Talk:Wireless telegraphy

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what are the effects of telegraphy on society???

Hertz was not early 1800s: should this be someone else, or is it just a too-loose use of 'early', i.e. Hertz was earlier than Tesla?

Most webpages I found about Lindsay were just proud claims made for a local man without any support. The one I added tends to debunk Lindsay's electric light work as likely repeating dead-end efforts others made 25 years earlier, and has references. Yes, a wire glows when you pass a lot of amperage through it . Volta demonstrated that around 1800. If you crank up the amperage to get a bright light, it burns out in a few minutes. I have not yet found a webpage which does a careful analysis of his wireless work, but at this point it sounds like a case of boosterism which needs some supporting documentation. This is not to say he was not exceptionally intelligent and creative to have been experimenting with electricity at all in the 1830's.Edison 05:47, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

This page "An Introduction to the Mysteries of Ground Radio" by Gerry Vassilatos http://www.borderlands.com/newstuff/research/ground-myst.htm has alot of people that should be included here. I don't care about the mystic or occultic knowledge it mentions, but the people are real and their activities are true. BTW, somneone might want to put the Beverage patent @ that page in Beverage wikipage too. 204.56.7.1 17:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

This article might be better if it was recast as a subset of the Telegraphy article. The subject of this article is mainly the early technologies of radio telegraphy, not the its applications or modern history, for example. Albany45 15:12, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Remove expert needed banner?

Being knowledgeable in the subject, I plan to remove the 'expert needed' banner. I think the article is better than a start article and would invite anyone to provide criticism of why it is deficient or suggestions on what is expected of this article. In my opinion, signaling through dirt and signaling through water were not mainstream topics of wireless telegraphy, they were almost irrelevant to wireless telegraphy. The mainstream was electromagnetic wave signaling, the birth of radio, and with it, the birth of electronics. It is not clear we can get into that very deeply because it is so well covered in other articles. Maybe some expect too much of this subject? Comments? John (talk) 04:58, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Ferdinand Braun

Spider90us (talk) 00:48, 22 February 2008 (UTC)Shouldn't anyone mention anything about Braun's contribution to wireless telegraphy

I agree that Karl Ferdinand Braun's invention of the "cat's whisker" point contact diode was very important in the early progress of wireless telegraphy, and even worked as a detector for early voice transmission. The Wikipedia article has some references you might use to add an appropriate mention of Braun in this article. Fortunately, Wikipedia is the "encyclopedia anyone can edit," so feel free to add something about Braun. Edison (talk) 00:56, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

The last sentences in the section on Calzecchi-Onesti are not grammatically correct and don't make sense. AKsoldat 24 March 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aksoldat (talk • contribs) 16:47, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Copy-editing needed

Wow, right now, this is a dog's breakfast. Little organization, disjointed chronology, stuff that doesn't make sense.

E.g., "He also proposed that intelligence — transmitted without wires — transmission through the Earth and to establish the physical mechanism of such a circuit": WTF???

I did some copy-editing, but I didn't know enough about the subject to "be bold."

Somebody who both (1) writes grammatical English and (2) knows something about electricity and its application to wireless telegraphy is desperately needed.VaneWimsey (talk) 07:15, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Period 1838-1897

The lead paragraph makes two questionable assertions.

Wireless telegraphy dates as far back as Faraday in the early 19th century, when it was discovered that radio waves could be used to send telegraph messages.

Radio waves weren't discovered until long after Faraday died. Michael Faraday and Joseph Henry discovered magnetic induction around the same time (1831). The use of magnetic induction to send telegraph messages wasn't demonstrated until the 1880s.

After James Clerk Maxwell had predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves, and had shown that their speed of propagation is identical with that of light, it required, in reality, very little to demonstrate by experiment the existence of such waves.

This is way off. A number of prominent investigators spent years trying to prove Maxwell's theory. Helmholtz challenged Hertz to come up with the proof, but at first Hertz could not think of any experiments. It was only after Hertz noticed he was able to produce effects that could not be explained by magnetic induction that he suspected he was dealing with radiating electromagnetic waves. Hertz was working with very primitive technology and proving Maxwell's theory required very clever and careful work. He had to show that it wasn't already known effects such as magnetic induction, and then he had to show quite clearly the wave nature of the phenomenon. Claudeb (talk) 20:33, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Trimmed back Tesla

This article contained a very WP:UNDUE section on Tesla that was mostly original research being primary sourced, including primary sourced images with no explanation. There is also a bit of a WP:POVPUSH going on with the insertion of the word "radio" many times in the section, Tesla did not agree that radio waves (Hertzian waves) were present so he would not be describing "radio". The Tesla Effect (Spark Gap Transmitter).png design drawing is not "Nikola Tesla's Spark-gap transmitter", its the authors demo of the the "Tesla Effect". Trimmed back to what can be referenced per the topic, Tesla's involvement in Wireless telegraphy. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 19:48, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Actually most of this article is a duplicate of Invention of radio/History of radio and so goes off topic re: Wireless telegraphy, which took many forms besides radio. The Invention of radio/History of radio stuff should be trimmed way back. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:56, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Off-Topic ---> too much Radio

Restating above, I propose trimming way back the Invention of radio/History of radio stuff. It just duplicates those articles and it is off topic, there were many types of "Wireless telegraphy" systems historically - one of them (radio based) was the most successful. Tesla's system would not even come under radio, it was a wholly different conduction system, but is a very on topic mention for this article. The section on "Electromagnetic wave (radio)" is wrong right off the bat re:"Wireless telegraphy dates as far back as Faraday". A large portion of these people were conducting science and then radio wave science: they were not developing or had little or no interest in Wireless telegraphy. It would help if more past or current non-radio "wireless telegraphy" systems could be mentioned in this article because an article that is just radio by another name should be deleted and redirected. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 19:47, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I was just about to make pretty much the same comment on this page when I noticed your entry. I think the radio stuff should be limited to descriptions of how Morse code is transmitted and received, and the redundant history of the invention of radio replaced by a link to one of the many articles that already cover this; Radio, History of radio, Invention of radio. --Chetvorno^TALK 19:21, 5 August 2015 (UTC)

Cleanup/followup. Trimmed out the duplicate Invention of radio stuff. Moved like systems to context. Removed martial that was not telegraphy - specifically voice communication (photophone, Landell de Moura, audion, modulated light, etc), not telegraphy by definition. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 15:04, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Fountains of Bryn Mawr: Just want to say that while I support the removal of the general radio history bloat, which mostly had nothing to do with telegraphy, IMHO by default the article now overemphasizes nonradio methods like ground conduction, electromagnetic and electrostatic systems, unimportant technological dead ends which were never used widely (see below). Not that any of this is our fault; more radiotelegraphy content just needs to be added.

Also, Wikipedia article names are based on current meaning, and the current meaning of "wireless telegraphy" is radiotelegraphy, transmission of telegraphy by radio waves. On that basis I think the lead sentence is inaccurate. It should be changed to say that wireless telegraphy means transmission of telegraph code by radio waves, but that for a period around the turn of the century it also included experimental systems that transmitted telegraphy by ground conduction, light, electrostatic and electromagnetic induction. --Chetvorno^TALK 20:05, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

I disagree with the idea of stripping out the early "pre-radio" history o wireless telegraphy. The efforts of Marconi and others has significant coverage in reliable sources such as books on the history of electrical technology. It would be a disservice to readers not to describe the widely covered early efforts using ground r water conduction. Some of these experiments were were about half a century before the "turn of the century." Tesla's patent was found by courts to in fact be "radio" regardless of the faults in his theory of energizing the atmosphere. Edison (talk) 16:46, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

(1) Look at the article. It still covers the "pre-radio" "ground and water conduction" systems of Steinheil, Morse, Lindsay, Ward, Loomis, Dolbear, Tesla, and Preece. No one has suggested "stripping out" this content. (2) Even if they did, there are more appropriate articles where this content should be placed: History of radio, Invention of radio, Timeline of radio. In these articles, these unsuccessful efforts could be described in context, as part of the technological development process which resulted in radio communication. --Chetvorno^TALK 18:46, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Undue weight on nonradio systems and inaccurate lead sentence

This article, and particularly the introduction, way overemphasizes a bunch of unimportant dead-end technologies like ground conduction, electrostatic and electromagnetic systems, giving them WP:UNDUE WEIGHT at the expense of the current meaning of the term "wireless telegraphy", which is radio wave telegraphy. Besides signal light ("blinker light") Morse code, which was widely used by naval vessels but was never called "wireless telegraphy", these systems were never more than experimental prototypes that didn't catch on. The meaning of the term "wireless telegraphy" from about 1905 on was "radiotelegraphy", the transmission of telegraphy by radio waves, and that is its meaning today. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] The definition in the lead sentence is overinclusive and should be changed to reflect that.

The body of the article is mostly devoted to these non-notable systems, and omits most of the technology of radiotelegraphy, which was a very important industry used to transmit most long distance military, diplomatic and commercial messages until WW2. Stuff which should be included: the different modulation methods which were used to transmit code; damped wave, continuous wave (CW) and FSK, how code transmitters worked, the difference between grid modulation and plate modulation, the use of the BFO, "break in" operation, paper tape code readers and siphon recorders, international regulations, the Q codes. This should be the main focus of the article. --Chetvorno^TALK 17:30, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, afk for a while. Agree radiotelegraphy should have larger coverage. The article in its current state is just whats left after all non-"wireless telegraphy" was removed. I would think expansion should fix the WP:UNDUE. The historical non-radio systems should be described at their fullest here because this is the prime topic article, other articles should just summarize this one. There may be a case for radiotelegraphy having its own article and/or moving this article to "History of wireless telegraphy". Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 01:18, 17 May 2018 (UTC)

Section on spark transmission and reception

This is misleading as written. Spark transmitters do not make "musical tones" in receivers; they make buzzing noises. "Musical tones" are made when so-called "continuous wave" transmissions are received by a receiver equipped with a beat-frequency oscillator ("BFO"). Suggest a change to reflect this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.219.136 (talk) 18:10, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

There were different spark transmitter systems. The average amateur spark transmitter produced a buzz, but later manufacturers attempting to increase the range realized that higher pitched, more musical tones could be heard through atmospheric noise better. In synchronous rotary spark gap transmitters the spark wheel was rotated by a synchronous motor synched with the AC sine wave from the HV transformer applied to the capacitors, so the spark rate (several thousand Hz) was a multiple of the AC line frequency and produced harmonics with it, producing what was described as a "musical" note. Shipboard quenched spark transmitters also often used a motor-alternator to power the HV transformer with a frequency of 500 Hz, so the spark rate was 1000 Hz. --Chetvorno^TALK 14:00, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Guglielmo Marconi

"The first practical radio transmitters and receivers invented in 1894–1895 by Guglielmo Marconi used radiotelegraphy."

This is highly disputable as Guglielmo Marconi did not invent any wireless (radio) equipment whatsoever. He only commercially exploited it. His early spark transmitters were direct copies of Heinrich Hertz's. His later, more efficient transmitters, using the "tank circuit" were stolen from Nikola Tesla. His early receivers, the Coherer, were invented by a number of people. The Magnetic detector, which his name is attached to, was not actually invented by him. (Electronics Notes)

This (Tesla) and many other web pages affirm that Marconi stole much of his technology from Tesla and got away with it because of power and money. User:122.60.89.238 17:13, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

The context is "radio communication" (please read previous sentence). Hertz didn't think radio waves were good for anything and Tesla considered them worthless for communication. The person to conceive of, and bring all these devices together for, a practical communication system was Marconi. Anonymous stuff on the web can be pretty misleading, I would suggest reliable sources. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 20:01, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Agree. The reason Marconi is credited with the invention of practical radio is he was one of the only people who believed that radio waves could be used for long distance communication, and between 1894 and 1901 developed Hertz's apparatus into a practical distance communication system. Other scientists of the time believed radio waves only traveled in straight lines like light, so were limited by the visual horizon. He is the first person known to have transmitted information (Morse code) by radio; other contemporary wireless researchers like Jagadish Chandra Bose, Alexander Popov, and Oliver Lodge could have done this, but they were not interested in communication so they just transmitted random pulses. Marconi did invent one essential component of radio, the grounded vertical wire monopole antenna. This reduced the frequency of his waves from the very high frequency range other researchers were using, which were limited to line-of-sight, to the medium frequency range, which enabled him to be first to transmit radio waves beyond the horizon. He was first to transmit across water, and the first to achieve transatlantic transmission. Jointly with Karl Ferdinand Braun, he received the 1909 Nobel physics prize for his radio work. --Chetvorno^TALK 19:40, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Removing repetition

This article should complement, and not overly duplicate the contents of the following articles: Telegraphy, Electrical telegraph and Radioteletype.

I think that the repetition of the mechanics of transmitting Morse code in both the lead and the 'Overview' section was inappropriate, which is why I removed it from the lead. I can understand that readers with no knowledge of the subject will want to know some basic technical detail, but as WP:MOSLEAD says "The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic". If manual telegraphy is being described, so too should automatic telegraphy, and I have tried to incorpoate this in the 'Overview' section.

I would also argue that the ten paragraphs that describe non-radio methods are excessive here and should be considerably shortend, with transfer of material to other articles if appropriate.

What do others think? --TedColes (talk) 17:47, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

I think we are at round two of "nuke and pave". Round one was kicked off by me with the goal of getting rid of a useless duplicate of Invention of radio to focus the article more towards what seemed to be the topic.

The article topic still has many problems as I see it (sorry if this reads like random thoughts):

• its an obsolete synonym for Radio
• its a historical word for Radio (pre 1910)
• its a WP:CHIMERA trying to describe many things
• as a solely radio description its not the correct current title for this topic, the title would be Radiotelegraphy, it does have some tertiary check
• "Nonradio methods" describes 19th century vaporware, the stuff never existed (except for a few demos) so does not belong under a topic that implies it did.
• Telegraphy stops covering this topic with the HMS Titanic

I think the description here sums up my thinking. This article should be moved to Radiotelegraphy and most of the "Nonradio methods" should be moved to History of telecommunication ---> Electrical telegraph---> new subsection called "Wireless electrical telegraphs"

Anyways, those are thoughts. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:31, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

On TedColes recent edit to the introduction: I support your removal of a lot of stuff from the introduction, like modulation methods; the intro was bloated. However I strongly oppose removal of the "mechanics of Morse code" paragraph. The general readers coming to this article (and even many technically educated readers) are not going to have any knowledge about this obsolete communication method, unless they are radio amateurs. They are going to want to know what radiotelegraphy is. This paragraph explains it (EXPLAINLEAD), it is the heart of the article. Without this paragraph the introduction is not an adequate summary of the article (MOS:LEAD), in fact it is a tease (WP:VAI). --Chetvorno^TALK 08:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

On Fountains of Bryn Mawr comments above: I wouldn't object to moving the article to Radiotelegraphy for the reasons you gave (leaving Wireless telegraphy as a redirect). I agree the coverage of nonradio "vaporware" is excessive and should be cut back. However I question whether these trivial dead end experiments merit a section in History of telecommunications; by default this article might be the best place for them. --Chetvorno^TALK 08:06, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

• I think that some re-structuring of the set of articles dealing with radio and telegraphy is desirable. 'Radiotelegraphy' is probably better than 'Wireless telegraphy', although I am old enough to have grown up with a domestic wireless at home, and references to W/T are likely to be encountered when reading about communication in the 1960s and earlier. Also, WiFi is defined as a family of wireless network protocols
• In my reading about the history of telegraphy, the change from manual telegraphy – usualy with Morse code – to automatic telegraphy – usually using a derivation of Baudot code, was a most significant advance. But the Telegraphy article only uses the word 'automatic' once, referring to the routing of Telex messages, so that should be improved.
• Although telegraphy was the first really useful application of electromagnetic transmission, a brief mention of failed dead-end attempts at transmission without wires is not unreasonable. The details of the different ways of using radio, I leave to others, but it seems to me that User:Fountains of Bryn Mawr's suggestion is appropriate.
• I did not intend that 'the "mechanics of Morse code" paragraph' should disappear entirely from this article, but not be duplicated in the lead and overeview section. Perhaps it could be described in less technical detail and complemented with something about the mechanics of automatic transmission with ITA2 code.--TedColes (talk) 10:19, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Added a brief explanation of the mechanics of radiotelegraphy to intro. On TedColes remarks about including "automatic telegraphy", ITA2 and Baudot code: I wouldn't object to brief mentions, but we already have articles on Teletype and Radioteletype which would be a more appropriate place for that. This article should concentrate on manual radiotelegraphy and the early paper tape machines used before the teletype. There is a huge amount of material that hasn't been covered: Q codes, Z codes, prosigns, keying circuits, siphon recorders, key clicks and splatter, break-in operation, radiograms, FSK modulation in Alexanderson alternator and Poulsen arc transmitters, amateur message relay nets and the American Radio Relay League. --Chetvorno^TALK 00:27, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Recent edits on modern use

@Rafal Lukawiecki: My feeling is your recent edits on modern use of radiotelegraphy are somewhat misleading. VOR beacons don't require knowledge of radiotelegraphy to use, they just transmit their 3 letter identifier in Morse code. Most pilots don't know Morse and look up the "dot-dash" code if they do not know it by ear. Also, most military training in Morse code is for signal lamp use, not radiotelegraphy. --Chetvorno^TALK 19:25, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

@Chetvorno: If your expertise suggests that VOR is not an example of radiotelegraphy please edit or remove my contributions. I am most definitely not here to mislead anyone. Please provide facts to support your statement that "*most* pilots don't know Morse and look up the dot-dash code". Based on my somewhat limited commercial and more non-commercial cockpit experience, pilots are familiar with the meaning of VOR signals and I have no reasons to believe they would be unfamiliar with something they are supposed to be familiar with as part of their training. Morse airport codes are still printed on commonly available aeronautical charts in UK and Ireland, as of 2021. They are transmitted, in Morse, by VOR radio (and also in visible light when close to the airport). If the former is not an example of "trasmission of telegraph signals by radio" as stated at the start of this article, I would appreciate if you could correct the article to redefine wireless telegraphy in accordance with a reputable source, which I would politely request you cite. Many thanks for your contributions. Rafal Lukawiecki (talk) 20:00, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

@Rafal Lukawiecki: It's a bit rich demanding sources for Chetvorno's talk page comment when your statement about VOR in the article is entirely unsourced. It is your responsible to cite the material you have added, not Chetvorno's responsibility to show something different. The WP:BURDEN policy says The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material. I can confirm from experience that there is absolutely no morse training needed for a private pilot license, but I don't know about a commercial license. I also agree that there is no need to know morse to use a VOR beacon. It is not even necessary to look up the morse ID of the beacon. Each VOR broadcasts at a frequency unique to it in that area and those frequencies are marked on air navigation charts. If you are flying towards the wrong beacon because you don't know morse, then you are an idiot who can't read a map and do basic navigation - a somewhat more serious problem. SpinningSpark 09:31, 7 August 2021 (UTC)

Date spark gap transmitters banned

@Chetvorno: I noticed that you changed the date of the ban on spark gap transmitters from 1930 to 1934 without giving a source. That caused me to try looking for a source and they are all over the place with dates; 1923, 1924, 1947. The problem seems to be that no one is citing who is doing the banning. Is it a local authority or an international agreement? This article in The Military Engineer says that attempts have been made to ban spark-gap transmitters but many are still in use, especially on non-US ships. That's from the December 1935 issue thus contradicting the 1934 date. After that we are in to the lead up to WW2 so international agreements seem unlikely. My money would be on the 1947 date. That is the only source I found talking about international conferences and agreements. It also says the FCC was formed in 1934 and later banned spark-gap Txs but no date. They do give a reference for the 1947 date but annoyingly gbooks won't serve that page to me. I'll try to find out what it is. SpinningSpark 09:58, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

International Telecommunication Conferences, Atlantic City, New Jersey, May-October 1947 is the source cited in The Military Engineer. They note that Class B (spark) transmissions have been prohibited in the US "for some time" and that successive conferences have progressively restricted their use. The regulations are amended by this conference to completely ban them except in emergency, but with a temporary exemption for Australian ships close to their own coast. SpinningSpark 16:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll source that date. Don't know why sources give so many dates. The international conferences negotiated global regulations and set implementation dates, which themselves had no legal force, then individual nations implemented them in their radio laws. A good account is in Schroeder, Ch. 3, which my browser for some reason is not showing me.

The 4th International Radiotelegraph Convention, 1927, prohibited licensing of land-based spark stations after 1929 and banned land-based damped wave emission after 1934 (Howeth, p.509), that's where my date comes from. However, the politically powerful shipping industry fought a blanket prohibition on damped waves, to avoid the capital cost of replacing old spark transmitters which were still being used on many ships, particularly in developing countries (which weren't going to stop using them regardless). So they allowed spark transmitters on ships to continue to operate, below 300 watts. At the 6th International Convention, 1938, spark use on ships was restricted to 3 frequencies.(Howeth, p.512) And if I remember it right, at each successor Convention shipping interests continued to get loopholes allowing shipboard spark use on a few frequencies. Your source indicates non-emergency spark use was prohibited at the 1947 conference, but I seem to remember Schroeder saying it was still legal in the 1960s, maybe he was referring to the Australians. --Chetvorno^TALK 19:26, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Correction: you're right. From what I can read of it, Schroeder says non-emergent use was banned at the 1947 conference. --Chetvorno^TALK 02:15, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

For the purpose of this article, I would think 1934 is the appropriate date for the end of damped waves. The shipboard transmitters were just a small tolerated legacy use.--Chetvorno^TALK 22:22, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

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