QRZ Logbook

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The latest news is that there is no news...sorta

Things have been so hectic that I haven't had time to get on the air. I've not pressured my daughter to studying for her ham ticket further, but with school, it's hard to take time out for that. We talked about it the other day, so I think we'll be back to the books soon.

On the media front, it looks like the New Jersey Hall of Fame is going to honor Guglielmo Marconi, which I didn't realize that 1) he hadn't been honored considering his contribution to radio and the radio art, and 2) that there was a New Jersey Hall of Fame.

It looks like Marconi will finally get this accolade he deserves. It's like Babe Ruth not being honored in the Baseball HOF, for those baseball fans out there.

For those who are not familiar with Marconi, first off you should be ashamed of yourself. Are there hockey fans who don't know Wayne Gretzky?

Radio was not "radio" until Marconi came along. He studied the so-called "hertzian waves" around the time of Heinrich Hertz's death. He built upon Hertz's studies of electromagnetic radiation. Through these studies, he transmitted the first wireless signal in 1895, and radio was born.

Although previous work by others had been performed, they could only get a signal to go a few feet. Roughly the same as if your electric mixer interfered with the TV is what it amounted to. When Marconi first transmitted his device, it went about 1.5 miles. He eventually sent signals across open sea and then, in 1901 the first trans-Atlantic signals were sent.

He proved that radio was not just "line-of-sight" and thus the era of "amateur radio" was underway.

Well time to get back to the other things that take precedence. I may let loose on a nagging issue I have, but will hold off. We'll see how things go with that. In the meantime, I hope to get back on the air soon.

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