> On Mar 18, 2022, at 3:15 PM, W2HX <w...@w2hx.com> wrote:
>
>> For a number of years they had on display the world's oldest broadcast
>> transmitter, an FM transmitter from 1919 invented in The Hague by Hanso
>> Idzerda.
>
> Interesting as that would have predated the invention of FM by Edwin Howard
> Armstrong in 1933 (or at least what we thought was the invention). But
> notably, vacuum tube technology that existed in 1919 might be hard-pressed to
> be up to the task. I look forward to doing some more research on this topic.
> Thanks!
FWIW, in an article I wrote about Idzerda's work I mentioned an analogy: Leif
Eriksson's discovery of America, well before the journeys of Columbus. The
difference is that Eriksson's travels did not produce any historic followup
while Columbus's travels did. Similarly, Idzerda's work was a technological
dead end; while a few additional transmitters were built from his design, it
disappeared in the late 1920s, and the reactance modulator used by Armstrong
was a better technology.
In the world of computers you can apply this analogy as well; the Analytical
Engine, the ABC computer, and perhaps Zuse's computers would be examples of
early work that didn't produce any real descendants. Somewhat different but
similar are all the various dead end technology bits, from core rope ROM to
bubble memory to magnetic card memory, all things that had a brief and very
limited existence but faded and left no progeny.
paul
