Testing a 1913 Deforest Sperical Audion Radio

 I only found this video recently but it's excellent. I've never seen a radio engineer go thru the circuit component by component and explain how it's working at this level of detail. He has several other videos all worth watching but this one is really something special. If you've never seen someone make a resistor with paper and a wood dowel this is a must-watch.

Direct Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ZVqr0fPo4

The Cruise of the Great White Fleet

In the book Lee de Forest and the fatherhood of Radio By James A. Hijiya I found a very arcane reference to a piece of radio history. In passing he quotes a 1940 article by G.H. Clark that refers to broadcasting on "the Navy's round-the-world-cruise of 1907-09." I had never before heard of the event.  He describes an operator who played phonograph records over the wireless. These devices transmitted speech instead of Morse Code.  This was so early in the history of radio that he describes that in the news account the operator "gave out" the music as the word "broadcast" was not yet used in that context.

"Late in 1907 the Radio telephone Co. installed wireless apparatus on ships of the U.S. Navy before they embarked on a round-the-world cruise. (The sets did not work well, but de Forest blamed that on the haste with which they were installed and with which Navy operators were trained.)"

It was called the Cruise of the Great White Fleet. On Dec.16, 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt sent a fleet of U.S. battleships around the world. They did not complete the circumnavigation of the globe until February 21st 1909.For the record, the color "white" was not racial.  In 2004 journalist Mike McKinley explained it:

"Altogether, 16 battleships and 4 destroyers, together with additional support ships, were assembled at the Brooklyn Navy Yard ready to make the 14 month tour around the world. All of the ships were newly painted a gleaming white and hence the flotilla became known as the "Great White Fleet".

Each of the 16 ships bore the name of a U.S. state, except for the Kearsarge and each was assigned a call sign for each transmitter. Some callsigns appear to have been just abbreviations The Georgia was GC for example.  Others like KSZ on the Virginia were internationally accepted callsigns. The U.S.S. Ohio carried the main network transmitter. All told de Forest sold 26 sets to the Navy in 1907. The USS Connecticut served as it's flagship. They began at Hampton Roads, VA and from there hit more than a hundred remote locations: Honolulu, South Africa, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Cuba, Italy, Chile, South America to California. and so many more. It was a saber-rattling move that was typical of Roosevelt. Wireless had been used in the Russo-Japanese war and he felt America was now competing with the Imperial Russian fleet. He still called it a goodwill tour. More here.

In 1965 Robert Hart wrote a book about the it. He described these transmitters as "rudimentary wireless sets." More here. But simple or not, communication between ships, while still maintained to some extent by semaphore and signal flags, was now principally by wireless telegraphy.  This was a big change. These ships didn't have radio before the trip. They had new equipment and novice operators. They sent messages to other ships and to the ports to schedule their arrivals replete with crowds and parades. Captains reported the events of their stops directly to President Roosevelt and also with the land-based station CC on Cape Cod.

Some navy ships had wireless sets as early as 1902, but captains were mixed on them. Of course at this early stage of development they were difficult to use, but it wasn't about that. For every useful tidbit of information they were able to send and receive, there were also orders from their superiors. In short, wireless was a challenge to the immediate autonomy of a ships captain. It's been recorded in some sources that Captains often ordered them shut down and that calls be ignored. When the ships returned in 1909, the wireless sets were uninstalled. The navy's interest in wireless stalled until 1917 and the beginning of  WWI.

Radio in Mass Transit

In the Fall of 1949 Chicago was installing radio in it's buses. A short list of stations were even being considered for the right to be aired inside the buses: WMOR-AM, WBBM-AM, WFMF-AM, WBIK-FM, WJJD-FM, This was a big change. Car radios debuted in the 1930s, but these were mostly add-ons. Cars did not come with radios standard for a couple more decades.  Ford pushed it as an popular option starting in 1950 and it took off. In 1952 Blaupunkt became the first maker to offer FM receivers but AM remained king for another 30 years. Why were Transit companies and city governments so keen on installing FM radios in their transit vehicles?

The first company was Transit Radio Inc. based in Cincinnati. In July of 1948 they launched the service in Covington, Kentucky installing 100 sets in the cars of the Newport and Covington railway. A Month later St. Louis was announcing plans to install radios in their buses to get news, time and weather reports from WXOK-FM. In Washington D.C station WWDC-FM  worked out a similar deal. Eventually over 1,000 buses and rail cars were equipped. Other cities followed in the first year: Houston TX,  Wilkes-Barre PA, Worcester MA, Huntington WV. It was a captive audience that advertisement wanted a piece of. The public reaction was mixed to say the least. A survey by the Edward G. Doody Company determined that 80% of riders found radio made their ride more enjoyable, 6% found it less enjoyable and 14% were ambivalent. They complaints were initially dismissed as a vocal minority.

When mass transit vehicles added radio to existing vehicles there was nearly no consideration for acoustics.  In the previous century acoustics had been acknowledged, but poorly understood. Even symphony halls were still designed in what's called a "shoebox configuration." The world's first scientifically designed symphony hall was only built in 1900, and it wasn't much different than those that preceded it. Imagine a 48-foot long aluminum and steel tube with an antenna, spark plugs, speakers and a radio. It's a metal box, it vibrates, sounds reflect and scatter. The saving grace of the bus was in that it is usually filled with humans. Compared to steel and aluminum we're pretty squishy. We provide a lot of acoustic absorption. In Chicago General electric and WGNB-FM tested their system and got specific complaints. One account in Billboard magazine described the reaction of the Chicagoan guinea pigs:

"One of the complaints of the public tested with sample uses of transit radio here has been irritation caused by lack of controlled volume. When vehicles were crowded, top volume was used.  But when there were fewer riders continued high volume was disturbing."

In the book Broadcasting the local news Lynn Boyd Hinds described committees forming opposed to radio in transit vehicles. Some people didn't like the idea of being bombarded by advertisements. In 1949, the first year of transit radio, complaints were being filed not just in Chicago, but with the transit authorities in Washington D.C. and others. Eventually it went to the courts. In 1952, after two appeals transit radio was declared constitutional. It was a show trial, with one justice even recusing himself. You can read the legal brief here.  Broadcasting Magazine summed up the verdict with a bit too much entitlement:  

"It sanctions the birth of a new advertising medium.  It affords opportunity to a substantial number of FM broadcasters to earn a return on their investments."

It may seem today to be an over-reaction. But try to compare it to the ire you give TV networks when the commercials are louder than the programs. The problem some thought, was really just one of volume. There was a valid argument for this. While loud speakers were already 70 years old, the electric amplifier was not. More here. Without a a modern amplifier, loud speakers aren't very loud in 1949 they were using tube amps, not solid state. Tubes themselves barely date to 1907 with DeForest. Radio was listed to at home in the parlor, car radios were a luxury.  So in every practical sense, these engineers had little prior work to base their implementation on.

General Electric, REI and Stromberg-Carlson came to the rescue with radios that automatically adjusted volume based on the number of riders. 21 Cities were using the devices so thsi was no small market.  Stromberg-Carlson probably got some Chicago contracts for virtue of being a local company. Alfred Stromgberg and Androv Carlson founded their first company in 1894, then a series of others. In 1910 they began making headsets, and other radio parts. They like others tried to tackle the problem in 1950, but as advertisers shied away in the face of the very public court cases... the service faded  away.

WNMH goes down

91.5 WNMH is a prep school radio station at Northfield Mount Hermon School in western Massachusetts. They are one of  over a hundred high school radio stations around the country. Ther eare 16 in Massachusetts alone. What makes them special is that the "Father of Radio" Mr. Lee de Forest graduated from  was a graduate of Northfield Mount Hermon School in the year 1893. The school celebrated it's 130th anniversary last year. What brings my attention to them today is that the FCC canceled their license.They are now DWNMH-FM.  "License canceled and callsign deleted by letter dated 9/28/2010;1800B3-KAW"

 Fybush recently wrote that WNMH, was "likely dead for good."  He was referring to the licensing culdesac they've walked into. Northfield Mount Hermon no longer even owns the campus where WNMH was licensed to transmit.  In 1971 Northfield School and Mount Hermon School merged to become the Northfield Mount Hermon School. this was the merger of the girls and boys campuses. In 2005, the trustees of the School decided to close the Northfield campus even though that means reducing the enrollment from about 1,100 students to about 600. The property was then sold.  Back in 1999 they managed to renew for probably the last time after a near-miss. More Here.

MA BLED-961007KB DWNMH
NORTHFIELD MOUNT HERMON SCHOOL
LICENSE TO COVER(BPED-931230IA) FOR CHANGES
91.5 MHZ NORTHFIELD, MA LICENSE
CANCELLED BY LETTER OF APRIL 30, 1999;
PETITION FOR RECON FILED 5/12/99
PETITION FOR RECONSIDERATION
GRANTED BY 1800B3-JWR.

The Northfield Mount Hermon Private school was founded in 1879 by Mr. Dwight Lyman Moody. He was an evangelist, missionary and writer. It's most famous student was probably Lee de Forest. Though he was born in Iowa, he received his early education at Mt. Hermon School, near Northfield, Mass. He paid some of his tuition with income from his early mechanical patents. He once wrote of his time there:

"...Hermon discipline taught me to surmount things of this character, and the results are becoming apparent."

It has been reported that theri tower and antenna are already gone from the campus.  This is no surprise as the station has been off air for approximately a year.  The station used the brand "Hogger radio" and broadcast 24 hours a day to it's campus and to webcast. It had both student and faculty DJs. Also notable that the "Radio One" satellite service still filled it's overnights and weekends.

Broadcasting Etymology

Lee de Forest gets a lot of credit for a lot of things; much of it due to the press campaign he waged at the end of his life trying to lobby his way into history books.  But there is one thing that he gets near unequivocal credit for: the word "broadcasting" used in the context of radio. More here.

broad·cast (brôdkst)

v. broad·cast or broad·cast·ed, broad·cast·ing, broad·casts

1. To transmit a radio or television program

2. To send out or communicate, especially by radio or television.

3. To make known over a wide area: broadcast rumors.

4. To sow seed over a wide area, especially by hand.

The term originates in the 1700s as a reference to the spreading of seeds as a compound word that describes the actual throwing of seed broad + cast. It was literally the wide swing of the hand to spread seed over a large area, a wasteful technique used in the planing of grain. in fact modern mechanical contrivances that mimic this motion are called "broadcast seeders." The modern meaning can be definitively dated to 1921 according to most texts. But de Forest was using it in his journals as early as 1907. I've found uses in radio before that date as well. You can see some of them use it in a metaphorical way as it may have been outside the radio context, but it serves to show how the word transmuted over time. The clear change is when the writer uses broadcast as a verb. One instance even uses it twice, once in each sense.

1920 - Hearings before the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries... From the statement of Mr. S. M. Kintner of the International Radio Telegraph Co.
"... The press associations do not want their news handed to people who do not pay them for it, as expressed by the one that objected to our broadcasting the news delivered by them to one of their subscribers.

October 1920 - The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society - Volume 1
"The caution was broadcast by wireless and placed vessel masters on the alert."

1918 - Report of the Commissioner of Education made to the Secretary of the Interior...
"During this period 36 messages of an average length of 1,500 words were broadcast, released twice each week, on Monday and Thursday evenings.

September 1918 - Popular Mechanics
"By broadcasting is meant the sending of messages so that any vessel, battleship, or merchantman, with a properly tuned instrument, can receive it."

1915 - Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Vol. 3 
"On the Pacific coast, time signals are sent broadcast to sea, thru the Naval stations at Mare Island, Eureka, San Diego, in California, and at North Head, Washington."

1915 - Wireless World, Vol.  By Wireless Society of London
"At 6 p.m. (75th Meridian time) ice information will be sent broadcast for the benefit of vessels using 600 metre wave-length. .."

1913 - West Indies Pilot, Volume 1,  By The United States Hydrographic Office
"Information concerning wrecks, derelicts, and other dangerous obstructions to navigation whenever received from the Hydrographic Office or from a branch Hydrographic Office is sent broadcast four times daily, viz, at 8 a.m., noon, 4 p.m., and 8 p.m., local (standard) time of station.

August 1913 - Report of the Hydrographer to the Bureau of Navigation
"...A great deal of this has been concerning dangers to navigation, which has been sent broadcast by the naval radio station at Arlington and by some of those on the coast. This method of broadcasting information concerning dangers to navigation is of great use to shipping and is greatly appreciated."

March 1909 - Popular Mechanics
"Sixty-five miles from shore the stricken steamer flashed electrical calls for help broadcast across the ocean."

tromborad + pianorad = what?

Microphones in the early days of radio were complicated, messy and performed poorly. Some tried to circumvent this entirely and broadcast the instrument directly over the air, skipping over that whole complicated acoustic "problem." This was the onus behind some of the first forays into electronic instruments. There was some success in this arena: the pianorad, the tromborad, the radio-violin, and even pipe organs modified in a similar manner.I found very little information on the Tromborad. It was invented in 1927. Mr. G.B. Ashton wrote an article on that in April of that year for Radio News. The IEEE referenced it in an overview of such creations in 1936.

The "Radio Violin" was a normal violin with a kind of acoustic pickup. In 1931 Rickenbacher made a guitar with a modern style electric pickup. But it wasn't the first. As early as 1920 Gibson was making electric prototypes, these all used acoustic pickups that were really adapted microphones. In 1926 Fred Roehm and Frank Adsit, designed the "radiano" a contact microphone meant for piano that somewhat bridged that gap. Jazz violinist Stuff Smith would employ one with a piezoelectric pick up as early as 1933. More here and here.

The Pianorad was designed by Hugo Gernsback and built by Clyde J. Finch in 1923. The first version was called a Staccatone. It used twenty-five LC Oscillators, one for every key on the two octave keyboard. The Pianorad was first demonstrated on the 12th of June 1926 on 800 WRNY-AM at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. Ralph Christman was the pianist. Ralph was a New York area pianist who also played on WABC. Gernsback's Pianorad regulated the pitch of the squeal emitted by a vacuum tube, the key opened and closed the circuit. Inexplicably, Gernsback gave credit for his Pianorad to Lee DeForest. More here and here.

Ultimately, the Pianorad had a very incestuous story. Gernsback was the publisher of the Radio News and owner of WRNY. The writer at the Radio news that wrote up the Pianorad was Clyde Finch. The station itself had only first broadcast on June 12, 1925, about a year earlier, with special guest... Lee DeForest.

LEE DEFOREST

I've put off this bio for some time while I decided if his place in radio history was as lame as I originally ascertained. After over a year of deliberating I have decided he is more lame than I originally thought. Perhaps I am too judgemental, and too hasty. But read on, you decide for yourself from my severely slanted essay...

Lee DeForest went to Yale University in 1893. He was bright, motivated btu not particularly technical. More of a gearhead than a bookworm. Once while being inquisitive he tapped into the electrical system at Yale and completely blacked out the campus one evening. It lead to his suspension. It was a hint of things to come. (Yale gave him an honorary degree in 1926)

While Flemming was off inventing the fleming valve, Lee DeForest was aping Reginald Fessenden. The clear cut-case was in 1903. DeForest makes a "casual" visit to fellow inventor Reginald Fessenden's workshop. He takes a look at Fessenden's invention of the Liquid Barretter detector. Lee steals the design and starts using it claiming it as his own. Fessenden actually has to sue him to stop him frokm using and selling it. And eventually gets an injunction against de Forest for patent infringement in 1906.

As a result Lee had to change all of his stations to use the silicon detector. But that was already patented too, but fortunately by another employee of the American De Forest Wireless Telegraph Company, Mr. H.H. Dunwoody. (Dunwoody is worth a bio on his own) Spectacular pictoral peice here: http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/deforest.htm
Because of this incident, de Forest resigned from his own company in November 1906 and began looking for a better valve detector. One that he wouldn't have to pay royalties for. He started with the Fleming valves. He made some Fleming valves (design patented 1904), and, in a moment of inspiration, he added a third element. The diode became a triode. It's just another electrode between cathode a.k.a. (filament) and the anode (plate). If you're imagining a lighbulb with 3 filaments you're not far off. It's that fucking simple

It was wild. The third element regulated the current. It was a patentable change. But DeForest didn't even understand how it worked. He just knew that it worked, and that he didn't have to pay Fessenden or Dunwoody to use it. De Forest patented his audion, the first three-element valve in 1907. This did not stop Marconi (who owned the Flemming tube) from suing the crap out of him. It was obvious to the Marconi Co that the idea came form Flemming, and they wanted a peice. http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/radio/quality.html

De Forest had difficulty at trial since HE DIDN'T KNOW HOW IT WORKED! His lack of understanding was so incomplete he thought the vaccume tube needed some gas still in it! Not until Edwin H. Armstong wrote a paper on it did Lee have a clue what the third element did. Armstonr wasn't alone in the examination. Other experimentrs including Langmuir, and Van DerPol made contributions as well. ...In 1912 somebody got around to telling him.

By 1916 DeForest was in trouble. After Armstrong explained how his own toy worked, he sued Armstrong. Armstrong had invented the regenerative circuit in 1913. Why? Well, the United States District Attorney started sueing De Forest for fraud on behalf of his shareholders in 1913. Because he promised them a regenerative circuit and well... he didn't have one. So he patented some crap that was kinda iffy to come thru on that in 1916. Problem was Armstrong already patented that in 1914! Despite the obvious problem with the lack of time travel DeForest won the lawsuit. He had the motivation... he didnt' want his shareholders to murder him. DeForest later acquitted of federal charges. Armstrong got screwed royally. The phrase used politely in most boigraphies is something like: "The view of many historians is that the judgement was incorrect." http://www.ylem.org/artists/jpallas/hh/pioneers/deForest.html

In 1919 he was at it again. This time ripping off the work of Eugene Lauste, Theodore Case and Freeman Harrison Owens. (and by default the krauts they ripped off too) The De Forest Phonofilm process recorded sound directly onto film. It kept the sound in synch with the movie which before hand ...was really a bugger to figure out. Hollywood was strangely disinterested in the oft-sued inventor. So DeForest gave them the finger and premiered 18 short films on him own. Their debut was in 1923 at the Rivoli Theater in New York City. Some of the above sued DeForest again and by the Fall of 1926 the Phonofilm Company folded. [the Vitaphone system developed by Warner Bros is what we eventually adopted] It was about then DeForest had to sell his own home to pay legal debts.

Lee spent his golden years endlessly shilling for good press and perpetually writing and rewriting his own version of history. He was an inventor yes. He built on the work of others before him like all inventors do -yes. But he barely understood what he was doing and more often than not, he either made (or tried to make) meaningless modifications to defeat patents or just ripped off the work of him employees. http://www.leedeforest.org/ He began billing himseelf as The Father of Radio. He hired publicists and had a lionizing autobiography ghost-written in 1950. He lobbied hard for a Nobel Prize inPhysics but was denied. He was trying to build himself a legacy.

I give him credit for the following:
1. He started his own radio station 2XG
2. From 2XG he may have made the first report of a presidential election
3. From 2XG he may have also done the first radio advertisements.. even it was for his own products.
4. He was a effective proponent of music programming over wireless i.e. radio. at 2XG and later at 6XC.
5. He built several early radio staitons, some now heritage stations including WWJ
6. He invented the first synthisizer, an electric keyboard of sorts (the Audion Piano in 1915) it was derided by critics as the "Squawk-a-phone' but it was the inspiration behind the Theremin.