Category: General

Reading Where Great Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson last week. I learned that Lee deForest (the grandfather of radio) accidentally invented the Audion which went of to be the vacuum tube.

The story goes that a Bunsun burner in his bedroom laboratory in 1903 changed colour when he sparked his spark gap transmitter. What is a spark gap transmitter?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8EgTyzG1gI

The spark gap transmitter is a descendent of an Irish invention. The Induction Coil was invented by Rev Nicholas Callan in Maynooth in 1836.

The blue flame of deForest’s Bunsen burner changed to red when the spark gap transmitter was activated. According to Johnson’s book this was an error. The flame change was not created by the massive all band electromagnetic pulse from the transmitter but was caused by more simple wave, an acoustic soundwave or air being pushed.

Never the less the error set deForest off on a tangent that would lead him to invent the Audion which was a very ineffective but much needed amplifier. The Audion was later improved by placing its gates inside a vacuum tube.

I was happy to believe this story until tonight I read a story on OneTubeRadio.com.

Possible truths
1. Lee deForest didn’t understand what he had invented
2. Flames do conduct electromagnetic waves
3. The Audion was not an efficient amplifier
4. The Vacuum Tube was the improvement the Audion needed.

So here is the really interesting thing, deForest though ignorance, blind faith and belligerence invented something from a scientific error that directly led to the ideal solution which is still used to this day in guitar amplifiers.

So sometimes mad scientists invent what conventional scientists will never discover because learned conventions mean they would never be barking at the wrong tree. All hail the mad scientist.

The Martello Tower in Howth was the scene of tests in the early 1900s for deForest and the British Post Office. At the Martello Tower today is The Hurdy Gurdy Radio Museum that has a real working Spark Gap Transmitter. If you ask them nicely they will demonstrate it for you.

1957 Lee de Forest This Is Your Life

The smallest radio station in the world 107.9 FM Radio Scilly Closedown Sequence – Radio Scilly Goes AUTOMATIC 7 days a week from 10PM TO 7AM

Wikipedia says

Radio Scilly is a not for profit, non-profit distributing community radio station. It launched at 2 pm on 3 September 2007, and broadcasts to 2,100 residents of the Isles of Scilly.

It broadcasts on FM on 107.9 MHz from the existing radio mast by the Coastguard Tower at Telegraph on St. Mary’s island. Currently, BBC Radio Cornwall transmits from there on 96 MHz. Tests show that all of the Isles of Scilly can be covered from this site, and the transmitter output power is 100 watts vertical polarisation, although the station is licensed for up to 200 watts mixed polarisation.
It claims to be the world’s smallest radio station, due to the small number of residents on the islands, and the fact that reception beyond islands is very limited (reception is possible in St. Just in Cornwall). However, its licensed service area population is slightly larger than that of the UK’s smallest licensed station Two Lochs Radio which broadcasts to an official service area population of just 1,681.

Every good pirate radio ship needs a good anchor. Testing Anchor.FM app for what is says is ‘radio reinvented’

Made for DCTV by broadcast historian Eddie Bohan this is Dublin Pirate Days. Episodes 1 & 5 are missing in action but I hope to source them. There is some great content here, but do excuse the audio quality which suffered in the production budget.

Spirit Radio is off air on 549KHz

in a message on facebook the station said

“Hi. Just to let you know we are experiencing transmitter Issues affecting our 549MW Broadcast.
We have Technicians working on it to fix them.
Thanks.”

in just over a week’s time Ronan Keating will begin co presenting the breakfast show on Magic FM with fellow host Harriet Scott. Starts September 4th across the UK.

Ronan’s best holiday trip ever? The Maldives “The Ocean below you and these fishes and creatures, just different form the way I was born and raised”.

I think Bayside in Dublin isn’t so far from the Irish Sea and the Blue Lagoon Ronan! (but it isn’t the Maldives). Next ESPN will send a news crew to Dublin 13 looking for the ghetto.

Ronan’s previous radio hosting experience was in June 2015 filling in for the summer on Magic. He is an accomplished presenter on TV and once co presented the Eurovision Song Contest to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

When Sam Phillips sold Elvis’ contract in 1955 he used the money to start an all girl radio station in Memphis, TN. Set in a pink, plush studio in the nations’ third Holiday Inn, it was a novelty—but not for long. He hired models, beauty queens, actresses, telephone operators. Some were young mothers who just needed a job. WHER was the first radio station to feature women as more than novelties and sidekicks. The WHER girls were broadcasting pioneers.

Tune in to the weekly podcast on iTunes and stitcher and others later. Having been on a break since December 2016 this includes the period since April 2017 when Netflix released the TV version of the book about Sophia Amoruso and the making of the Nasty Gal company.