Off topic, but I believe we have a few radio amateurs in the audience.

From a hackaday article on spark gaps and coherers, two old radio books you can read online:

- Radio simplified; what it is–how to build and operate the apparatus
by Kendall, Lewis F., jr.; Koehler, Robert Philip, joint author
Published [c1923]

- Wireless Telegraphy its history, theory and practice
by A Fredrick Collins
Published in 1905

Also a couple of specific papers on spark gaps and coherers:
- On the Action of the Coherer
by Wheeler, E. B.
Published April 28, 1899

- A Self-Readjusting 'Coherer.'
by Lawrence, A. E.
Published December 9, 1898

And one more:
- The work of Hertz and some of his successors
by Lodge, Oliver, Sir
Published 1894

Thanks Ed.

It was interesting to read the first chapter of 'Wireless telegraphy', published in 1905. The chapter discusses the Ether (or Aether). I didn't know that about 200 years earlier, the existence of the Ether had been rejected by one Father Boscovitch. And then continuing to explain that the experiments of Faraday, Maxwell, and Hertz in fact proved that the Ether exists ("settled conclusively and finally the existence of an ether"), and Boscovitch' notion could be rejected. The discussion in the book is quite detailed, going over many pages. What's strange, of course, is that the book was published in 1905, and the Michelson-Morley experiment which did not find an Ether was performed in 1887. And it had been repeated with increasing sensitivty (according to Wikipedia) since, including in 1902 and 1905 (which is a significant year in so many ways). So just when the Ether theory was apparently at its most solid ever, among some physicists, it crashed headfirst into a wall and had to be rejected.

In many ways the Ether discussion reminds me of today's dark matter and dark energy theories.. not that they will necessarily suffer the same fate, but it's like deja-vu to read about the aether/ether in that chapter of this book.

-Tor

Interesting point! We do tend to grab at ideas and hold onto them, but research moves on and a new generation may come up with a much better fit.

_________________
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?

Here's a Carver Mead link; He's "picked a fight" with Einstein!

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnwX2IF46m0 "Carver Mead presents The Universe and Us: An Integrated Theory of Electromagnetics and Gravitation"


Also, Michelson, Mr. "Ain't-no-such-thing-as-ether" man, himself, had a computer (analog!).

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsM30MAHLg&list=PL0INsTTU1k2UYO9Mck-i5HNqGNW5AeEwq "Albert Michelson's Harmonic Analyzer: (1/4) Intro/History: Introducing a 100-year-old mechanical computer"

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KmVDxkia_w&list=PL0INsTTU1k2UYO9Mck-i5HNqGNW5AeEwq "(2/4) Synthesis: A machine that uses gears, springs and levers to add sines and cosines" (and two more)

I still have to listen to the "Mead" thing again--with a fine toothed comb---though I just broke my metaphor, as combs are rarely known for their listening capabilities ... (Interdigitated "comb filter" .... hmmmm .... maybe... I studied SAWs once or twice; Surface Acoustic Wave Transducers. A bit "over my head', but what isn't, in this field! Maybe those "combs" do something like "listening"?)

I should also (1) see some old Mead vids and (2) try to read a couple things he wrote. (I did see a panel discussion vid with just him and Gordon Moore, discussing Moore's law; interesting that these old friends exchanged a couple of 4004s for the simple pleasure of conversation! I guess Mead's bona fides are legit! I rarely read, much about him, and only know what I read in Gilder's book--which I intensely distrusted, for various reasons; political, religious, philosophical, and scientific--"The Silicon Eye".).

[Another mistake on my part, intended to send a PM]

That machine is amazing, as are so many of the mechanical marvels that came along before computers. Taking its input from an array filled from an 8-bit A/D converter, my 5MHz 65c02 workbench computer does a 2048-point complex FFT in five seconds in Forth (not even assembly), approximately a hundred times as fast as the original IBM PC did a complex FFT of half that many points in GWBASIC, and of course some other processors can do it a thousand times as fast or faster. We have it so easy today.

_________________
http://WilsonMinesCo.com/ lots of 6502 resources
The "second front page" is http://wilsonminesco.com/links.html .
What's an additional VIA among friends, anyhow?