Customer Reviews

Syntony and Spark: Origins of Radio (Science, culture & society)

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I inherited a copy of this book and, being a fan of the history of technology, looked forward to at least poking a bit. Now, I am pretty much what some historians and scholars condemn as a nuts-and-bolts sort of person, an engineer, even. That's probably why the introduction, which is a very long argument about the philosophy of invention and the concept of bandwidth, began to make my mind wander about the fourth page. The author even gives a warning about this, which I should have heeded; and I should have understood that this book is far more devoted to matters like patent priorities and revelations of communication between workers in a very important field.

It is clear from the introduction that the author is a historian of great note, and that he has given the matter at hand a lot of thought and a great deal of effort.

But the rest of the book isn't much better. If the author is truly interested in the principles of radio, it isn't obvious. Every so often he breaks through with an insight that's somewhat interesting and then settles back into the philosophy of 'syntony' and why it's a word that we ought to be using instead of 'resonance,' or 'tuning,' or whatever.

The illustrations are poor; mostly patent drawings that were made long before there were anything resembling standard symbols. This is understandable, but the lack of any translation into conventional circuit symbols is not.

The organization of the book is generally wretched.

Now, part of the difficulty is that this book is based on the history and philosophy of science, a discipline which typically endeavors to exclude technical applications, aka engineering. That is presumably why it's more concerned with patent disputes than the development of radio circuitry, and I suppose that these are interesting to anyone fascinated with the fact that scientists might get into squabbles like anyone else.

But I'm not entirely sure that the author understands the fact that identical inventions often appear simultaneously from inventors operating entirely independently, and I also don't believe that he understands that most scientists, inventors and engineers are generally more interested in the progress made by others in fields that they love than in fighting for priority in court. There is some of the latter, but not as much as laypeople would like to think.

Like many important technologies, radio was invented several times over by many different people who came upon the basic principles about at the same time. Anyone who wishes to assume that this indicates the theft of ideas is welcome to do so, but what really happened is that technology was at a point where 'second order' electrical effects were starting to noticed and examined. A 'first order' effect would be ohmic heating and electromagnetism. A 'second order' effect would be behavior and external effects of arcs formed by currents through inductances, the energy storage available in capacitors, and the effects of inductance and capacitance in the same circuit. Hertz realized arcs applied through resonant circuits produced a form of electromagnetic radiation akin to light, (and if the authors had discussed Hertz' work with a few illustrations and technical details it wouldn't have hurt a bit.)

As telegraph systems grew in size and the technical crews grew in sophistication, a lot was learned about induced currents and cross-talk. Tesla became interested in resonant phenomena and did some of the groundwork in this field.

And then, just about at the end of the 19th century, it all came together, and a number of inventors figured out radio at the same time. Ideas might have been stolen outright, but for the most part scientists like to talk to each other and share what they've found. And even a stolen idea is useless unless it's presented to someone already thoroughly experienced in the field.

As for Mr Marconi, his principal sin is that he had the wit to take the technology and run with it. While his work was undoubtedly influenced by the work of others--as that of others was influenced by his--there is no doubt that he understood the principles and applications of radio and that his research was both valid and valuable. The fact that he made a lot of money with it is not important except to the extent that his success helped to drive further work in the field.

Be it known that I may change my opinion of this book on future readings if I can talk myself into making the effort. But the late gentleman from whose library this book came from was an avid reader of technical material, and I found between its pages several articles--one an exchange of letters between readers of the IEEE _Spectrum_--that helped me recall what good technical writing, and good historical technical writing, is like.

Mark Kinsler

I knew Hugh Aitken through the 1970's when we both lived in Amherst, Mass -- he a professor of economic history at Amherst College , and I a business student at UMassAmherst -- connected by our shared hobby of amateur radio.

I lost track of him when I left Amherst, and only 20+ years later did I stumble upon this book in the stacks at UConn. I found him again via email, and learned that creation of this book on sebatical, had been a dream of his, to make use of his considerable talent as an economic historian, and his love of radio through our hobby.

I'm not equipped to judge this book against others of tech history (maybe someday in retirement!), but I can relay to the reader, the pure joy that Hugh got from creating this book. For those who want to continue the story where this leaves off, Hugh's "part 2" -- The Continuous Wave -- continues the story well into the 20th century. Less magic, more detail.

The book chronicles the role of the Marconi monopoly on the development of modern radio and the struggle of Oliver Lodge to promote a superior technology in the face of technology shortfalls and entrenched commercial interests. I found it interesting because Marconi is the prototype of todays tecchie entrepreneur and franchiser who will atempt to enlist finaciers, regulators and the legal system to establish a monopoly to minimize the risks and maximize the returns of introducing a new technology.

In Marconi's case the franchise was radio contact with ships at sea, which was a critical element to the success of Great Britain's commercial empire. radio rooms on board commercial vessels were marconi franchises.

Eventually the Marconi monopoly was broken by congestion of the airwaves through broadcasts from broad spectrum spark transmitters (his technology) and the invention of the audion by Lee de Forest which finally allowed implemantation of the syntony concept (tuned circuits) promoted by Lodge. US trustbusters may have played a role as well.

Note also the role of David Sarnoff, the founder of Radio Corporation of America who was the first to receive the distress signal from a Marconi franchise on board the Titanic and who played a critical role in the commercialization of the audion, another struggle that is woth its own story.

It also shows how mMrconi exploited the ideas of Heinrich Hertz who without a promoter, never profited from the intellectual property he developed.

It is ironic the Marconi got a Nobel Prize for Physics for his business acumen.

In short a fascinating read.

For those interested in these struggles, the accounts of Farnsworth's role in the commercialization of television, and the struggle between Fleming, I believe the inventor of FM broadcaststing, both of which involved the Radio Corporation of America, itself a monopolistic Marconi competitor, are also interesting.