Having been reading and tinkering with things "radio" since the late 1940's, I've come to the conclusion that virtually every significant concept we use in our radios today was known by the late 1920's. Much of that work was driven by the "space race" of the 1900 to 1930 era - the rush to have reliable radio communications linking all of industrialized countries of the globe.
Ever since then it's been a matter of developing the components to better exploit those concepts. Even SSB was well understood by 1930, not to mention FM, radar and television and phase modulation techniques. Before 1930, Hidetsugu Yagi and Shintaro Uda had completed the design of their famous "wave projector antenna" in Japan - the antenna we know today as simply a "Yagi" - employing the dipole antenna developed by Heinrich Hertz in the 1880's. Of course, Marconi pioneered and defined the grounded end-fed antenna over that same span of years. They were just a couple of examples, not to ignore giants like Harold Beverage and others who put into practical use every sort of "antenna" we use today. Some concepts still thought of as leading edge today, such as spread spectrum and frequency hopping schemes, were defined before 1920, although it did take "pinup girl"/popular actress (and less well known to her admiring public as a skilled electronic engineer) Hedy Lamaar to describe a practical system in the 1940's. It seems that, in radio, a veritable explosion of invention took place over just a few decades spanning the turn of the 19th century. Everything since has been simply developing the technology to best exploit those inventions. It's not just radio. Our automobile engines haven't changed except in the components used either and, of course, electric cars were not unusual on the roads of 1900 with their future simply awaiting better battery technology. 73, Ron AC7AC -----Original Message----- On 7/11/2011 1:57 PM, Anthony Simons wrote: Is there truly anything new in electronics? > See it here: http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1939/ ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
