• ElectroVagrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Speaking of when radio was new reminds me of reading about some very early concerns that were discussed about the possibility of setting the atmosphere ablaze with some of the experiments being conducted. 😅

    Interesting stuff skimming through these, especially the info about dealing with faded/distant signals!

    • kalkulat@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      setting the atmosphere ablaze

      Maybe that’s why Tesla took his lab out to Colorado!

      20-30 years later, some of the famous Manhattan project physicists were worried about the atom-bomb doing that too. They went ahead anyways. Cuz, what the hell.

      • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        Oh, now that you mention it, I think I may have been mixing memories together. Confusing the nuclear tests with early radio research. 😅

        Edit:
        I couldn’t help but keep wondering about this, so I did some digging to check my memory. Turns out I was right after all!

        The trick, Tesla thought, was to use the air of the upper atmosphere to transmit energy - over any distance, above or through the Earth, even to other planets. Power would be beamed to a terminal in the upper atmosphere, then transmitted to receivers on the ground or in the air. The risks were potentially high - “So strangely do such powerful discharges behave,” he wrote in 1899, “that I have often experienced a fear that the atmosphere might be ignited.”

        • kalkulat@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Good catch! At least Tesla was concerned about potential side effects. (Too bad he gave his patents to Westinghouse … so everyone forgot who invented AC generation and transmission for a century)… or he’d have had the money to do more, better experiments.)

          Unlike many of those ‘Inventing Tomorrow!’ these days … too busy to ‘Save Today!’.