Ray King
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Karma: 1 |  | Geoff’s letter to the Sentinel Newspaper
« Thread Started on Feb 17, 2010, 12:29pm » | |
Geoff’s letter to the Sentinel Newspaper about Oliver Lodge and the origins of radio.
Sir,
Once again untrue claims are being made about the achievements of Sir Oliver Lodge. This time by BBC Radio Stoke.
Oliver Lodge did not invent radio, can we therefore "lay the ghost" that he did?
Whilst I applaud those who want to celebrate the achievements of our famous local people, please do not make us look foolish by making claims that are patently untrue.
About 150 years ago, James Clerk Maxwell, a British scientist, developed a scientific theory to explain electromagnetic waves. He predicted that electrical fields and magnetic fields can combine together to form electro magnetic waves. In essence this was the start of Radio.
Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist and an acquaintance of Sir Oliver lodge, applied Maxwell's theories to the production radio waves.
A Frenchman, Dr. Branly 's research into radio conductors is remembered for inventing a device that was simply a glass tube containing metallic filings which was connected by two wires. When the filings in this tube detected an electro magnetic wave the filings arranged themselves into a uniform order which indicated the signal was being received.
Now we come to Sir Oliver Lodge's part in the story. In August 1894, at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Oxford University, he transmitted radio signals one year before Marconi. If the dates are correct this was probably the first time in public that a radio signal was sent and received, even though the distance travelled was only across a room. The radio equipment made by Oliver Lodge used an improved version of Edouard Branly's radio wave detector which Oliver Lodge renamed the "coherer". The improvement was simply an additional device that tapped the coherer and caused the filings to fall when there was no signal or electromagnetic wave present.
In 1895 a Russian professor named Alexander Popov improved on Oliver Lodge's receiver, replacing a "spark gap device" with a vertical antenna connected to the ground via the coherer. In fact it is stated that he transmitted and received signals at an intervening distance of 600 yards.
Nicola Tesla an ethnic Serb created, whilst living in America, a basic design for radio and in 1898 he patented a radio controlled boat. Tesla was almost unknown for his work in radio. Marconi claimed all the first patents in radio, including inventions originally developed by Tesla and others but it was not until 1943, when Marconi's patents were deemed invalid, that Tesla's work became known.
So there we have it, no one person invented radio even though for over 100 years Marconi has been called the "Inventor of Radio". Marconi took the ideas and inventions of others and put them together in a workable form to allow people to send messages through the air, invisibly, on radio waves. Marconi developed very little of the essential knowledge and equipment necessary for radio.
None of this deminishes the stature of Sir Oliver Lodge. We must remember that Oliver Lodge obtained a patent on the moving coil loudspeaker, and his "syntonic" tuner patent allowed the frequency of transmitters and receivers to be verified with ease and certainty. Furthermore, it is said, that he made a major a contribution to motoring when he patented a form of electric spark ignition for the internal combustion engine i.e. The "Lodge Igniter". Later, two of his sons developed his idea and in 1903 founded Lodge Brothers which later became known as Lodge Plugs Ltd.
It is also interesting to note that Oliver Lodge sued Marconi for infringement of his patents. Subsequently he became Marconi's Chief Scientific Adviser. When Marconi applied to have his patents recognised in the USA the only one the USA was prepared to recognise was one of Lodge's patents used by Marconi. In addition to this the U.S. Navy's account in connection with this matter quotes " Marconi can scarcely be called an inventor. His contribution was more in the fields of applied research and engineering development. He possessed a very practical business acumen and he was not hampered by the same driving urge to do fundamental research which had caused the likes of Lodge and Popov to procrastinate in the development of a commercial radio system"
Sir Oliver Lodge was Professor of Physics at Liverpool University and I believe there was once an award presented by the university called "The Lodge Award". Later still he became the first Principle of Birmingham University.
Not bad at all for a "Potter".
To conclude. You might find the following of interest.
Oliver Lodge sold the ground to the Lichfield Diocese upon which St. Andrew's Church, in Porthill, the church I was married in 1958, was built. The connection does not end there because my eldest brother was once the organist at this church. To further compound the plot the connection takes us to the S.S. Titanic whose captain, you will recall, was Captain Smith. We all know that Smith was, like Oliver Lodge, born in Stoke-on-Trent. My brother worked for Captain Smith's son. So a full circle was established, simply by the fact that Marconi tried to contact the Titanic's sister ship, using radio, at the time of the disaster. So, as they say, the circle has been squared.
Geoff G3XHP
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