18 Mar
2022
18 Mar
'22
1:46 p.m.
On Mar 18, 2022, at 3:15 PM, W2HX <w2hx at
w2hx.com> wrote:
FWIW, in an article I wrote about Idzerda's work I mentioned an analogy: Leif
Eriksson's discovery of America, well before the journeys of Columbus. The difference
is that Eriksson's travels did not produce any historic followup while Columbus's
travels did. Similarly, Idzerda's work was a technological dead end; while a few
additional transmitters were built from his design, it disappeared in the late 1920s, and
the reactance modulator used by Armstrong was a better technology.
In the world of computers you can apply this analogy as well; the Analytical Engine, the
ABC computer, and perhaps Zuse's computers would be examples of early work that
didn't produce any real descendants. Somewhat different but similar are all the
various dead end technology bits, from core rope ROM to bubble memory to magnetic card
memory, all things that had a brief and very limited existence but faded and left no
progeny.
paul
For a number of years they had on display the
world's oldest broadcast transmitter, an FM transmitter from 1919 invented in The
Hague by Hanso Idzerda.
Interesting as that would have predated the invention of FM by Edwin Howard Armstrong in
1933 (or at least what we thought was the invention). But notably, vacuum tube technology
that existed in 1919 might be hard-pressed to be up to the task. I look forward to doing
some more research on this topic. Thanks!