We Rediscover Spark Gap Radio by Accident
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- Опубликовано: 4 авг 2024
- It's 1890 all over again in the lab. By complete accident, I find myself the new owner of a high voltage box that turns out to be a vintage Xenon lamp sparker. Not only do we make it work, but we use it to retrace the critical experiments that led to the discovery of radio, using the lamp starter as the spark gap transmitter, and a coherer as the receiver.
Ken’s blog article gives more details about the reverse engineering of the Siemens sparker:
www.righto.com/2020/03/repair...
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Spitzensparken Maschine ... HAHAHA The whole Sticker is one funny automatic translation using words that do not really exist in german are composed in a way that they quite clearly express what they mean. As a german I am really rolling on the floor, laughing.
Wiz Raven Me too. Im asking myself all the time what the hell is „Spitzensparken“...🤣
what are you talking about- this is just named after my good friend Jochen Spitzensparken 🤣
It's from decades before anything could do an AUTOMATIC translation.
These exact terms have been used jokingly for this sort of thing in the USA (and probably England) since at least the 1930s. (The USA had a very large German population in the early part of the 20th century, so jokes about German accents and German words were quite common, even by ex-Germans themselves.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkenlights
We used to have similar signage in the various places that I worked at, (AUTOVON, AUTODIN, and etcetera). Mainly, it was used to jokingly tell visitors not to play with the machinery.
The blinkenlights inspired warning label made me roll on the floor.
Thanks for keeping the culture alive.
It’s interesting to think that in a little over a century, we’ve gone from this discovery phase, to the technology that allows me to watch this video over an in home radio transmission. Great video.
true man so true its insane
Yes, the last hundred years or so have been extraordinary.
More vidios to make to show how we got here....
The bandwidth of wi-fi channels is crazy compared to analogue TV, too! 10, 20, even 40 MHz wide!
I have an 80yr old friend who used to run a printed circuit board company I say to him "hey Jack! remeber when they invented the transistor?" he says "yes, yes I do." now we have computers and cell phones MPUs and CPUs ASICs etc.
"What could go wrong?" - Master Ken 😂
"FCC OPEN UP!"
Next time there's a thunderstorm, I'd be curious to know how far away that coherer would be triggered by nature's own "spark gap transmitter" in the sky!
Well even with a normal radio you can hear thunderstorms on AM very well. Even if they are really really far away.
@Heads Mess hahaha yeah, I used to do that too. I took a neon on a stretched out coat hanger, disconnecting the jumper between each section as I went, touching the Heath-Robinson Tester onto the wire. Thankfully, the farmer was clever enough to put the electric fence pulser by the entrance - easy to replace the batteries from the back of the Land Rover... I remember the mechanism, it was just a small heated bimetallic switch turn the knob and the contacts moved further apart the batteries needed changing about every 3-4 weeks, on the plus side it did seem to cope with lightning, something later models had problems with, so lightning arrestors would have to be put in every 50 yards to stop the damn things from popping in a thunderstorm.
So the coherer functions like ElectroBOOM's relay... it tack welds itself stuck until you bump it.
And that pseudo-German had me DYING! 🤣
That’s actually a pretty good explanation of it!
I remember we had a Blinkenlights and Dummkopf warning message on an big old Siemens development system I used back in the 1980s when I had a work placement at Wandel & Goltermann in the UK. It used 8" floppies, when it worked at all, and was sat on my bench. One day Princess Anne came to visit the site to open a new building, followed by lots of German VIPs. The Dummkopf signs were hurriedly covered up when it dawned on us that the Germans might not see the funny side. Shortly afterwards the machine gave up the ghost and I had to re-write all of my code on a "modern" HP system. The business eventually closed and the new building was abandoned for many years.
We had that sign at the Computer History Museum on top of our "German" IBM 1401. We had to take it down too. Some Germans, mostly the ones that had low fluency in English, took it at face value. And it's obviously not funny if you do that. I (used to) speak German fluently and I still find it very amusing - it's plain English, but with cleverly substituted German sounding made-up words, mostly with English roots, so every English native understands it (i.e. "Not to be Operated By Dimwits" becomes "Nicht fur Gewerken by Dummkopfen"). Believe me, humor is the most difficult thing to catch when you learn a foreign language - I still struggle with it in English - and this is a double take on two languages on top of it.
@@CuriousMarc "Das machine ist nichtfur gefingerpoken or mittengrabben...". I'm going to betray my age. Shortly after I learned to read this ad appeared in the classified ads of my mother's Saturday Evening Post magazine. You could for some nominal price get a nice printed sign with those instructions. Scientific American at the same time had ads for Curta calculators. You should get one of those.
15:35 Family photos printed with a needle printer on endless paper. No doubt, printed by some historic mainframe. Perfect! This is how nerds decorate lab walls in style! :-)
I can honestly say that after seeing that celebratory soviet lamp, my life has changed. I need one!
This was awesome!! In the 90’s, during the time of analog TV, I did a lot of experimenting with spark gap transmitters, including a coherer (antique equipment, which I still have). But my proximity to a neighborhood occupied by spirited Texas sports fans, and the fact that it *might* have been connected to a 50 ft. antenna during a Super Bowl game (that I didn’t realize was being broadcast, because I [was] a geeky nerd) *may* have been why I *voluntarily* stopped. In Texas, Sports>Science. (Me and fellow geeky nerds are working on that, just not during football games😁)
"In Texas Sports>Science" I feel that one, man. x_x
That’s so cool-interfering with your common Texass Goober’s Football Game! You could have set up a switch so when you turned on the spark during their football game, all the tubby, emotionally stupid little goobers would start screeching and running around going ape-sh’t, beating their dogs and wives and children and shooting ethnic minorities in the neighborhood, then turn it off and then they settle down again, then do it again and on and off again and you’ve just invented a ‘Goober Emotional Control System’! Awesome!
Uhm, what? I was just talking about not realizing I was creating static on nearby TV’s.
@@DanielGBenesScienceShows That’s ok-I figured it all out for you! You don’t even have to think! 😃
@@Quark.Lepton The heck are you on about?
My dear old dad always had the famous Spitzensparken sign over his ham radio station - which gave my German friend conniptions every time he saw it!
So you gave people in your neighbourhood a pretty hard time listening to radio during that episode?
And TV and maybe wifi? FCC coming to knock on Marc's front door soon ;)
Power drops off with the square of the distance from the source. It may have been momentarily annoying for a residential block or so around.
No worse than CB radios were years ago.
What about WiFi and mobile phones?
@@bobroberts2371 Ha!...but only if you transmit the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 ! 😂
the secret life of machines had an interesting episode on radio. in it, they made their own coherer out of a piece of plastic tubing with two screws screwed into it, and some filings from a silver coin in the gap. they then hooked it up to a battery, in series with a small electric bell. a wooden dowel was attached to the arm of the bell to hit their coherer to make it non conductive again. they used kites with wire to make two antennas; one was connected to the makeshift coherer receiver, and the other to the ignition coil on a car. every time the car fired the spark, it caused the receiver to ring the bell. they got a pretty far distance away with it still working. I'm sure the episode is on youtube. search for "secret life of machines radio".
Ha! Tim Hunkin has put out remastered versions of the secret life on his own channel and coincidentally that's what led me here.
Didn't electroboom do a video on spark gap radio stuff or something like 12 hours ago or something lol
And Diodegonewild started a series on tesla coil, yes lol
About 30 years ago too in a great tv series, The Secret Life of Machines.
@@BenHelweg golden show by Tim Hunkin
me coming here, right after watching the video of Medhi
@cyber soul And both of them are degreed electrical engineers.
"So that it can work at full chooch." Marc is an AvE fan! Two of my favorite worlds collide.
1:22 Someone finally promouces SIEMENS properly. Thank you Curious Marc for fascinating video :-)
Thank you Marc, I love it when we get a pop up history lesson like this! Very well done!
This coherer is pretty amazing. I always wonder how inventions like this came into place. I can't image some guy filling a tube with metal shavings and two electrodes to place it in front of a spark generator to see if it has some effect on it....
Very cool experiments. Back in the early 80's, I made a Jacobs Ladder using a 555 timer and an automotive coil. While I was experimenting with it, my brother complained that something was affecting the TV program he was watching. Of course I thought that was hilarious and operated the Jacobs Ladder even more. 😉
Ei heff to mittengrabben mei Belly!!1! That Spitzensparken Maschine so completely cracked me up, I can't see the video for tears! Excellent!
Superb video, Marc! Always wondered how spark gap radio did anything useful. Also shows beautifully the benefits of an antenna.
This is a great video. I appreciate you reproducing the experiments that led to such a great rabbit hole of discovery and invention.
Tx Marc! That was awsome! Brought me back to a lab I was working around 2000 in at one of the little "Bell's" up here in Canada. Anyhow, .one day a bunch of us got bored as things had slowed down on a project while waiting for materials to arrive. So me (as the technician) and a group of electrical engineers decided to play with some of our employer equipment. We all got together in our lab's and after messing around for hours basically preformed this VERY SAME experiment,All be it not as well as you have shown, for just some shits and giggles! I tell you though the cheer when we confirmed we had made radio in our lab was nothing short of exhilarating! Towards the end even our managers were chipping in!Man that was the best 7 hours of my life I tell you. All of use co-operating and working together. Not something seen as much today. So many people today are Lone wolf types... Man.. just realized that was 20 years ago.. I am all of a sudden overcome with how old I am.
I've been a "member" of the QCWA for over 20 years. WB0xxx
Great video... excellent understanding of the process... Thanks for the mention... David Navone N6SWX Stockton CA
Nice to see you here! How did you ever get into making coherers for the rest of us?
I so want one of these! I’d love to get into the radio of the brass and mahogany era! Not sure the ACMA (Aussie FCC) would love me for it…
That was fantastic. A bit of history and demo. Makes me want to go to an auction to see what I can pick up.
This reminds me of my experiments with an old ford spark coil and a 6v lamp battery, that would have been about 60 years ago when I was 11 or so.
Thanks for showing a coherer in action. Whoah! As low as 4 ohms looks very impressive.
"Spitzensparkenmaschine" cracked me up! (um, yes, I'm German).
I think the A/D converter may be a 18652A. This was designed and built by HP's Avondale division and was used for chromatographic data collection and analysis in the HP 335x series Lab Automation Systems. These ran on HP1000 computers, the earliest being the 2100, I think, with paper tape and teletypes. They went right through to the 3357 with RTE6VM and the 3350A series on RTE-A. The A/Ds were daisy-chained on a loop with a maximum of 100 metres of cable between boxes, and 15 devices on a loop. They were interfaced to a 18651A loop card in the HP1000 M/E/F series. I can't remember the number of the card in the A-series. I remember the 3357 supported up to 4 loops, giving simultaneous data collection, analysis and reporting on up to 60 chromatographs. The design was interesting. Chromatography does not require fast rates, but it does demand a very high dynamic range. What you are after is to measure the area under the curve, so these are dual-slope integrating A/Ds that effectively give you area slices, with no dead time. Another box that was available was the 18653B, which you could use to control an autosampler or to give you 16 bits of TTL input and 7 bits of triac output. Let me know if you want any further information -- I was a systems engineer who worked on these systems.
Yes that's the very one from the Chromatograph. Thanks for the info, particularly the HP 1000 interface card number. Now, how to find one of these...
@@CuriousMarc You'll need LAS software to make it work, Marc, and even then it's very specific to chromatography. Good luck!
All those mysterious antennae on buildings down the street at SRI are experiencing mysterious noise bursts. ... Wir fürchten die Funken.
Thank you for another great video! I always assumed that telegraph started with modulating broadband arcs (TV telegraph beeps) and someone on the other side would listen with a very sensitive earpiece, but this has helped me correct my ways!
How coincidental; Eletroboom just did a video on spark gap transmitters just the other day (I think yesterday infact)
He just did, right here: ruclips.net/video/SnKKj2bonAI/видео.html . He concentrates on the critical step after this, and explains the resonant tuning quite well. And of course zaps himself a few times in the process. Added a card with a link to it in the video itself.
That's like the first thing I noticed when I saw this video lol
Physics lessons are much more exciting these days, thanks Marc. Shows why cars have to have suppression on their ignition systems too. I like the multiple disc spark gap thingy - that's a clever solution.
Fascinating stuff! Bit of history, theory explanation and practical demonstration. Subscribed!
Good demonstration of a spark gap radio.
Nice shoutout to ElectroBoom. His spark gap video is in my playlist.
When I was a kid way back in the early 50's I had a radio controlled Japanese toy bus that used this principal to steer the wheels. It had a spark gap transmitter, one press to turn right one press two presses to turn left etc. After each detection by the coherer, the motor and gears that drove the steering linkage would reset the coherer by tapping on it with a metal spring weighted arm. With fresh batteries IIRC the range was about 6 to 10'.
les voisins devaient être heureux que tu filmes cet épisode !! en tout c'était très intéressant. Vivement la suite !
You are making me fall in love with electrical engineering in a way my coursework never could.
I remember reading an old book as a child where this principle was being demonstrated. The coherer was tied to a solenoid which triggered a little hammer to tap on the glass tube and break the connection. They even walked you through how to make the glass tube and metal shavings (through filing) and how to wind the transformer and the solenoid. Since it was supposed to be battery-powered, I assume they relied on the contact bounce to get the AC.
Very very very interesting video. 19 mins of excitement and good knowledge.
In the late 70's I had a Radio Shack Science Fair 65 in One, electronic kit that had a 9 volt spark gap generator circuit project using the small relay as a spark buzzer and AM ferrite coil and thought it would be cool to connect it to my 50 foot long wire antenna (not mentioned in the instructions). My parents and neighbors were not too happy when my signals blotted out nearby TV's sets and AM FM and CB radios. Later I learned the FCC banned Spark gap technology in the 1930's due to the similar intrusive wide spectrum interference.
this sparks joy!
Okay, that does it. I'm through lurking. Great little history lesson. Subscribed!
Love the sound it makes. Pretty impressive given that home automation could have been achieved in the early 20th century! Great work as always!
I like the experimental and educational aspects of this video.
8:45 The meter seems not that happy about the amount of RF flowing through it :D
True! I had not noticed! Looks like it loses its marbles for a second! It's OK a little further away. Good way to test your electronics for EMI robustness...
@@CuriousMarc Do you have a Spectrum Analyser? I'd love to see how bad the RF emissions are from one of these.
You could probably destroy the Input of the SA when the antenna is too close :D
Yes I show the spectrum on the SA towards the end of the video.
@@CuriousMarc whoops sorry 😅😅
Holy crap i knew it was bad but that is basically just a giant rf jammer 😄
Great to see the sheer fun of exploration here. 👍
Thanks for sharing this. Its interesting to see how simple electronics can interfere with each other.
What a wonderful demonstration! I tried making a coherer when I was a teenager and never got it to work.
Great video. First I thought the hilarious pseudo-German couldn't be topped, but my jaw actually dropped when the sparks affected the radio conductor.
The kid in me LOVES the idea of a big ol' spark gap transmitter, but it gives the ham in me heebiejeebies. If you think today's noise-floor is bad, just imagine what it would be like with spark-gap wifi!
9:14 Well, that was interesting... I paused the video here to try and read the paper, ended up finding it online, which led to early radio sites, invention of radio sites, and finally coming back here an hour later. Thanks!
Superb history and radio lesson. Learned a lot today.
As a ham and commercial radio guy, I loved playing with spark gaps and noisy things, but if I WASN'T the one playing with it and was your neighbor, I would possibly be driving around the neighborhood with a directional antenna to locate the source of interference!
Of course, if I KNEW I was your neighbor, I wouldn't need the antenna to know it was probably you... It would be like the dinner bell.
*watching TV via the internet via cable* cue spark gap sounds drowning out Jack Benny.
Gets up and walks over to see what cool stuff you are using to make the pixies dance!
Luckily, this is what Faraday cages are for :D
Intriguing experiment with the antenna and coherer!
Those poor SW- amateurs in your vicinity...
Hi there, I came to comments to ask this very question. What is it that they may be experiencing, and from how far away could this be heard?
Hahahaha, I remember my experiments back in1975 my brother still wondering why the TV has black and white bars in the middle of the football match, hahaha!!
Not just shortwave, that thing was kicking out RF over most of the spectrum. However, without much of an antenna, it was probably only detectable for a few hundred meters.
Spark gap transmitters are very wideband and very noisy. He may not have an antenna connected, but I'm quite sure that he can at least annoy any SW- amateurs with a reasonable antenna and receiver 2 or 3 kilometers away. When I was a young YL in the 90's, a cement mill in the next city used a Ward- Leonard- Set to start up their ball mills. That thing blocked every SW band for about 2 minutes. Went like *bssssSSSSSSSSSSSS* (increasingly louder and higher) *brag* (when they switched from the WL to the "runing" recticifier). You could count the number of machines they started up. And of course they did that when you just had contact with a very weak station and bad fading. Authorities didn't do anything about it, as it (quite strangely) only blocked the SW- bands and left VHF and UHF alone. So there were only a handfull of ham guys complaining and rising from your cozy office chair for them...
Great vid an great class/lesson. Thanks, Masters!
Nice video! I make coherers with students, just using some iron filings, filling them into pvc tubing, and clogging that with some bolts. A LED and a coin battery completes the receiver. For the spark we use a Leyden jar.
Loved it! Curiously captivating.
I was playing about with this in my childhood, swapping out a high voltage transformer for ignition coil (easier to obtain) and a long wire antenna with some very crude tuning, we got some really good range on this before I was advised to cease / desist and become a radio ham :)
That was a shocking video Marc! Looking forward to the next chapter!!
73s de KC4BGA
Now that sparked my interest.
Old TIG welding power supplies have a similar spark gap 'transmitter' built into them to initiate the arc. The high voltage was inductively coupled onto the main power supply output and a current sensing relay would turn off the spark gap when the main arc was established. They were pretty simple and just had two pointed electrodes hidden behind a metal panel. The only maintenance you had to do was to pull the panel and check the electrode gap on occasion.
I was impressed by the conducting wooden probe you used.
lmao "risking an electroboom moment" i love it
Electroboom sors de ce corps :))
Great video, thank you! Very instructive.
However the noise of the spark sounds exactly like my appartement door"bell" and it stresses me everytime 🤣
Those glasses Ken! Hahah.. this is the best video ever.
MARC MON AMI ! Merci a toi de faire des experimentations a des fin d'apprentissage de connaissances super importante 🙏Jarrive en FRANCE en juillet. Jai bati une 3 spark gap machine in Canada. We should link up when I get to your country brother😇 Thanks again and talk soon.
Wonderful educational video!!!
I know I learned something because I am left with 10 questions. Thanks for the lesson @CuriousMarc. Static electricity.
the sticker is also funny in german! 🤣
You learn something new everyday!
Reminds me of my first "proper" Tesla coil I built as a teenager, it wiped out everything for quite a radius, I could hear it several miles away (a 0.5s burst every 10s) and it could be seen very clearly on a friends TV half a mile away. My father discovered my problem and earthed one end and the spurious RF ceased. I can see why these things are banned...
I'd mention Popov and his first transmition "HEINRICH HERTZ". Not only Marconi.
As said previously. I am referring to the invention of what we commonly call radio today, which did hinge on the use of the coherer. Transmission of energy through electromagnetic waves had been demonstrated by several people slightly earlier, although deemed not suitable for telecommunicatons. The first one was Heinrich Hertz in 1888, who set out to experimentally verify the wave transmission predictions of electromagnetism, soon after Maxwell formulated his equations. Branly's coherer thoroughly documented experimental study is 2 years later in 1890. Marconi always acknowledged the pioneering role of Branly and others in the development of radio, including Branly's name in the first message transmitted across the channel. But he is the one that refined it into practically viable radio (and got the Nobel prize for it).
@@CuriousMarc In 1943 the US Supreme Court invalidated marconis patents because he copied them from Oliver Lodge,John Stone and Nikola Tesla.Tesla said marconi was using 17 of his patents and sued marconi in 1915 but unfortunately he didnt have enough money for the expenses.
Very nice to see some german words on a device in your video. At least the correct ones on the SIEMENS ZX501 :-D Keep on tubing, your videos are so instructive! A bientôt!
That lamp Sparker Tube would make a dandy X-Ray generator. Brave Man wearing that chunky wrist watch performing HV experiments.
The spectrum analysis at 17:18 looks cleaner than a Baofeng radio!!! 😁
enjoyed that a lot..
Spitzensparken Maschine, i love it :-)
Love the 3kv supplies. Have two of them :)
Meanwhile on the neighbor's RUclips channel: "Today I'm going to tear down my car stereo because it keeps picking up this interference and I don't know where it's coming from".
spitzensparken maschine ❤️
07:10 "- Rebel base in range. - You may fire when ready."
marc: "so what can you do with 40kV?"
me: "generate x-rays?!"
marc: "perform early radio experiments! :) "
:(
Excellent video!
Between each zap and the tap to reset it... I'm hearing a 1734 Hz and 8670 Hz tone.. What is causing that? Actually looks like there may be more tones but those two are the most apparent...
@@jdwilliams518 That was the multimeter tone signaling very low impedance.
This is so cool
I love lamp!
Actually, they are still sorta arguing about how the Branly effect works. Some say Joule Heating. Others say it's a quantum tunneling effect of some sort. It's still being actively discussed and researched.
The spectrum looks like the waterfall display on my IC-7300 when lightning hits somewhere and you see and hear the crash.
Great demo! Have you seen the demo from the Secret Life of Machines where they used a running car’s ignition circuit to make a transmitter?
Yes I have
CuriousMarc seemed like a safe assumption :) Hope you and yours are able to stay safe!
Fascinating
That waveform looks like a snare drum sample.. I wonder what the captured sample set would sound like slowed down to audio frequency and pumped though a speaker 🤔
Great video! All my other comments have been commented already.
Nicht fur gefingerpoken!
David Hugh invented the Wireless Transmitter Receiver in 1879.
I created a low-power battery-operated miniature tesla-coil using a small electromechanical buzzer as the exciter.
Watching this reminded me of playing with neon sign transformers as a kid. I made a Jacobs ladder, great fun watching the spark climb the gap. All went well until I decided to see what happened if I put a pencil in the spark. Little did I know graphite is conductive. I was sitting on an wheeled office chair and then next thing I know I was on the other side of the room and my arm hurt.
I am in Virginia and you are in California, but I am rather sure it was you causing my S9 noise interference on 40m last week, cut it out!
🙂 Charlie
Ooh, interesting that signal got that far! I do have a receiver but I am only sometimes receiving weather satellites on uhf/137mhz
"Spitzensparken Maschine"
Ich lache mich tot. (I'm laughing my ass off.)
:)
Flawless German pronunciation Monsieur Marc!