequencies were sold to the
general public, by the FCC for
billions of
dollars.
CLICK
TO SEE 1907 AUTO PATENT
DRAWING.
Alexanderson had been
employed at General Electric for
only a short period of time, when
GE received the order from
Canadian-born professor and
researcher Reginald Fessenden in
1904. The Tesla styled generator,
which patent was to expire in
1906, was converted into an AC
alternating generator with 1000
times higher frequency than any
in existence at that time.
In the summer of 1906 Dr.
Alexanderson presented a 50 kHz
alternator that was installed in
Fessenden's radio station in
Brant Rock, Massachusetts. By
fall it's output had been
improved to 500 watts and 75 kHz.
On Christmas Eve, 1906, Fessenden
broadcast the first long distance
voice and music broadcast with
music and talk, playing the
violin and reading the gospel
himself.
The big difference in the
Alexanderson/Fessenden 1906 RF
broadcast, and the January, 1902,
Stubbblefield ship-to-shore and
land-line voice/music broadcasts
were; the NBS wireless
demonstration were open to the
general public, and his telephony
system used batteries for power,
like today's cell phones.
FOR
MORE SEE STUBBLEFIELD and
TimeLine.
The Alexanderson /
Fessenen Wireless Telephony
transmission was power by a
generator, and was reportedly
heard by a GE tech group as far
away as the Caribbean Sea.
The NBS wireless RF
transmitter/receivers antenna
system used in the NBS
broadcasts, were stationed two
miles apart. The broadcasts were
extented to a 125 mile radius by
the use of land-line connections,
relaying the wireless voice
broadcast to Philadelphia
listeners, like in today's WiFi
hot-spot technology.
The
Steinmetz
Papers on Alternating Current
Phenomena
Encouraged by his father
who was a professor of language,
Dr. Ernst Alexanderson learned
English, French, and Latin in
addition to his native Swedish.
Thus, he was able to read a copy
of Dr. Charles P. Steinmetz's
paper on Alternating Current
Phenomena while attending the
Technical University in
Berlin.
He was so impressed that
he decided to move to America and
seek work with Dr. Steinmetz. He
arrived in the U.S. in 1902,
about the same time Marconi was
financing Fleming to produce a
stable, dependable coherer device
in which Marconi could introduced
to his grounded earth induction
coil antenna. Each coil had
varied electrical characteristics
for each transmitting and
receiving antennas, thereby
enabling him to tuning them to to
each other.
This
made it possible for a great
number of stations to use the
"air" at one time without
interference.
The Fleming
Electron Tubel Device, the
Oscillation Valve was patented in
1904, as an Telegraphy device.
MORE
AMBROSE
STORY.
Alexanderson
first assignment a member of the
GE engineering staff in l904, was
designing generators under Dr.
Steinmetz.
It was in this year that
Professor Fessenden, contracted
G.E. to design and build a high
frequency machine that would
operate at high speeds and
provide continuous wave
transmissions. The project was
turned over to Alexanderson. This
was a two kilowatt, 100,000 cycle
machine.
Marconi heard about the
News Of The Success of the new
Alexanderson Alternator, in 1904.
Shortly after the Alexanderson'
demonstration, Marconi arranged
for a 50 kilowatt installation to
be made at the New Brunswick,
N.J., his Marconi transatlantic
station.
Not content with his
development, he further perfected
the unit to provide 200 kilowatts
of power. This powerful
transmitter was also installed at
New Brunswick and was used by
President Wilson in the
transmittal of messages to the
warring countries in Europe,
since the cables had been
cut.
The historical test came
on October 20, 1918, when
President Wilson used this
station to send the Peace
ultimatum which brought the war
to a close. In 1919, Marconi
tried to buy the exclusive world
rights to the Alexanderson
transmitter, but President Wilson
had a deep desire to keep the
inventions ''American." The end
result was the formation of the
Radio Corporation of America.
He designed the Alexanderson
alternator, a high-frequency
generator for longwave
transmissions, which made
modulated (voice) radio
broadcasts practical. The only
surviving transmitter in a
working state is at the Grimeton
radio station outside Varberg,
Sweden. It is a prime example of
pre-electronic radio technology
and was added to UNESCO's World
heritage list in
2004.
----
Marconi
soon discovered that if all
Hertz's had to do is groud a
tuning fork properly, to send a
spark of electricity across a
room to produce a visible spark,
why couldn't a coherer be used.
Using the already deviloped
coherer in place of a spark gap,
Marconi found that by properly
grounding the coherer properly,
the effect would multiply the
distance a thousand times over
the stop gap the signal, he was
using to send Dit - Dahs.
----He
later found out that this was
because a coherer required less
than one thousandth of the energy
necessary to produce a visible
spark.
----
Marconi,
even as a Nobel Peace Prize
winner, said, "he never claimed
to be a scientist." He always
stated his ability lay in
combining certain facts
discovered and developed by
others. Marconi's first
transmitter consisted of an
elevated antenna with the spark
gap located at its lower end, the
end itself was solidly connected
to the earth. His receiving
antenna carefully duplicated the
transmitting antenna with the
coherer positioned where the
spark gap was. His first efforts
succeeded in transmitting a
signal three-fourths of a mile
across his father's estate.
02
/ The
Smart Daaf Boys
Timeline
/ TIMELINE - ERNST
ALEXANDERSON
1878 - Ernst
Alexanderson was born in Upsala,
Sweden, on Jan. 25, 1878.
1896 -
Alexanderson devoted
one year of technical work at the
University of Lund.
1900 - Alexanderson
Graduated as an
electrical-mechanical engineer
from the Royal Institute of
Technology in
Stockholm
1901 -
Alexanderson spent a
year of postgraduate work at the
Technical University (Technische
Hochschule in Berlin -
Charlottenburg) Germany. It was
in Berlin that Alexanderson read
"Alternating Current Phenomena"
by Dr. Charles Steinmetz, the
mathematics genius at General
Electric. The book inspired him
so much that he decided to come
to the U.S. to meet Steinmetz and
seek work with him at General
Electric.
1902
- Alexanderson
emigrated to the U.S. and spent
much of his life working for the
General Electric company.
1906
- Alexanderson had
been employed at General Electric
for only a short period of time
when GE received an order from
Canadian-born professor and
researcher Reginald Fessenden for
an alternator with 1000 times
higher frequency than any in
existence at that time. In the
summer of 1906 Dr. Alexanderson
presented a 50 kHz alternator
that was installed in Fessenden's
radio station in Brant Rock,
Massachusetts. By fall it's
output had been improved to 500
watts and 75 kHz. On Christmas
Eve, 1906. Before the invention
of his alternator, radio was an
affair only of dots and dashes
transmitted by inefficient
crashing spark machines.
1909 - PATENT
- Alexanderson's
1008577 US Patent Filed "High
frequency alternator (100 kHz),"
filed April, 1909; issued,
November 14,
1911.
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1910 - Alexanderson enrolled
in the famous mathematician and
electrical engineer Charles
Proteus Steinmetz' Consulting
Engineering Department, which
afforded him still greater
opportunities to concentrate on
continued work with the
alternator.
1915 - Marconi who
visited Schenectady in 1915 found
Alexanderson's alternator to be
superior to his own equipment in
the big, newly constructed
station. As a result, the Marconi
equipment was torn out, and the
alternator installed. Via the New
Brunswick station, which had
finally acquired a 200 kW
alternator, and was placed during
the war under the command of the
US Navy, President Wilson was
able to maintain wireless
telephone contact with the USA
throughout his voyage to the
Peace Conference in Versailles,
and back.
1911 -
PATENT
- Alexanderson's 1008577 US
Patent Issued "High frequency
alternator (100 kHz)," filed
April, 1909; issued, November 14,
1911
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1915 - Marconi, who on his
visit to the States in 1915 had
desired to buy the exclusive
right to sell the alternators on
the world market, made a new
offer to General Electric in
1919. President Wilson appealed
to General Electric not to sell,
since he feared that the English
would in that event become
completely dominant in the field
of world communications. Instead,
an entirely new corporation was
created, the Radio Corporation of
America (RCA), for the purpose of
marketing the alternators.
Alexanderson was brought in as
Chief Engineer at the new
corporation, and subsequently
shared his working time between
GE and RCA until 1924, when he
returned to working full time at
GE.
1918 -
Alexanderson's alternator was
further developed, assuming its
final form at the end of the
First World War. President
Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen
Points" and an exhortation to the
Kaiser to abdicate were broadcast
by means of the Alexanderson
alternator in 1918 in the
"Marconi station" in New
Brunswick.
1924 - Alexanderson
on June 5, 1924, the first
wireless telegraph picture was
transmitted across the Atlantic.
This was a handwritten page from
a letter from Ernst Alexanderson
to his father Professor
Alexanderson, in Sweden.
1924 - Alexnderson was
elected a member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Engineering
Sciences
1925 - he became a
Knight of the Order of the
Northern Star, and, also in that
year, a Knight of the Polish
order of Polonia Restituta. These
are only a few examples of the
distinctions he received over the
years.
1926 - Alexanderson
sent the first facsimile
transmission to go around the
world. Passing through successive
relays, the picture was
reproduced on machine in the same
room as the transmitter after
just two minutes.
1926 -
PATENT
- Alexanderson's 1,723,908 US
Patent Filed "Ignition system,"
(RFI suppressor), Patent filed
June, 1926; issued August, 1929.
CLICK
TO VIEW
PATENT
1927 - Alexanderson staged
the first home reception of
television at his own home in
Schenectady, New York, using
high-frequency neon lamps and a
perforated scanning disc. On
January 13, 1928, the first
television play was transmitted,
and the television transmissions
from "Alex's lab" at General
Electric were received and shown
on a screen measuring roughly 2x2
meters with the aid of
Alexanderson's new TV
projector.
1927 -
PATENT
- Alexanderson's 1,775,801 US
Patent Filed "Radio signaling
system" (directional antenna),
filed November 1927, issued
September 16, 1930.
CLICK
TO VIEW
PATENT
1929 - PATENT
Alexanderson's
1,723,908
US Patent Issued"Ignition
system," (RFI suppressor), Patent
filed June, 1926; issued August,
1929.
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1930 - PATENT
- Alexanderson's
1,775,801
US Patent Issued "Radio signaling
system" (directional antenna),
filed November 1927, issued
September 16, 1930
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1934 - Alexanderson was
elected a member of the Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences.
1938 - Alexanderson
was awarded an honorary doctorate
by the University of Upsala .
As a result of the gradual
broadening of its work to cover
numerous fields, Alexanderson's
Radio Consulting Department was
renamed the Consulting
Engineering Department in 1928,
and in 1933 it became the
Consulting Engineering
Laboratory. In connection with
the reorganization of General
Electric in 1945, this laboratory
was merged with General
Electric's General Engineering
Laboratory to form the General
Engineering and Consulting
Laboratory.
1944 - Alexanderson
for a while was President of the
American Institute of Electrical
Engineers, which awarded him its
Edison Medal in 1944.
Stockholm.
1944 - Alexanderson
was awarded the Cedergren Medal
for his outstanding technical
writing in the field of
electrical engineering. The medal
was first awarded in 1914, to
Charles Proteus Steinmetz.
1948 - awarded an
honorary doctorate by the Royal
Institute of Technology,
Stockholm.
1948 - Alexanderson
formaly retired from Genera
Electric but continued his
inventing activities as a private
person for a further 20 or so
years. During that time he
obtained 28 patents in a variety
of fields. His last patent he
acquired as recently as 1973.
1975 -
Alexanderson died on
May 14, 1975, at his home in
Schenectady, N.Y.
1983 -
Alexanderson was
honoured posthumously, when he
was elected, for his invention of
the high-frequency alternator, to
join the ranks of distinguished
inventors in the National
Inventors Hall of Fame. Several
of the original Alexanderson
Alternators can be found today in
the museum set up in Grimeton,
Sweden. In 1996, one was turned
on during the 80th anniversary
celebration. The station worked
just it as it did in 1916, and
transmitted signals back to the
U.S.
03
/ PATENTS
During
his long period of service with
General Electric, and including
his years in retirement, he
obtained a total of 344 patents,
of which 11 private, 34 together
with colleagues, and the rest as
assignor for General Electric.
Each new patent was followed by a
"latent patent" (a patent under
development) which, when it had
been processed and approved, was
followed by new patents and
latent patents in a long chain
over the years. He left
practically no aspect of
electrical engineering untested.
It is thus possible, from his
life's work, to sketch the
development of electrical
engineering from power
engineering to the more and more
important field of
electronics.
An exhaustive list includes all
the patents he obtained between
the years 1905 and 1973. He
produced inventions in such
fields as railway
electrification, motors and
direct-current power
transmission, telephone
relays, gun-control systems
and electric ship propulsion, in
addition to his pioneer work in
radio and television. During
World War II, he worked on analog
computers for use with radar and
developed military applications
of the amplidyne.
1909 -
PATENT
- Alexanderson's
1008577 US Patent Filed "High
frequency alternator (100 kHz),"
filed April, 1909; issued,
November 14,
1911.
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1911 - PATENT
- Alexanderson's 1008577 US
Patent Issued "High frequency
alternator (100 kHz)," filed
April, 1909; issued, November 14,
1911
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1926 - PATENT
- Alexanderson's 1,723,908 US
Patent Filed "Ignition system,"
(RFI suppressor), Patent filed
June, 1926; issued August, 1929.
CLICK
TO VIEW
PATENT
1927 - PATENT
- Alexanderson's 1,775,801 US
Patent Filed "Radio signaling
system" (directional antenna),
filed November 1927, issued
September 16, 1930.
CLICK
TO VIEW
PATENT
1929 - PATENT
Alexanderson's
1,723,908
US Patent Issued"Ignition
system," (RFI suppressor), Patent
filed June, 1926; issued August,
1929.
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
1930 - PATENT
- Alexanderson's
1,775,801
US Patent Issued "Radio signaling
system" (directional antenna),
filed November 1927, issued
September 16, 1930
-
CLICK TO VIEW
PATENT
----
MAXWELL'S
ETHER THEORY DIES - November,
13, 1931. The one-hundredth
anniversary of Clerk Maxwell's
birth was marked by the
scientific world "digging a grave
for the theory of a luminiferous
ether," but at the same time
honoring Maxwell's mathematical
genius.
4.
Related
Stories
/ General
Electric, Engineer. AC Generator
or Alexanderson Alternator Made
Fessenden's - 1906 successful.
The
AC
Generator
was
used as the power source, along
with other ancillary technologies
utilized by Fessenden during the
Christmas Eve demonstration.
Alexanderson
was
with Fessenden at the time of the
broadcast, using the spark AC
Generator induction system
Alexanderson's
high-frequency 1906 alternator
was capable of putting 700
amperes of high-frequency current
into the Fessenden antenna.
TELEVISION
Dr.
Alexanderson was also
instrumental in the development
of television. The first
television broadcast in the
United States was to his GE Plot
home at 1132 Adams Road in
1927.
Over his lifetime, Dr.
Alexanderson received 345
patents, the last awarded in 1973
at age 94. The inventor and
engineer remained active to an
advanced age, working as a
consultant to GE and RCA in the
1950s.
Dr. Alexanderson Was a prolific
inventer and his inventive genius
touched many different fields.
Some of his inventions in
communication included the
magnetic amplifier, the
electronic amplifier, the
multiple tuned antenna, the
anti-static receiving antenna,
radio altimeters, television in
1928, and in 1924 the first
facsimile across the Atlantic,
which included a hand written
greeting to his father in Sweden.
In other fields such as power and
control, he designed single phase
motors for railway
electrification, used by
Pennsylvania R.R. system, worked
out a system for regenerative
breaking of direct current series
motors used on the St. Paul R.R.
locomotives. The amplidyne and
thyratron motors were among some
of the 320 patents issued to him
during his 46 years with General
Electric Co. (One for every
month, give or take a few
days).
Dr. Alexanderson retired in 1948
-- but continued as a consultant
for another year. He was 97 when
he died on May 14, 1975, at his
home in Schenectady, N.Y. Dr.
Alexanderson was widowed twice,
and was survived by his third
wife Thyra and son Werner; also
three daughters and nine
grandchildren.
In 1983, he was inducted into the
National Inventors Hall of
Fame.
Stubblefield
Marconi
Ambrose
Fleming
Reginald
Fessenden
Tesla
DeForest
Armstrong
Alexanderson
Farnsworth
More
Stubblefield02
Research
MORE
RESEARCH
NBStubblefield
01
NBStubblefield
02
NBStubblefield
03
NBStubblefield
04
SmartPhones
DVD/VHS
Purchase
Radio
Trust
NBS100
Demonstrations
More
Articles
Converging
News 302006 / TeleCom BuyOuts,
Spinoffs and Asset Seizure
Boom
Respectfully
Submitted
Josie
Cory
Publisher/Editor
TVI
Magazine
TVI
Magazine, tviNews.net, YES90,
Your Easy Search, Associated
Press, Reuters, BBC, LA Times, NY
Times, VRA's D-Diaries, Industry
Press Releases, They Said It,
SmartSearch, and Wikipedia, the
free encyclopedia were used in
compiling and ascertaining this
Yes90 news
report.
©1956-2007.
Copyright. All rights
reserved by: TVI Publications,
VRA TelePlay Pictures, xingtv and
Big Six Media Entertainments. Tel
- 323 462.1099.
We
Preserve The
Moment
Return
To
Top
|
|