I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war (1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment. Radio was
always described as unreliable.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a book
or a web site?

Al Dykes ) writes:
I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war (1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment. Radio was
always described as unreliable.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a book
or a web site?



My impression is that it wasn't very developed. The Titanic went
down in 1912, and only that brought rules requiring radio be part of
ships. Armstrong patented the regenerative receiver in 1914. I remember
seeing a photo of a WWI surplus receiver, and it was a "crystal radio".

So the technology was barely there, and I'm not sure how much ramping
up there was when the war came along. Plus, the decision makers had
to be convinced that radio was valuable, and there may not have
been a chance. Certainly airplanes had limited use in WWI, and only
between the wars was a fair strategy developed.

There are lots of books about radio or technology in WWII, but I can't
think of anything that deals with the first war.

You might get a feel for the era by getting the first volume of QST
on CDROM. I have no idea if there'd be anything about military radio
at that point, but it would at least give an indication of the general
level of radio technology at the time.

Michael

"Al Dykes" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war (1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment. Radio was
always described as unreliable.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a book
or a web site?



Try UNITED STATES EARLY RADIO HISTORY
BY THOMAS H. WHITE
Radio During World War One (1914-1919)
http://earlyradiohistory.us/sec013.htm

Lots of clickables
Lamont

In article , Al Dykes wrote:
I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war (1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment. Radio was
always described as unreliable.

Okay, the transmitter here is a broadband noise source, going into some
tuned circuits that produce a peak roughly in the 200 to 500 Khz range.
For a kilowatt input power, there would be a couple watts out on channel,
and the channel was pretty wide.

Combine that with a receiver that was usually a coherer, which used
electrostatic attraction between particles to detect an RF source,
which took substantial power at the antenna to detect any signal.

On top of that, we're working at really long wavelengths where
skip propagation is poor, onboard ships where the antenna size is
limited by the small size of the vessel.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a book
or a web site?

I believe there is a book by the US Army Center for Military History
that should be available from the GPO, on communication in WWI. It
talks very little about radio, because radio wasn't really very useful
although there were attempts to transmit field orders and to communicate
with aircraft-borne observers.

Although by the time WWI came along, the technology had advanced
considerably since that of 1904, there were still no power tubes and
still no use of short waves yet, although improved detectors helped
a lot.

The first serious use of radio in combat wasn't until the Italo-Ethiopian
war of 1936, where Mussolini equipped units with field radios and operators.
Selassie's troops would open up a hole in the line, take in a bunch of
Italian troops and cut them off with a pincer movement as worked so well
for Marechal Foch in WWI. Unfortunately, troops that were cut off
physically still maintained communication by radio and the effect was not so
effective.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Al Dykes" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the
earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the
war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war
(1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from
the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but
the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment.
Radio was
always described as unreliable.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a
book
or a web site?


One excellent source is History of
Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, by
Captain Linwood S. Howeth, USN (Retired) published by the
U.S.Government Printing Office (1963).
A HTML version of this is available at:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1963hw.htm

But I think I was able to download a PDF version from the
web. This book is also an excellent source of history of the
formation of RCA. It also has an extensive bibliography.


--
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA

In article ,
Richard Knoppow wrote:

"Al Dykes" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the
earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the
war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war
(1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from
the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but
the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment.
Radio was
always described as unreliable.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a
book
or a web site?


One excellent source is History of
Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, by
Captain Linwood S. Howeth, USN (Retired) published by the
U.S.Government Printing Office (1963).
A HTML version of this is available at:
http://earlyradiohistory.us/1963hw.htm

But I think I was able to download a PDF version from the
web. This book is also an excellent source of history of the
formation of RCA. It also has an extensive bibliography.



TNX

You might enjoy reading Erik Larson's new book, Thunderstruck.
It's an entirely historical account of the efforts Marconi put into
getting wireless to work ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore, before
finally crossing the Atlantic. It's non-fiction told like a novel, with
a murder mystery intertwined that would later be closed via spark
wireless aboard a ship.

Great read if you want to get a little 'color' on the whole spark
era of 1899 - 1912 or so.

Dave - WB7AWK


"Al Dykes" wrote in message
...
I'm looking for some reading material about radio from the earliest
days up to the end of WWI and how it was used during the war.

I've just reading a history of the Russian-Japanese war (1904). It was
entirely a naval war, Russia sent it's entire fleet from the Baltic
Sea to the Pacific Russian coast. Radio played a roll but the book
didn't give me an idea of range or any of the equipment. Radio was
always described as unreliable.

It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a book
or a web site?

In article ,
None wrote:
You might enjoy reading Erik Larson's new book, Thunderstruck.
It's an entirely historical account of the efforts Marconi put into
getting wireless to work ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore, before
finally crossing the Atlantic. It's non-fiction told like a novel, with
a murder mystery intertwined that would later be closed via spark
wireless aboard a ship.

Great read if you want to get a little 'color' on the whole spark
era of 1899 - 1912 or so.

Dave - WB7AWK





TNX, I just reserved it online with my library.

FWIW, here is the Publisher's Weekly review

Starred Review. [Signature]Reviewed by James L. SwansonIn this
splendid, beautifully written followup to his blockbuster thriller,
Devil in the White City, Erik Larson again unites the dual stories
of two disparate men, one a genius and the other a killer. The
genius is Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless
communication. The murderer is the notorious Englishman
Dr. H.H. Crippen. Scientists had dreamed for centuries of capturing
the power of lightning and sending electrical currents through the
ether. Yes, the great cable strung across the floor of the Atlantic
Ocean could send messages thousands of miles, but the holy grail
was a device that could send wireless messages anywhere in the
world. Late in the 19th century, Europe's most brilliant
theoretical scientists raced to unlock the secret of wireless
communication.Guglielmo Marconi, impatient, brash, relentless and
in his early 20s, achieved the astonishing breakthrough in
September 1895. His English detractors were incredulous. He was a
foreigner and, even worse, an Italian! Marconi himself admitted
that he was not a great scientist or theorist. Instead, he
exemplified the Edisonian model of tedious, endless trial and
error.Despite Marconi's achievements, it took a sensational murder
to bring unprecedented worldwide attention to his
invention. Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen, a proper, unattractive little
man with bulging, bespectacled eyes, possessed an impassioned,
love-starved heart. An alchemist and peddler of preposterous patent
medicines, he killed his wife, a woman Larson portrays lavishly as
a gold-digging, selfish, stage-struck, flirtatious, inattentive,
unfaithful clotheshorse. The hapless Crippen endured it all until
he found the sympathetic Other Woman and true love. The "North
London Cellar Murder" so captured the popular imagination in 1910
that people wrote plays and composed sheet music about it. It
wasn't just what Crippen did, but how. How did he obtain the poison
crystals, skin her and dispose of all those bones so neatly? The
manhunt climaxed with a fantastic sea chase from Europe to Canada,
not just by a pursuing vessel but also by invisible waves racing
lightning-fast above the ocean. It seemed that all the world
knew.except for the doctor and his lover, the prey of dozens of
frenetic Marconi wireless transmissions. In addition to writing
stylish portraits of all of his main characters, Larson populates
his narrative with an irresistible supporting cast. He remains a
master of the fact-filled vignette and humorous aside that propel
the story forward. Thunderstruck triumphantly resurrects the spirit
of another age, when one man's public genius linked the world,
while another's private turmoil made him a symbol of the end of
"the great hush" and the first victim of a new era when instant
communication, now inescapable, conquered the world. 14-city
tour. (Oct.)James L. Swanson's most recent book, Manhunt: The
12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, was published by Morrow in
February. Copyright ) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed
Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Hi,

On 1 Jan 2008 10:03:59 -0500, (Al Dykes) wrote:


..........It got me to wondering about WWI. Can anyone recommend a book
or a web site?


If you haven't seen it already you might find the two first minutes (at least...) of
the following video pleasant and interresting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACLE6YTV28


Regards,

Thierry