Wireless: from Marconis Black-box to the Audion :: Wireless: from Marconis Black-box to the Audion

piano tuner from Marconis Black-box to the Audion Wireless is a methodical account of the early development of radio telegraphy and the inventors who made it possible. Sungook Hong examines several early significant inventions, including Hertzian waves and optics, the galvanometer, transatlantic signaling, Marconis secret-box, Flemings air-blast cardinal and double transformation system, Lodges syntonic transmitter and receiver, the Edison effect, the thermionic valve, and the audion and continuous wave. Wireless subscribes the respite created by Hugh Aitken, who described at length the early development of radiocommunication communication, but who did not attempt to probe the substance and context of scientific and engineering practice in the early years of radiocommunication (p. x). Sungook Hong seeks to fill this gap by offering an exhaustive analysis of the theoretical and data-based engineering and scientific practices of the early days of wireless by examining the bord er district between science and technology depicting the transformation of scientific effects into technological artifacts and showing how the race for scientific and engineering accomplishment fuels the fluent of the corporate institution. While the author succeeds in fulfilling these goals, the thesis, it seems, is to affirm Guglielmo Marconis place in history as the father of wireless telegraphy.Wireless begins with a apprize discussion of the 1995 centennial of the invention of radio by Marconi and a refuter by the British historians who oppose this claim. Using underused or previously overlooked or perhaps ignored resources the author disproves the claims against the originality and ingenuity of Marconis 1897 patent on wireless telegraphy. While credit is given to several British scientists and engineers and their scientific discoveries and inventions, it was Marconi, a practitioner, who made the first significant breakthrough in pragmatic wireless telegraphy when he conne cted one end of the place of the receiver, and one end of the transmitter, to the earth (p. 20). Marconi transformed these scientific effects into wireless technologies and then exploited them for commercial purposes. The focus of British scientists and engineers on optical analogies, scientific experimentation and demonstration, and the fear of British national interests becoming monopolized (particularly by a foreigner) are the primary reasons for the dispute surrounding Marconis patent. (By 1897 it was clear how wireless telegraphy would impact military interests.) The author shows in great contingent how British scientists and engineers, namely physicist Oliver Lodge, J. J. Thomson, Minchin, Rollo Appleyard, and Campbell Swinton, deliberately constructed false scientific and social claims to ignore the originality of Marconis patent.