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October 1963 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
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Guglielmo Marconi is usually credited with first employing radio waves for
remote, wireless communications. In 1894 he reportedly demonstrated a wireless
signal transmission that rang a remote buzzer when a spark transmitter was
activated. He famously sent the first known transatlantic message in 1901 from
North America to Europe. Wireless between ships and shore had occurred half a
decade earlier over lesser distances. Russian historians beg to differ on who
should get credit for the first wireless communications. Alexander Stepanovitch Popoff
(aka Popov) supposedly beat Marconi in a number of wireless benchmark
transmissions and receptions by months or years. Popoff does usually receive
credit for having invented the automatic de-coherer which broke the completed
circuit formed when the iron filings in the
coherer
would fill the gap between electrodes. There are no doubt many instances of one
person receiving credit for being the first to accomplish some task, when
another did it beforehand, but did not have the benefit of fame and renown to
widely broadcast and record the event.
Inventors of Radio: Alexander Stepanovitch Popoff
 By Dexter S. Bartlett
Alexander S. Popoff has become a controversial subject of late years. The Russians
claim him as the sole inventor of wireless; yet he is apparently totally ignored
by the Marconi adherents. The truth, as is often the case, seems to be somewhere
between. His contributions may not have been epoch-forming, but are well worth mentioning
for the record. He definitely was first to make practical use of a wireless device
and the first to utilize an antenna. (Loomis and Edison had previously used antennas
in experiments.) He made Branly's coherer a success with his decoherer and he was
one of the first to have his equipment used in saving lives at sea.
Alexander Stepanovitch Popoff (or Popov) was born in Perm, in the Ural mountains
of Russia, on March 16, 1859. At the age of 17 he entered the University of Sciences
and in 1883 became professor at the Marine Academy at Kronstadt. It was there that
he did most of his scientific work. He died at St. Petersburg (Leningrad) in January
1906.
After hearing of the discoveries of Roentgen and Crookes, he made up a series
of tubes for investigating X-rays on fluorescent materials. He also heard of the
experiments of Hertz and Branly and began his many wireless experiments at the Kronstadt
Naval Yard.
As early as 1895, Professor Popoff communicated to the Physico-Chemical Society
of St. Petersburg the details of a device employed by him for graphically registering
atmospheric disturbances with an iron-filing coherer, introduced between an antenna
or "exploring rod" and ground. A relay and tapper (decoherer) were also employed,
the former operating a 12-hour recorder. With this arrangement, he detected thunderstorms
at a distance of 20 miles.
Although Hughes and Lodge had used thumpers for decoherers, it remained for Popoff
to make Branly's coherer usable by brilliantly hooking his bell tapper in the receiver
relay circuit and thereby decohering after each received signal.
In May 1895, using his thunder-storm detector, along with an Hertz oscillator,
he worked a distance of 1,000 meters. According to Sir Oliver Lodge, he had no thought
of wireless telegraphy, but the experiment was for scientific purposes. Nevertheless,
by Dec. 5, 1895, Popoff expressed confidence that he could establish a wireless
telegraph system if he could perfect a more powerful transmitter.
On March 24, 1896, he and his assistant, Rybkine, gave a demonstration at St.
Petersburg University, transmitting Morse signals between two buildings 250 meters
apart and recording them on tape. This radio program - the first in the world, and
taped, too - comprised only two words: "Henri Hertz."
In March 1897, he established a station at Kronstadt, and equipped the cruiser
Africa with his apparatus. As the story of Popoff's record goes, in 1899 wireless
communication was established between the battleship Admiral Aprasin and the coast,
a distance of 45 miles. In 1900, a wireless dispatch from St. Petersburg, using
Popoff's apparatus, was flashed to the icebreaker Ermak in the Baltic, instructing
the crew to rescue a group of fishermen stranded on floating ice in the Gulf of
Finland, possibly the first time wireless was used to save lives at sea.
In 1897, during experiments aimed at organizing radio communications within the
Baltic fleet, Popoff is claimed by the Russian author P. Kolessov to have discovered
the reflection of electro-magnetic waves by naval units. More than 40 years later
this discovery was to serve as a basis for radar.
A year later the Russian Army used Popoff's equipment and in 1903 the Ministry
of Postal-Telegraph opened its first commercial wireless service. In 1901 he became
professor at the St. Petersburg Electro-Technical Institute, but still found time
to work on developing wireless telegraphy on board units of the Russian fleet.
Undoubtedly Popoff has considerable justification in his claim for firsts in
wireless telegraphy as his dates are mostly contemporary with Marconi. But being
a basic scientist, Popoff is said to have refused to take out patents on his wireless
system, contending that the discoveries should benefit the scientific world at large.
Bibliography
Orrin E. Dunlap, Radio's 100 Men of Science 1944 Larousse Du Siecle, 1932 Maver
Wireless T & T 1909
Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity, 1912
Mary Texanna Loomis, Radio Theory, 1926
J. A. Fleming, Principle of Electric Wave Telegraphy, 1910
Story, The Story of Wireless Telegraphy, 1904
Radio Times of India, Sept. 16, 1949.
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