National Coherer Day
August 20 was National Radio Day, arbitrarily created in the '70s to celebrate WWJ in Detroit. This year is the centennial of WWJ's first broadcast, which wasn't exactly the first commercial broadcast but close.

I'll arbitrarily call today National Coherer Day because I feel like it.

Coherers were an odd sidetrack in the history of radio. They were developed by experiment and accident, not by theory. Coherers flourished in a very specific environment, and helped to maintain the environment. Spark gap transmitters favored coherer receivers, and coherer receivers favored spark gap transmitters.

Most of all, coherers were strictly for Morse, and strictly for driving a tape-writer or plotter. They didn't belong in a system that relied on human hearing, whether via Morse sounder or earphones. Printers were part of the early transatlantic cable systems, and printers were mature and reliable at the time when wireless experimentation started. Marconi saw wireless as a replacement for the transatlantic cable, with essentially one sender and one receiver; so his system was surrounded and constrained by the analogy and the existing equipment.

= = = = =

Let's start with a complete Lodge-Muirhead station, operated by Polistra with the help of Happystar.

Lodge designed a resonant antenna, with two conical capacitive elements tied by an inductive element.



The station included, from right to left, the Morse key (hidden by Polistra); the Lodge Buzzer; an induction coil; a spark gap tuned by Leyden jar capacitors and an inductor; the transmit-receive switch leading out to the antenna; a Lodge Coherer; and finally a printer or tape-writer.



The Lodge Buzzer was an overly complex way of providing AC to the primary of the induction coil. Most systems used a simple hammerbreak. The Buzzer was a three-stage relay, allowing the Morse key to handle low voltage and current. The fast switching of high current for the primary was done by a mercury dip.



Now we see the whole thing ticking and tapping away, while Polistra sends a meaningful message through the antenna.



Early telegraph rigs were extremely clocky, with all sorts of mechanical pendulums and escapements, and electrically switched pendulums.

Before looking at the Lodge Disc Coherer, we'll show the most common coherer.



A glass tube with loose metal powder or filings inside. The tube was placed in series with a battery and the printer or tape-writer. Normally the filings had a high resistance, essentially non-conducting. When an RF signal came through the ether near the coherer, or a high-frequency signal was imposed on the DC, the filings lined up and cohered, closing the circuit and effectively acting like a relay. The filings wanted to remain lined up, so a mechanical tapper was needed to break them apart between dots and dashes. This tapper is run by a buzzer, but it could also be pure mechanical clockwork.

The Lodge Disc was entirely different.

Here's a description of its action:

This is done by causing a small steel disc to revolve continuously in contact with a column of mercury, between which is interposed a thin film of oil. In action the coherer operates as follows: When the impinging waves set up oscillations in the resonator circuit the potential difference due to their cumulative effect disrupts the film of oil and at that instant cohesion takes place between the molecules of the solid and the fluid metals, only to be instantly restored by a partial revolution of the disc.

The thin layer of oil between dissimilar metals was probably acting like a semiconductor, similar to a catwhisker or even a bijunction transistor. "Cumulative" implies that some degree of rectifying was going on.

Marconi tried another variation on the constantly moving surface:



Looks like a tape recorder or wire recorder. The large-diameter coil around the moving wire carried the DC, and the antenna was connected to the small-diameter coil inside it. When RF was present, the magnetic particles in the wire cohered, strengthening the core effect, raising the inductance of the large coil momentarily, and thus providing a pulse of added current in the larger coil. The moving loop gave this section of wire a chance to relax its coherence before it was used again.

Another inventor went full biological, reverting to Galvani.



A frog leg carried a pen in its foot, and the RF was enough to trigger muscular contractions.

= = = = =

An early realization of the need for tuning came close to understanding the principle of rectifiers:

To excite the coherer under the conditions presumed to be necessary for long distances, the impulses due to these waves must syntonize with the natural period of oscillation of the receiving circuit, and therefore these successive waves must pass by that circuit (wherever it may be), with the second following in the same phase as the first, or nearly so, otherwise the tendency of the second one will be to weaken or annul the effect of the first one.

Again emphasizing the cumulative effect. Almost got the point of rectifying, but not quite. Fleming finally realized that it was necessary to eliminate or invert the negative side of the sine wave. A symmetrical wave adds and subtracts equally, so the sum is zero. Removing one side made it possible to accumulate the RF power, which could then be filtered to sort out the modulation. But the realization was hard to grasp while the sparks and coherers were working together nicely.

= = = = =

Earlier I mentioned an attempt to see coherer-like activity in the brain. The experiments were interesting, and I noted that the connection was actually better than the 1906 researcher could see.

There's a separate coherer-like response in nearly all neurons, which didn't occur to me at that point. A spark-gap signal received by a coherer, complete with the buzzing and tapping and ticking at both ends, was a pulse train of varying length. A longer series of pulses for a dash, shorter series for a dot. This is how MOST neurons communicate and accumulate their signals. Pulse trains of varying lengths.

= = = = =

Happy ending:

Surprisingly, coherers are enjoying a second life in the new digital world.



In the '50s, US and Soviet researchers were using coherers as computer memory elements, taking advantage of the natural hold time to create a 'short-term' memory.

Several recent Japanese patents use old-style powder coherers for the original purpose, giving a sensitive relay-like response to small added AC. The patents use coherers in touch-sensitive pens, or to detect nearby lightning.

Convective question: Wouldn't it be nice if our wetware memory had a tapper to break up unwanted coherences? Instant answer: We do have a tapper. Walking. Also, some biofeedbackish therapy techniques use finger tapping for this exact purpose.

= = = = =

Here's the set for Poser at ShareCG.

Followup, a real experiment with a real coherer!

Labels: Equipoise, Happy Ending, Lodge, Morsenet of Things, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:55 PM

  Lodge meets Lodge
This item is really an extension of the Lodge precipitator. I'll repeat part of the earlier item and tack on the new.

= = = = = START PARTIAL REPRINT:

Electrostatic precipitators were under active development in 1886. Lodge and his associates built a practical precipitator, and tried it in a lead smelter. The precipitator reduced the dust and fumes "remarkably".

Lead is one of the few REAL pollutants. The EPA acted first to halt lead pollution, which is the ONLY good thing they did.

I've seen the effects of lead pollution. Several of my engineer uncles worked for American Metals, which had a smelter in Blackwell. We visited them occasionally, and the results of REAL pollution were dramatically obvious. The part of town downwind from the smelter was BARREN AND GRAY. Plants refused to grow there. Most adults had serious lung problems and died young. After EPA forced the plant to shut down, Blackwell was green again.

Big point: Pollution control for lead was AVAILABLE in 1886, and was developed and perfected over the years. Effective precipitators on smelters were common in 1920. American Metals didn't bother. Pinching pennies was more important than live workers. American Metals deserved to be shut down.

After 1975, EPA's real mission was finished, and EPA should have been shut down instead of switching to the "carbon" genocide. Unfortunately there's no meta-agency to shut down agencies that create problems instead of solving problems. Calling Trinity House, the permanent enemy of Parkinson!

= = = = =



Lodge and associates built several versions of the precipitator. The small version was meant mainly for demonstrations. Before turning on the charge, smoke from an oil lamp flowed freely through the chamber.



= = = = =

With charge applied from a static machine or induction coil, the smoke was ionized and precipitated.



Positive ions deposited on the negatively charged comb, and negative ions deposited on the positive comb.



= = = = = END PARTIAL REPRINT.

= = = = = Extension:

Lodge's sons, who ran the Lodge Fume Deposit Company profitably for many years, also tried to control weather with static charge. This miniature experiment was successful, but they quickly gave up attempts to apply the same technique to parts of a city. One 'active lightning rod' on a building managed to clear out a few cubic feet around it. There was no way to multiply the effect enough to clear a house, let alone a neighborhood.

This bell jar was similar to the one above, except that the positive charge is a single point in the middle and negative charge is on the metal base. The bell jar contained water vapor similar to a London fog.



When charge was applied, the water vapor COHERED in radial patterns, following the electrostatic lines of force.



The real thing:



This coherer-like behavior was the interesting part. Coherers are a basic and general type of device, with a range of uses that have only been partly explored.

Effective weather control tends to work by reactance, not resistance or blunt counterforce. Trees break wind into vortices. Hail cannons shoot vortices into the cloud mass to induce larger vortices that suck in the energy. If a coherer-like effect could create charged 'nuclei' for pollution, it could possibly agglomerate and precipitate large masses of smoke and smog.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Lodge, Parkinson, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:02 PM

  Lodge vs lead
Still more from the 1886 Canadian Patent Register.

This ties in with my previous coverage of the Lodge-Muirhead wireless system, and the destructive EPA approach to wildfire pollution.

Electrostatic precipitators were under active development in 1886. Lodge and his associates built a practical precipitator, and tried it in a lead smelter. The precipitator reduced the dust and fumes "remarkably".

Lead is one of the few REAL pollutants. The EPA acted first to halt lead pollution, which is the ONLY good thing they did.

I've seen the effects of lead pollution. Several of my engineer uncles worked for American Metals, which had a smelter in Blackwell. We visited them occasionally, and the results of REAL pollution were dramatically obvious. The part of town downwind from the smelter was BARREN AND GRAY. Plants refused to grow there. Most adults had serious lung problems and died young. After EPA forced the plant to shut down, Blackwell was green again.

Big point: Pollution control for lead was AVAILABLE in 1886, and was developed and perfected over the years. Effective precipitators on smelters were common in 1920. American Metals didn't bother. Pinching pennies was more important than live workers. American Metals deserved to be shut down.

After 1975, EPA's real mission was finished, and EPA should have been shut down instead of switching to the "carbon" genocide. Unfortunately there's no meta-agency to shut down agencies that create problems instead of solving problems. Calling Trinity House, the permanent enemy of Parkinson!

= = = = =

Lodge and associates built several versions of the precipitator. The small version was meant mainly for demonstrations. Before turning on the charge, smoke from an oil lamp flowed freely through the chamber.



= = = = =

With charge applied from a static machine or induction coil, the smoke was ionized and precipitated.



Positive ions deposited on the negatively charged comb, and negative ions deposited on the positive comb.



= = = = =

Lodge also built a large two-stage device, which I haven't animated because the description wasn't clear. Apparently the smoke entered the right chamber for partial precip, then an updraft sucked it into the left chamber for more thorough cleaning.



Lodge's sons commercialized his invention, running the wonderfully named Lodge Fume Deposit Company in Birmingham for many years. Why does the name tickle my fancy? Probably because it's more verb than noun. It tells you what the product does. It's like Frito-Lay Salty Taste Enjoyment Company or Tesla Neck-Snapping Acceleration Company.

Continued with an alternate use of the precipitator.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Lodge, Parkinson, Trinity House

  ¶ 2:51 PM

  Lodge month
October was Lodge month 'in these columns'. I've added a tag to the related items.

I hadn't paid much attention to Lodge before, even though his name is well known in radio circles for his studies of propagation. That wasn't his central contribution.

His constant focus was on the boundaries and borders between electricity and matter. His coherer made use of a constantly moving and re-forming layer of liquid. The device wasn't practical, but it helped to form a better understanding of modulation and rectification, which then led to the changeover from Morse to music.

His precipitator also applied a static charge to flowing gas and smoke, ionizing and cleaning the flow. This device proved to be powerfully practical, and his sons commercialized it for profit. The precipitator, as improved by Cottrell, is still in use.

Lodge's philosophy was unfashionable in 1906, and even more unfashionable now. Around 1900 the cult of "science" was in its first flush of victory. Deconstructors were everywhere, from religion to biology to math to physics. Purpose was dethroned and replaced by Lord Random.

Lodge, with impeccable credentials as an experimenter AND theorist, discussed the boundary between static spiritual charge and the moving material world. He countered the purpose-killers and psychopaths who were starting to take over the world and now have completely conquered it.

The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? If we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire, we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings.

The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character insofar as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that is ipso facto already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality.

That is my creed, and, optimistic though it be, it seems to me the only rational creed for a man of science who, undeterred by any accusation of dualism, realizes strongly that our entire selves — our thoughts, conceptions, desires, as well as our perceptions and our acts — are all but parts of one stupendous whole.

LIFE IS PURPOSE.

Labels: Lodge

  ¶ 10:06 PM

  More from 1942
Another article in the 1942 Westinghouse Engineer also has an immediate resonance. The subject is electrical dust filters. History:

This simple principle of electrical precipitation of dust was noticed by Hohlfeld of Germany in 1824 as he watched the behavior of an electrical discharge in smoke. Nothing came of his observation until 1884 when Sir Oliver Lodge successfully applied the principle in a lead smelter. Electrical precipitation of dust did not become widely practical until 1906 when Cottrell, who had worked with Lodge, brought out the precipitator that bears his name.

Hmm. Lodge. Where have we heard that name? And where have we heard 1906?

Most of the article discusses various modern precipitators, based on the 1906 Cottrell invention.

This chart of the Dust Spectrum is especially useful. (I tacked on Orange Man Bad "virus" for future reference, but it's not the focus here.)



Note the area of 'smokes' and the typical smoke particle.

In the recent Gaian Punishment Smoke Lockdown, the EPA warned us NOT to use electrical precipitators. Only use filters!

Which of them would take care of the smoke? Precipitators, not filters. I found that the filter was ineffective by experiment, but I don't have a precipitator so I don't know if it would have done a better job.

Why did EPA tell us NOT to use the precipitators? Because they generate ozone, which is a "pollutant".

Can't make it up.

The rule is always the same. Government FORBIDS self-defense and REQUIRES methods and devices that make the pollution or disease WORSE.

= = = = =

Later, I animated the Lodge precipitator.

Labels: Carbon Cult, defensible spaces, defensible thymes, defensible times

  ¶ 5:36 AM

  Come on, US manufacturers. You can do better!
I keep trying to buy American, but the results are disappointingly mixed.

Couple years ago I tried a Kuulaire evaporative cooler, which didn't work at all. (However, I can't really complain about that one; the online reviews warned clearly that it didn't work!)

Last summer I bought a new manual lawn mower, which is a magnificent machine. Just about perfect!

This year I bought a cast-iron skillet from Lodge. It's solid, but Lodge mysteriously skipped an important part of the manufacturing process. They didn't polish the surface.

Comparison: Back in 1970 I inherited a Wagner Ware skillet from grandparents. They had used it from (approx) 1950 to 1970, then I used it for another 10 years. It was easy to use and easy to clean, because the surfaces are smooth.

Since I resumed real cooking I've been using Chinese aluminum pans because the old 5" Wagner is too small for my usual 3-egg omelet. When the latest Chinese pan wore out, I decided to try American again. Bought a Lodge pan.

Failure. You can't use a spatula on the rough sand-cast surface, and you can't get the egg to slide on the butter. The egg merges completely with the surface.



= = = = =

Artistic note: I tried to get a photo of the two pans, to show that the cartoon above wasn't just my imagination. But the sand-cast interior of the Lodge pan absorbs light the same way it absorbs everything else. Black hole. Couldn't even make it visible with the scanner. I did manage to scan the bottom side, which shows the difference fairly well:

Labels: Heimatkunde

  ¶ 5:49 AM

  Edison's revenge on Tesla


A super-modern Tesla electric roadster shows off its super-modern propulsion system. Occasionally the Tesla is propelled by electric motors, but if you mistakenly allow its batteries to discharge, it becomes a Brick, absolutely immovable and unrollable and unrechargeable. You have to haul it to a Tesla dealer and spend $40,000 (uninsured, unreimbursed) for new batteries. This is apparently part of the aristocratic Gaian thrill you get in return for your original $170K investment.

Meanwhile, Polistra hums sedately past the Brickmobile in her 1910 Detroit Electric. The Detroit has roughly the same short range as the Tesla, but lacks the super-modern super-digital Brickification feature. If you discharge its primitive batteries completely, you just have to recharge them. Dull. Analog. No more exciting than refilling an empty gas tank.

The picture was inspired by this delightful story. (Link leads directly to a PDF.)

Outline of the story: A remote Adirondack hunting lodge had been lighted since 1924 by an Edison DC generator outfit using 80 nickel-iron storage batteries. The system had been used fairly steadily with spotty maintenance. When the lodge's owners decided to sell, they offered the antique electric stuff to people who would preserve it or display it, rather than discarding it.

The authors of the story heard about the batteries, went up to the lodge, took the system apart, and brought the batteries down to their lab. Some cells still had electrolyte, some had been empty for many years.

Best part of the story: The authors flushed out and refilled the cells, and every single one still worked, still charged up to specified voltage, still discharged smoothly.

Edison had advertised his nickel-iron batteries as lasting a hundred years, and he was right!

Nickel-iron cells are no longer made in America ... [Didn't really need to say that, did I?] ... but one Chinese and one Russian company still make them. Aside from the obvious advantages (not turning to Bricks when they discharge, and lasting a century) nickel and iron are common minerals in plentiful supply. Contrast with the Tesla's laptop batteries, requiring rare Lanthanide minerals found mostly in China.

= = = = =

Later: Another testimony to Edison's nickel-iron cells. When car collectors restore Baker Electrics from around 1910, they don't need to replace the batteries! After a full century the nickel-irons still work perfectly.

= = = = =

Much later addendum, Jan 2013: Looks like the gov't is considering a rule that electric cars must emit sounds. As a perpetual pedestrian, I love this idea. I've been vastly more careful and 'optical' since I got whacked by an SUV in 2008, but I still rely on hearing for a general sense of approaching cars. Been fooled several times by quiet Priii and Leaves.

Electric cars should constantly emit characteristic tunes, like the ice cream man with his Entertainer Rag (aka the Sting tune). The Tesla Roadster needs to emit the following song over and over and over and over:

Oh give me a place
where the wind turbines race,
where the birds and the bats die and scream;
where subsidies pay
for my Latté Grandé,
and exploded dams kill human dreams.


Home, home is my range,
where the volts charge my batteries quick,
I can quietly roam,
thirty miles from my home,
then my Tesla turns into a brick.

Labels: 20th century Dark Age

  ¶ 8:29 PM

  Lodge vs Darwin
Lodge again. From Literary Digest, 1905, p247 of the PDF. Writing in response to Haeckel and Darwin, and prematurely but perfectly in response to the Quantumites.

Sir Oliver proceeds to analyze what he regards as the two main propositions of Haeckel's philosophy, namely: (1) the theory of the inorganic origin of life, will, and consciousness; and (2) the theory of persistence as a test of real existence. The first is declared to be "quite unsupported by the facts of science as at present known," and the second rests on doctrines which are "very far from being axiomatic."

"It is singular," adds Sir Oliver, "that even during Haeckel's lifetime the atom shows signs of breaking up into stuff which is not ordinary matter; and it is quite likely that before long fresh atoms of matter may be brought into being in a laboratory." He goes on to say: "I admit, however, that a certain speculative hypothesis, really underlying Haeckel's contention, tho not explicitly formulated by him, deserves consideration. It is not a scientific theory, but it is a plausible assumption. There is a sense in which the guess is plausible that real existence is a permanent thing; that anything which really and fundamentally exists, in a serious and untrivial and non-accidental fashion, can be trusted not suddenly to go out of existence and leave no trace behind. Arbitrary collocations may and must be temporary, but there may be in each a fundamental substratum which if it can be reached will be found to be eternal."

There is a sense, continues Sir Oliver, in which matter and mind may be "different aspects of some fundamental unity." A lofty kind of monism can be true, he thinks, just as a lofty kind of pantheism can be true; but "the miserable degraded monism and lower pantheism which limits the term 'god' to that part of existence of which we are now aware — sometimes indeed to a fraction only of that — which limits the term 'mind' to that of which we are ourselves conscious, and the term 'matter' to the dust of the earth and the other visible bodies, is a system of thought appropriate perhaps to a fertile and energetic portion of the nineteenth century, but not likely to survive as a system of perennial truth."

He says, in conclusion:

"The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? If we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire, we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings.

The universe is in no way limited to our conceptions: it has a reality apart from them; nevertheless they themselves constitute a part of it, and can only take a clear and consistent character insofar as they correspond with something true and real. Whatever we can clearly and consistently conceive, that is ipso facto already existent in the universe as a whole; and that, or something better, we shall find to be a dim foreshadowing of a higher reality.

"That is my creed, and, optimistic tho it be, it seems to me the only rational creed for a man of science who, undeterred by any accusation of dualism, realizes strongly that our entire selves — our thoughts, conceptions, desires, as well as our perceptions and our acts — are all but parts of one stupendous whole."

Shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire also sounds familiar.

Labels: Grand Blueprint, Lodge

  ¶ 10:15 AM

  iSimplify, iSimplify, iSimplify.....
The basic concept of a personal wireless telephone is VERY old. As I noted earlier, the idea started percolating in 1910, immediately after voice communication by radio was practical.

Just after WW2, amid the burst of open-source government creativity that was soon halted by Truman's globalist tyranny, a specific proposal was made by FCC. This specific proposal sounds remarkably familiar....





Bringing out a couple of sentences:

...the walkie-talkie will contact a physician from a central exchange while he is en route by automobile to a patient's home; the farmer's wife who formerly summoned her husband to the noon-day meal with a clanging dinner bell will call him on 460 megacycles; hunters exploring the far reaches of forests or swamps in search of wild game and fish will be in contact by radio with a central hunting and fishing lodge; department stores, dairies, laundries and similar business concerns will communicate directly with their delivery trucks en route....

Most of these specific activities are either obsolete or illegal now, but you get the idea.

Cellphones as developed in the '80s began with a different essential concept but ended up matching this description.

This 1945 proposal was INTRINSICALLY LOCAL, naturally decentral, strictly BASE TO REMOTE, with each base communicating on low power to its OWN remotes. The central office or house or lodge would use regular phone lines for communicating outside the family or business.

Modern cellphone activity is ALMOST ENTIRELY BASE TO REMOTE, which is why these little scenarios sound so familiar. I don't have stats, but I'd guess 90% of cellphone activity is base-to-remote. Parents tracking kids, businesses tracking deliveries, gamers communicating with Game Central or whatever it is. Very small hub-spoke patterns with at most a few hundred spokes.

The post-1980 implementation DID NOT START with base to remote; it developed from the phone company's long-distance operations, so it's INTRINSICALLY GLOBAL. Modern cellphones are ALWAYS IN CONTACT with the nationwide network, which means the nationwide network can always find you and monitor you.

Under the 1945 system global monitoring and global hacking would have been hugely expensive and impractical. Under the existing system global monitoring and global hacking are the core and base of the business.

Labels: 1901, defensible spaces

  ¶ 12:01 AM

  What killed localism?
Rod Dreher quotes a Patrick Deneen article which accuses the "new isolationists" of free-riding. Deneen says we are taking advantage of the system that made it possible for us to have the luxurious choice of opting out.

I wrote this comment on Dreher's blog, and want to preserve it here for my own reference if nothing else:

= = = = =

Deneen is, as always, deep and unique. But there's a timeline problem in his accusation of free-riding against the localists. He says we are taking advantage of all the goodies (mobility, communication, occupational choice) provided by modernity, while trying to escape from deracination. He has conflated two different "packages".

Occupational choice has been an American feature from the start. Mobility and communication came in 1860 with the telegraph and railroad. But local institutions and Tocqueville's "mediators" were still perfectly strong and vibrant in 1950. It wasn't mobility and communication that killed the lodge and the church. It was a Leninist Sabotage Weapon called "The Supreme Court" that killed the lodge and the church.

If we want to restore localism, we don't need to eliminate the telegraph, the railroad and the internet. We do need to eliminate the Leninist Sabotage Weapon, or more precisely we need to escape the clutches of its secret police.
(i.e. plaintiff lawyers, social workers, public schools.)

Since both political "parties" are solidly Leninist (as you [Rod] brilliantly pointed
out in your discussion of Rush's CPAC speech) the answer must be either a third party determined to repeal bad laws, or secession.
  ¶ 7:49 AM

  More Lodge
Just completing the history of the Lodge precipitator. Previously I showed two experiments.

This is the later practical version produced by Cottrell. Variants on this form are still in common use. Practical versions have dozens or hundreds of coaxial pipes. I've placed it next to a factory-style building which might contain forges or smelters.

Before turning on the charge:



Air laden with dust and smoke simply passes through. Nothing falls into the hopper below.

= = = = =

After turning on the high voltage:



Particles are ionized and attracted to the inner rod electrode or the outer cylinder. They cling to the electrodes, and a tapping hammer (not shown) loosens the mass every few seconds so it can fall into the hopper. The air itself is also ionized into ozone, which the EPA describes as a "pollutant" because EPA's job is to ban all effective pollution control.

Self-calibration: This isn't a good animation because I didn't find this device especially interesting. I simply wanted to complete the history and move on to a more interesting subject.

Labels: Lodge

  ¶ 11:42 PM

  Lodge on science
Last year I was focusing on the work of Oliver Lodge, including his 1906 essay on creation vs Darwin. The latter concluded with a clear picture of demons, and a plea to keep demons out of power:

"The essence of mind is design and purpose. There are some who deny that there is any design or purpose in the universe at all: but how can that be maintained when humanity itself possesses these attributes? Is it not more reasonable to say that just as we are conscious of the power of guidance in ourselves, so guidance and intelligent control may be an element running through the universe, and may be incorporated even in material things? If we could grasp the entire scheme of things, so far from wishing to shatter it to bits and then remold it nearer to the heart's desire, we should hail it as better and more satisfying than any of our random imaginings.

Today a 1925 essay on science has appeared at American Radio History.

It is devoutly to be hoped that in the long run, when present international troubles have subsided, the power of rapid communication will surely conduce to better understanding among the nations, and will lead in due time to the much-desired but long-delayed era of universal peace. To this end much more than physical and material progress must contribute, for nothing can replace the whole-hearted desire for cooperative advancement of all nations on terms of mutual amity and good will.

The interchange of discoveries between the nations has long been in operation. All scientific discoverers throughout the world virtually pool their resources and communicate to each other their results, except indeed those of a destructive and inhuman character. Secrecy is alien to the spirit of science; and all true wealth increases in value when freely shared. Indeed, that is the test of true wealth, as Ruskin long ago pointed out — namely, that the more it is shared the more it is possessed and the greater value it has for everybody. Witness the broadcast distribution of music and drama and works of art generally. These are not things for private possession only, but can be shared and enjoyed by all. Things of this sort constitute the true wealth of humanity, and to that category scientific discoveries belong.

The spirit of nationalism is wholesome enough if it be held reasonably and without flaunting claims to superiority. The spirit of emulation is also wholesome, for it is by no means the same as competition.

Emulation is the desire to do something better than has been done before, and better than others have as yet learnt to do it; while competition is mainly the effort to monopolize some activity, and to do things instead of others.

In extreme cases unfair competition may prevent others from taking their due share in the beneficent work of the world. Hence progress surely lies in the direction of co-operation all round, each nation and each individual doing his best, and not seeking to prevent others from doing theirs. Nations which interchange scientific discoveries might also wisely interchange commodities, since not every locality is equally suitable for producing everything. Division of labour, of this sane and salutary kind, might be recognized as good.

And international jealousies, based on mere rivalry and competition, ought to cease, especially rivalry and competition in armaments and instruments of destruction. Civilization ought to have progressed too far by now for the perversion of ingenuity responsible for the construction of diabolical and otherwise useless mechanism, and for the artificial increase of those natural evils among which it is our lot to live and against which it is our business to contend.

Sorrow and sighing there must be in plenty during this planetary existence, without our trying to increase their sum, without adding to each other's difficulties, and without bringing about those horrors of death and torture and destruction which, when they occur by inadvertence or by accident or by the unconscious and uncontrolled forces of Nature, arouse worldwide feelings of sympathy and desire to help.

Until the will of man is brought into harmony with what we can gather of Divine intention, humanity cannot be called really and effectively civilized, although it may achieve marvellous feats of locomotion, and although it has extended the range of human speech to distances undreamt of by our ancestors. Now that we are able to travel farther and faster, we should travel to some good purpose. And now that we can speak across a continent, let us see to it that we have something worthy to say.

The overall spirit is the same from 1906 to 1925. It also sounds a lot like Harding and Hartness in the same period. Important people had ACTUALLY LEARNED from both WW1 and the excesses of the Gilded Age. The latter learning quickly disappeared in US, as Coolidge reactivated the Gilded Age based on Share Value. FDR finally brought both sides of the lesson into harmony.

The WW1 learning persisted even through WW2, as we clearly recognized the difference between imperialism and defense. Deepstate had to work hard in 1946 to break down the WW1 lesson and resume imperialism.

Labels: Equipoise, Natural law = Sharia law

  ¶ 12:19 AM

  When self-defense was allowed
Before Gaia invaded large parts of science in 1975, weather control was an active subject of research, with considerable success. Hail cannons worked and still work. Cloud seeding worked and still works.

This little piece from a Gernsback mag in July 1930 shows that fog control was an active research project.



Nice combination of two subjects I've recently mentioned.

1. Lodge and his sons were attempting to use electrical charge to break up fog. They abandoned the effort after deciding that it would require WAY too much equipment and electricity to make a difference. Hail cannons and cloud seeding both require remarkably small amounts of energy and material. A few acetylene puffs, and a few pounds of silver iodide. By analogy, is there a similar solution for fog, using vortices?

2. The MIT facility at Round Hill was a gift from Colonel Green, the heir of the Hetty Green fortune. He was a dilettante but contributed tremendously to the progress and enjoyment of science through gifts of money and property.

Self-defense from weather has been prohibited since 1975. All the old research has been memoryholed, even though hail cannons are still protecting European vineyards.

In 2020 self-defense against disease joined weather. We no longer have immune systems, so we must do what we're told, no matter how crazy and holocaustal the tellers are. Ours not to reason why, ours but to die and die.

Immediate answer to the question: Yes, fog control worked.

Labels: defensible times, Jackboot stomping forever

  ¶ 3:30 PM

  Nice fable
This is the perfect icon-fable for the R and D establishment responding to Trump and Sanders.



Hmm. I wonder why things seem different? Why did the scenery stop moving? Why is everything sort of sideways? Never mind. Just keep driving. Keep driving. Keep driving. Keep driving. Keep driving. Hmm. Now I'm seeing explosions and flames in the mirror. What could it be? Never mind. Just keep driving. Keep driving. Keep driving. Now a fire truck and police car seem to be catching up with me. What could they possibly want? Never mind. Just keep dr......

= = = = =

Immediate update: Beautiful example of Keep Driving just after posting the above.

Headline after SC primary:

Donald Trump won South Carolina while doing seemingly everything in his power to lose.

You still don't get it, do you? Trump is doing everything in his power to LOSE SHELDON ADELSON. The other Rs are doing everything in their power to WIN SHELDON ADELSON.

Trump's super-secret weapon, known only to XENOPHOBIC BUFFOON lodge members, is One Weird Trick that the Parties can't possibly conceive or imagine. Trump is doing everything possible to win the el voteros. (Note how I cleverly translated the secret phrase into the El Secreto Languageo for secrecy.) These mysterious unknown Dark Matter Particles known as el voteros were discovered in Trump's fiendish Secret XENOPHOBIC BUFFOON Laboratory, and the secret has been kept until now.

But don't worry, the Parties will just Keep Driving, keep courting Sheldon Adelson. All is well in the world of the Parties.

Labels: Emersonian justice

  ¶ 3:21 AM

  Quickie on audions
I'm not doing justice to this subject but felt the need or duty to output SOMETHING with a bit of meaning, as counterforce to the wild destruction of logic and meaning. I might return later with a proper animation.

The first triode tube, DeForest's audion, looked a lot like the existing detectors for radio waves, and was used first as a detector plus incidental amplifier. Soon the audion's real use for amplification became clearer, and detection was separated from amplification.

Here Polistra is receiving Morse with an audion. I've shown a parallel connection to an external coherer to illustrate the substitution, but there wouldn't have been a real reason to connect them.



Coherers were uniquely suited to spark gap transmitters. When spark gaps were gradually replaced by high-frequency alternators, then by tube oscillators, coherers were replaced by rectifiers. I'm showing two typical crystal rectifiers next to the coherer; first the common vertical catwhisker, then the enclosed horizontal version often used in military receivers.



Closeup of the audion in action, connected to a receiver that tuned the incoming signal. The filament ran straight through from top to bottom; the grid was a sparse spiral around it; the plate surrounded the grid.



Inner view without the glass. The action was similar to Lodge's precipitator. The hot filament threw off electrons. If the grid was uncharged, the electrons passed through to the positively charged plate easily. If the grid had a negative charge, it repelled the negative electrons and they stayed around the filament. The ability of a charge (without current) to regulate the flow of a large current is the valving or amplifying effect. Because the grid only varied the current when the charge on it was negative, it also rectified the incoming signal, giving rise to the demodulating or detecting effect.



These earliest audions typically used 12 to 20 volts on the plate. Later submini tubes returned to this range of voltage, but by that time transistors were already underway. As I discussed earlier, if tubes had continued on this scale, it would have made experimentation much easier and safer, and it also would have made rechargeable batteries more practical. Wet batteries are necessarily big, and a wet battery for the typical 90 volt B supply would occupy a major piece of furniture. Dry batteries are wasteful of materials and short-lived, but 90 volts could be packed into a cardboard case about 6 inches long.

Labels: From rights to duties, Lodge

  ¶ 11:08 AM

  Outtake
I don't do 'shop talk' here often, but this was just a perfect bit of accidental Murphy's Law humor. Recently mentioned my long-lasting and artistically satisfying project to model the Nelson Dream Village tourist lodge. It's reached the point where I'm about ready to submit the set to online graphics stores for testing and sale. So I decided to rig up a series of demo pics to stir up some interest, and maybe get a couple of acquaintances to run a beta test before submitting to the store.




First a nice outdoor shot, with the Musical Fountain emphasized. The fountain was the centerpiece of the real Dream Village, and the truly unique part of Colonel Nelson's dream. Lots of tourist lodges in the '30s had charming rock-faced cottages; only the Dream Village had a music and light show every evening in the summer.

Apparently the original mechanism ran the fountain and lights through a standard 'ringing the changes' pattern, while Colonel Nelson's granddaughter Beth took charge of the turntable, favoring Strauss waltzes. I've done the Colonel one better in digital form, with an animated mechanism that 'dances' the fountain and lights to the music.





Second, the interior of the cottage looking toward the kitchen and bath. Since no interior pix of the actual Dream Village are available, I've used appropriate period furniture, as seen in other motels of the time.




Third, we'll turn toward the front window and wait for the fountain to start up. I activate the water and lights, and ....





CUT!

Apparently the water was improperly centered on the house instead of the fountain.





Obviously we're not ready for testing and sale yet, if Murphy's Law can bite me so easily. An unsuspecting buyer would have even worse problems!

= = = = =

Much later note: Most of the Dream Village set has ended up as part of my free Route 66 packages. The cottage is here and much of the furniture is here. The fountain isn't part of either set; I decided it wasn't up to the same quality standards.
  ¶ 11:36 PM

  Tubes were an unnecessary and destructive sidetrack
Random afterthought to real coherers.

Thinking again about those submini tubes while using the breadboard for experimentation led to a historical oddity.

Tubes were probably an unnecessary sidetrack in the overall development of electronics, making experimentation unnecessarily hard for a few decades.

If the path of coherers and catwhiskers had been extended, it would have led quickly to transistors. The Lodge liquid coherer was a solid-state diode. Some early experimenters with catwhisker-style detectors developed the triode transistor but didn't pursue it.

Tubes made experimentation hard because they needed high plate voltage, which in turn required special precautions. When you're fiddling with 1.5 to 18 Volts, you can plug and unplug stuff and screw around to your heart's content, without stopping your heart or starting a fire. When you're working with 250 Volts, extreme caution is needed.

The HV could have been avoided if the original Audion had led directly to those submini tubes. Subminis easily live in the same breadboard world as transistors and ICs, with 1.5 V filament and 18 V plate. DeForest's original Audion operated in this range.

The Brits had subminis in the '30s, but America stuck with the big HV tubes until '48. By that time the transistor was already underway and the tube era was fading.

Plain old size is another factor in experimentation, but it's more of a balanced factor. The components in 1920 were much larger than now, requiring bigger workbenches and more woodworking and metalworking tools. If I had been working with those components, I couldn't keep my electronics stuff inside one desk. I'd need a separate workroom or an outside ham shack. But larger components are easier to handle and repair, and easier to see, so there are advantages both ways. Safety is a purely one-way variable.

Continued here.

Labels: Alternate universe, Lodge, Morsenet of Things

  ¶ 12:08 AM

  Now it's clear.
Tracing the technology of the Lodge precipitator and its later developers, I've been reading a British journal called World's Work. The magazine wasn't really about work, it was an overview of culture and science.

A column about the 1904 US election contains a surprise that verifies my Agent Provocateur suspicions of Jennings Bryan.

Earlier I wrote:

It's not clear from available documents whether influencers like Jennings Bryan were Agents Provocateurs or just poor economists. In fairness, they didn't have a lot of experimental data on the effects of breaking gold. Bubbles were common during pure gold periods. Gold doesn't prevent bubbles. Only regulation prevents bubbles. Gold DOES discourage infinite creation of fake value. Those populists couldn't have imagined monstrosities like QE and MMT, but they should have remembered Madman Lincoln's inflation, and the inflation in the first decades after 1776.

Well, now we have an 'available document' that makes it clear.

There are only two pronounced candidates, but it does not necessarily follow that one of them must be successful. The two active competitors for the Presidency on the Democratic side are Chief Justice Alton B. Parker, of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and Mr. W. R. Hearst , a member of Congress from one of the districts of the city of New York, and the proprietor of the New York Journal and other newspapers.

Justice Parker is highly regarded by members of the bar, but he is unknown to the general public, who are consequently indifferent about his nomination. He has been brought forward as a candidate by the Conservatives — the men who detest Mr. Roosevelt as bitterly as they detest Mr. Bryan. Both Roosevelt and Bryan are Radicals, although they reach their Radicalism by different routes and do not meet at a common centre; and both are the terror of certain men of property, who profess to fear that Mr. Roosevelt will plunge the country into war, and that Mr. Bryan will plunge it into anarchy.

Mr. Bryan is out of the running, but his mantle has fallen on Mr. Hearst, who is the son of a multi-millionaire and owes his present prominence solely to his father's millions. He has spent an enormous sum in buying up delegates and creating sentiment in his favour. In all things, he is as extreme and fanatical as Mr. Bryan, and as Mr. Bryan realises that his nomination is impossible, he is giving Mr. Hearst his ardent support.

Bryan threw his ardent support to Hearst, the ultimate NYC plutocrat neocon warmonger.

NOW I SEE.

Bryan and Trump were Pied Pipers who picked up dissidents, took them on an enjoyable ride, then tossed them out and drove away, leaving the dissidents in a state of stunned confusion.

What did Bryan get for his trickery? He ended up as Sec of State for Madman Wilson, and helped to set up Versailles and the League of Nations. Neocon imperialism at its worst, the perfect absolute diametric opposite of populism.

The Dems nominated Alton Parker after all, because they knew TR was scheduled to "win". Parties don't waste useful candidates like Hearst in guaranteed-loss "elections".

Labels: NOW I SEE, Pluponents

  ¶ 5:04 AM

  Rare common sense about common sense
Via ScienceDaily, a study that separates FACT knowledge from SKILL knowledge properly.

"Current machine text-generation models can write an article that may be convincing to many humans, but they're basically mimicking what they have seen in the training phase," said Lin. "Our goal in this paper is to study the problem of whether current state-of-the-art text-generation models can write sentences to describe natural scenarios in our everyday lives."

Specifically, Ren and Lin tested the models' ability to reason and showed there is a large gap between current text generation models and human performance. Given a set of common nouns and verbs, state-of-the-art NLP computer models were tasked with creating believable sentences describing an everyday scenario. While the models generated grammatically correct sentences, they were often logically incoherent.

For instance, here's one example sentence generated by a state-of-the-art model using the words "dog, frisbee, throw, catch":

"Two dogs are throwing frisbees at each other."

The test is based on the assumption that coherent ideas (in this case: "a person throws a frisbee and a dog catches it,") can't be generated without a deeper awareness of common-sense concepts. In other words, common sense is more than just the correct understanding of language -- it means you don't have to explain everything in a conversation. This is a fundamental challenge in the goal of developing generalizable AI -- but beyond academia, it's relevant for consumers, too.

This also applies to the deification of theory among "human" scientists. As every branch of science departs from PHYSICAL experience, theories become weirder and crazier and more murderous. 100 years ago, theorists like Lodge and Faraday and Ayrton worked constantly with REAL PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT, and depended on close teamwork with mechanics who could build and maintain the REAL PHYSICAL EQUIPMENT.

When every idea is applied directly to Nature, Nature will TELL you which ideas are sensible. ... but you need to LISTEN as well, and you need to break out of Parkinson. You need to use negative feedback, not positive feedback. With negative feedback, constant failure tells you to stop and try something different. With positive feedback, constant failure tells you to try the same shit EVEN HARDER AND BIGGER.

The omnicidal "physicists" at LHC are using positive feedback. Their attempts to obliterate the universe just go on and on and on. They never find the mythical unicorns they're supposedly looking for. Every failure becomes an urgent requirement for more speed, more energy, more staff, more funding.

Common sense and physical reality should tell you when to stop. If the unicorn is a real part of Nature, you should be able to find it at ordinary scales and ordinary energies. If you have to use energies trillions of times beyond anything in Nature, you're not going to find a unicorn that occurs in Nature.

NEGATIVE FEEDBACK IS LIFE. POSITIVE FEEDBACK IS DEATH.

Labels: Not AI point-missing, Parkinson

  ¶ 11:22 PM

  Y no lead dress?
In reading about early experiments from the era of Marconi and Lodge, I'm constantly struck by the outright sloppiness of the rigs. There's no regard for lead dress or preventing trips and falls. Wires wiggle and coil randomly in hopeless tangles.

These weren't homebrew tinkerers. These were well-funded and well-organized scientists. They had teams with division of labor. They could afford to cut proper lengths and tie things together. Nylon zipties hadn't been invented, but string was available, and the telegraph industry had developed a wide variety of tying and lacing methods.

Here's an especially egregious example:



Magnetic therapy for headaches and pain, in a SWISS sanitarium. The Swiss are fanatics about neatness and order. Why didn't the obsession apply here?

Compare with the lead dress in the target device:



Nothing tangled, nothing out of place. Everything bundled neatly in coaxial cables and conduits.

Lead dress is especially important with high voltages and high currents, and in situations like this where you want to know how the magnetic field is formed and resonating.

Labels: Bemusement, Lodge

  ¶ 3:35 PM