Download or read book Signor Marconi s Magic Box written by Gavin Weightman and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-06-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world at the turn of the twentieth century was in the throes of "Marconi-mania"-brought on by an incredible invention that no one could quite explain, and by a dapper and eccentric figure (who would one day win the newly minted Nobel Prize) at the center of it all. At a time when the telephone, telegraph, and electricity made the whole world wonder just what science would think of next, the startling answer had come in 1896 in the form of two mysterious wooden boxes containing a device one Guglielmo Marconi had rigged up to transmit messages "through the ether." It was the birth of the radio, and no scientist in Europe or America, not even Marconi himself, could at first explain how it worked -- it just did. And no one knew how far these radio waves could travel, until 1903, when a message from President Theodore Roosevelt to the king of England flashed from Cape Cod to Cornwall clear across the Atlantic.Here is a rich portrait of the man and his era-and a captivating tale of science and scientists, business and businessmen. There are stories of British blowhards, American con artists-and Marconi himself: a character par excellence, who eventually winds up a virtual prisoner of his worldwide fame and fortune.
Download or read book Signor Marconi s Magic Box written by Gavin Weightman and published by HarperCollins Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gavin Weightman tells the story of how Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless - and how it amused Queen Victoria, saved the lives of the Titanic survivors, tracked down criminals and began the radio revolution.
Download or read book Signor Marconi s Magic Box The invention that sparked the radio revolution Text Only written by Gavin Weightman and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The intriguing story of how wireless was invented by Guglielmo Marconi – and how it amused Queen Victoria, saved the lives of the Titanic survivors, tracked down criminals and began the radio revolution.
Download or read book Signor Marconi s Magic Box written by Gavin Weightman and published by . This book was released on 2006-03-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world at the turn of the 20th century was utterly in the throes of MarconimaniaÓ -- brought on by an incredible invention that no one could quite explain. And at the center of it all was an eccentric figure -- Guglielmo Marconi. In 1896 he rigged up a device to transmit messages through the ether.Ó Many of those at the first public demonstration thought they were witnessing a con man's trick. Yet Marconi's magic box would come to be regarded as the most remarkable invention of the 19th cent. For this was nothing less than the birth of the radio. A rich portrait of the man & his time -- & a captivating tale of science & scientists, business & businessmen, & of Marconi himself: a character par excellence, a complicated & celebrated genius.Ó Photos.
Download or read book Tesla written by W. Bernard Carlson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius. Even at the end of his life when he was living in poverty, Tesla still attracted reporters to his annual birthday interview, regaling them with claims that he had invented a particle-beam weapon capable of bringing down enemy aircraft. Plenty of biographies glamorize Tesla and his eccentricities, but until now none has carefully examined what, how, and why he invented. In this groundbreaking book, W. Bernard Carlson demystifies the legendary inventor, placing him within the cultural and technological context of his time, and focusing on his inventions themselves as well as the creation and maintenance of his celebrity. Drawing on original documents from Tesla's private and public life, Carlson shows how he was an "idealist" inventor who sought the perfect experimental realization of a great idea or principle, and who skillfully sold his inventions to the public through mythmaking and illusion. This major biography sheds new light on Tesla's visionary approach to invention and the business strategies behind his most important technological breakthroughs.
Download or read book Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi written by Timothy C. Campbell and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wireless technology has become deeply embedded in everyday life, but its impact cannot be fully understood without probing the contributions of the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), who ushered in the beginning of wireless communication. Marconi produced and detected sound waves over long distances, using the curvature of the earth for direction, and laid the foundations for what we know as radio—the original mobile, voice-activated, and electronic media community. Timothy C. Campbell demonstrates that Marconi’s invention of the wireless telegraph was not simply a technological act but also had an impact on poetry and aesthetics and linked the written word to the rise of mass politics. Reading influential works such as F. T. Marinetti’s futurist manifestos, Rudolf Arnheim’s 1936 study Radio, writings by Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Ezra Pound’s Cantos, Campbell reveals how the newness of wireless technology was inscribed in the ways modernist authors engaged with typographical experimentation, apocalyptic tones, and newly minted models for registering voices. Wireless Writing in the Age of Marconi presents an alternative history of modernism that listens as well as looks and bears in mind the altered media environment brought about by the emergence of the wireless. Timothy C. Campbell is associate professor of Italian at Cornell University.
Download or read book Telegraphic Realism written by Richard Menke and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Telegraphic Realism demonstrates the connections between British nineteenth-century fiction, media technologies, and developing ideas about information, from the postage stamp to wireless.
Download or read book A Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists and Inventors in American Film and TV Si written by A. Bowdoin Van Riper and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first in-depth study of how historic scientists and inventors have been portrayed on screen, A Biographical Encyclopedia of Scientists and Inventors in American Film and TV since 1930 catalogs nearly 300 separate performances and includes essays on the screen images of more than 80 historic scientists, inventors, engineers, and medical researchers.
Download or read book Marconi written by Marc Raboy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A little over a century ago, the world went wireless. Cables and all their limiting inefficiencies gave way to a revolutionary means of transmitting news and information almost everywhere, instantaneously. By means of "Hertzian waves," as radio waves were initially known, ships could now make contact with other ships (saving lives, such as on the doomed S.S. Titanic); financial markets could coordinate with other financial markets, establishing the price of commodities and fixing exchange rates; military commanders could connect with the front lines, positioning artillery and directing troop movements. Suddenly and irrevocably, time and space telescoped beyond what had been thought imaginable. Someone had not only imagined this networked world but realized it: Guglielmo Marconi. As Marc Raboy shows us in this enthralling and comprehensive biography, Marconi was the first truly global figure in modern communications. Born to an Italian father and an Irish mother, he was in many ways stateless, working his cosmopolitanism to advantage. Through a combination of skill, tenacity, luck, vision, and timing, Marconi popularized--and, more critically, patented--the use of radio waves. Soon after he burst into public view at the age of 22 with a demonstration of his wireless apparatus in London, 1896, he established his Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company and seemed unstoppable. He was decorated by the Czar of Russia, named an Italian Senator, knighted by King George V of England, and awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics--all before the age of 40. Until his death in 1937, Marconi was at the heart of every major innovation in electronic communication, courted by powerful scientific, political, and financial interests. He established stations and transmitters in every corner of the globe, from Newfoundland to Buenos Aires, Hawaii to Saint Petersburg. Based on original research and unpublished archival materials in four countries and several languages, Raboy's book is the first to connect significant parts of Marconi's story, from his early days in Italy, to his groundbreaking experiments, to his protean role in world affairs. Raboy also explores Marconi's relationshps with his wives, mistresses, and children, and examines in unsparing detail the last ten years of the inventor's life, when he returned to Italy and became a pillar of Benito Mussolini's fascist regime. Raboy's engrossing biography, which will stand as the authoritative work of its subject, proves that we still live in the world Marconi created.
Download or read book Marconi and Tesla written by Tim O'Shei and published by Enslow Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduces readers to the inventors of wireless communication equipment and the Tesla coil used in today's radios and television sets through an examination of their childhood years, education, inspirations, and groundbreaking discoveries.
Download or read book Marconi s Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology written by Aaron A. Toscano and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-09 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the discourse surrounding the wireless, created by the Anglo-Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The wireless excited early twentieth-century audiences before it even became a viable black box technology. The wireless adhered to modernist values—speed, efficiency, militarization, and progress. Language surrounding the wireless is a form of technical communication, overlooked by today’s practitioners. This book establishes a broader definition for technical communication by examining a selection of the discourse surrounding Marconi's wireless. The book’s main themes are the following: 1) technical communication is all discourse surrounding technology, 2) the field of technical communication (or technical writing) should incorporate analyses of discourse surrounding technologies into its epistemology, 3) the wireless is a product of the society from which it comes (early twentieth-century Western civilization), and 4) the discourse surrounding the wireless is infused with tropes of progress—speed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity.
Download or read book Lonely Ideas written by Loren Graham and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expert investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by commercial failure and points to new opportunities to break the pattern. When have you gone into an electronics store, picked up a desirable gadget, and found that it was labeled “Made in Russia”? Probably never. Russia, despite its epic intellectual achievements in music, literature, art, and pure science, is a negligible presence in world technology. Despite its current leaders' ambitions to create a knowledge economy, Russia is economically dependent on gas and oil. In Lonely Ideas, Loren Graham investigates Russia's long history of technological invention followed by failure to commercialize and implement. For three centuries, Graham shows, Russia has been adept at developing technical ideas but abysmal at benefiting from them. From the seventeenth-century arms industry through twentieth-century Nobel-awarded work in lasers, Russia has failed to sustain its technological inventiveness. Graham identifies a range of conditions that nurture technological innovation: a society that values inventiveness and practicality; an economic system that provides investment opportunities; a legal system that protects intellectual property; a political system that encourages innovation and success. Graham finds Russia lacking on all counts. He explains that Russia's failure to sustain technology, and its recurrent attempts to force modernization, reflect its political and social evolution and even its resistance to democratic principles. But Graham points to new connections between Western companies and Russian researchers, new research institutions, a national focus on nanotechnology, and the establishment of Skolkovo, “a new technology city.” Today, he argues, Russia has the best chance in its history to break its pattern of technological failure.
Download or read book Radio Modernism written by Todd Avery and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radio Modernism marries the fields of radio studies and modernist cultural historiography to the recent 'ethical turn' in literary and cultural studies to examine how representative British writers negotiated the moral imperative for public service broadcasting that was crafted, embraced, and implemented by the BBC's founders and early administrators. Weaving together the institutional history of the BBC and developments in ethical philosophy as mediated and forged by writers such as T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf, Todd Avery shows how these and other prominent authors' involvement with radio helped to shape the ethical contours of literary modernism. In so doing, Avery demonstrates the central role radio played in the early dissemination of modernist art and literature, and also challenges the conventional assertion that modernists were generally elitist and anti-democratic. Intended for readers interested in the fields of media and cultural studies and modernist historiography, this book is remarkable in recapturing for a twenty-first-century audience the interest, fascination, excitement, and often consternation that British radio induced in its literary listeners following its inception in 1922.
Download or read book A History of the Future written by Peter J. Bowler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-02 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging survey of predictions about the future development and impact of science and technology through the twentieth century.
Download or read book Mobile And Wireless Communications An Introduction written by Gow, Gordon and published by McGraw-Hill Education (UK). This book was released on 2006-06-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mobile information society has revolutionised the way we work, communicate and socialise. Mobile phones, wireless free communication and associated technologies such as WANs, LANs, and PANs, cellular networks, SMS, 3G, Bluetooth, Blackberry and WiFi are seen as the driving force of the advanced society. The roots of today's explosion in wireless technology can be traced back to the deregulation of AT&T in the US and the Post Office and British Telecom in the UK, as well as Nokia's groundbreaking approach to the design and marketing of the mobile phone. Providing a succinct introduction to the field of mobile and wireless communications, this book: Begins with the basics of radio technology and offers an overview of key scientific terms and concepts for the student reader Addresses the social and economic implications of mobile and wireless technologies, such as the effects of the deregulation of telephone systems Uses a range of case studies and examples of mobile and wireless communication, legislation and practices from the UK, US, Canada, mainland Europe, the Far East and Australia Contains illustrations and tables to help explain technical concepts and show the growth and change in mobile technologies Features a glossary of technical terms, annotated further reading at the end of each chapter and web links for further study and research Mobile and Wireless Communicationsis a key resource for students on a range of social scientific courses, including media and communications, sociology, public policy, and management studies, as well as a useful introduction to the field for researchers and general readers.
Download or read book Patently Contestable written by Stathis Arapostathis and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the fierce disputes that arose in Britain in the decades around 1900 concerning patents for electrical power and telecommunications. Late nineteenth-century Britain saw an extraordinary surge in patent disputes over the new technologies of electrical power, lighting, telephony, and radio. These battles played out in the twin tribunals of the courtroom and the press. In Patently Contestable, Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday examine how Britain's patent laws and associated cultures changed from the 1870s to the 1920s. They consider how patent rights came to be so widely disputed and how the identification of apparently solo heroic inventors was the contingent outcome of patent litigation. Furthermore, they point out potential parallels between the British experience of allegedly patentee-friendly legislation introduced in 1883 and a similar potentially empowering shift in American patent policy in 2011. After explaining the trajectory of an invention from laboratory to Patent Office to the court and the key role of patent agents, Arapostathis and Gooday offer four case studies of patent-centered disputes in Britain. These include the mostly unsuccessful claims against the UK alliance of Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison in telephony; publicly disputed patents for technologies for the generation and distribution of electric power; challenges to Marconi's patenting of wireless telegraphy as an appropriation of public knowledge; and the emergence of patent pools to control the market in incandescent light bulbs.
Download or read book The Right Letter written by Jan Venolia and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2011-04-13 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Replaces previous edition. In today's hectic world of cell phones, email, and instant messages, is it still worthwhile to know how to write a good letter? Absolutely! An attractive, well-written letter can grab the reader's attention and hold it long after someone else's email has been discarded. It can make a strong, lasting impression on a hiring manager, potential client, or faraway friend who receives it. In other words, the letter is still an important professional and personal communication tool, one that too few people know about these days. In this completely revised and updated edition of BETTER LETTERS, writing authority Jan Venolia dispenses expert advice on creating the perfect letter, covering composition, style, and format. With THE RIGHT LETTER! your message will rise above the rest. • This handy, portable addition to the Right! series (650,000 copies sold) is an important guide to effective letter writing, including a section on email. • With so many people complaining about the glut of email, spam, and misinformation, this reference is needed now more than ever. • Previous editions of BETTER LETTERS have sold more than 80,000 copies.
