Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and recently I covered
Speaker 1: the video game crash of Night three, and in that
Speaker 1: episode I also talked about an earlier video game market
Speaker 1: crash that happened in nine Now I also talked about
Speaker 1: a company called Magnavox and the Magnavox Odyssey console that
Speaker 1: ushered in the early era of home video game systems. Well, today,
Speaker 1: I thought we would learn more about the company Magnavox,
Speaker 1: where it came from, and how it played an important
Speaker 1: part in the history of electronics, because, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: Magnavox has a really interesting history beyond the fact that
Speaker 1: it helped bring about the the age of home video games.
Speaker 1: So this is gonna be a deep dive series into
Speaker 1: the history of Magnavox. And like most of my history series,
Speaker 1: I like to take opportunities to talk about certain technologies
Speaker 1: that played an important role in the company's history and
Speaker 1: explain how those technologies work. It's kind of my sneaky
Speaker 1: way of talking about how tech works. So there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a lot of that in these episodes because the
Speaker 1: founding of Magnavox itself actually comes from a pivotal technology
Speaker 1: in the history of radio. So we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: a lot about radio early on in this episode in particular.
Speaker 1: So while I'm calling this the history of Magnavox, you're
Speaker 1: getting a ton of extra content on top of that.
Speaker 1: You're welcome. Now, it also means that we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to learn about the history of the co founders of Magnavox,
Speaker 1: and we usually say that the founders were uh, Peter
Speaker 1: Jensen from Denmark and Edward Pridom. Now we'll start with
Speaker 1: Pridum because I actually know the least about him. There
Speaker 1: are more sources to have at least something to say
Speaker 1: about Jensen. He's he's something of a hero in Denmark,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure what caused the disparity here where
Speaker 1: Jensen has way more about him than Pridom does. But
Speaker 1: I'll give you what I do know about pried Um.
Speaker 1: So unfortunate in that there are historians who focused primarily
Speaker 1: on hyper local history, like the history of a specific town,
Speaker 1: for example, and I happened to come across one that
Speaker 1: incidentally had information about Edwin Priddham. His father, James, was
Speaker 1: born in eighteen forty four, so before the Civil War
Speaker 1: in the United States, but James was born in Quebec, Canada.
Speaker 1: He immigrated to Joaukegan, Illinois, in eighteen seventy one. There
Speaker 1: he met a woman named Jeannette Lagrange McClaskey, and the
Speaker 1: two fell in love and they got married in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy three. James Priddom's occupation was that of a manufacturing
Speaker 1: chemist or a druggist, and he would end up running
Speaker 1: a drug store in Woaukegan for several years, and from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, he appeared to be a pretty
Speaker 1: successful businessman. He and his wife moved to Maywood, Illinois
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy eight, and in eighteen eighty one they
Speaker 1: welcomed their son, Edwin S. Priddom, to the world. I
Speaker 1: don't have much other information about Edwin's upbringing. I do
Speaker 1: know he attended Stanford University and he graduated in nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine with a degree in physics. After graduation, he
Speaker 1: joined fellow Stanford graduate Cyril Frank Lwell. Now l Will
Speaker 1: had actually graduated a couple of years previously in nineteen
Speaker 1: o seven, and l Will was trying to produce a
Speaker 1: system that would allow for the wireless transmission of voice
Speaker 1: communication aka you know, radio voice transmissions. This was in
Speaker 1: Palo Alto, California. And we'll leave Pritam there for now,
Speaker 1: and we will rejoin him momentarily. But now, whether Jensen
Speaker 1: so Peter Jensen was born in eighteen eighty six, and uh,
Speaker 1: he was born on the island Foster, which is part
Speaker 1: of Denmark. As for where he attended school, by that,
Speaker 1: I am somewhat baffled because at least according to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: and bear with me, we'll touch on this, but according
Speaker 1: to Wikipedia, he went to Amherst College. Amherst College is
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts in the United States, and according to Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: he graduated from this college with a degree in liberal
Speaker 1: arts in nineteen o six. Now, immediately, that didn't sound
Speaker 1: right to me, and I tried to verify this. And
Speaker 1: because that particular fact in the wiki page had no citation, right,
Speaker 1: there was no source connected to this claim, and it
Speaker 1: sounded like it was off to me. So I did
Speaker 1: some searches to find out whether or not this was accurate.
Speaker 1: I found a couple of other sources that also mentioned Amherst,
Speaker 1: but every single one of them, including the Wikipedia page,
Speaker 1: used the exact same wording, so clearly these are all
Speaker 1: copies of each other. I don't know which one is
Speaker 1: the original. Maybe it's the Wikipedia page, maybe it's one
Speaker 1: of the others, but they all used exactly the same words,
Speaker 1: not like they were rephrasing things. So my guess was
Speaker 1: that this was a mistake that happened in one place,
Speaker 1: and then lots of other people copied it. And again,
Speaker 1: the reason I find this all baffling is that, according
Speaker 1: to most other sources, the young Jensen found himself apprenticed
Speaker 1: to Dutch inventor Valdemar Poulson in nineteen o three, So
Speaker 1: even the Wikipedia article says this that he joined Paulson
Speaker 1: as an apprentice in nineteen o three. Paulson, however, lived
Speaker 1: and worked in Denmark, so that raises the question how
Speaker 1: the heck would a young Jenson be able to travel
Speaker 1: all the way to the United States and attend Amherst
Speaker 1: while also working for Paulson, because the two would have
Speaker 1: had to happen at the same time. So I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that has to be an error and a reminder
Speaker 1: that if you go to Wikipedia, it's a great place
Speaker 1: to look for initial sources. It is not always the
Speaker 1: most reliable resource in of itself. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: not usually this bad, but this is pretty bad. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm going to assume that Jensen didn't leave Denmark before
Speaker 1: nineteen o nine or so, particularly since at least some
Speaker 1: sources suggest it would be his future business partner Pritum
Speaker 1: who would help Jensen learn English. Surely, if he had
Speaker 1: attended Amherst in the United States and received a Liberal
Speaker 1: Arts degree of all things, he would have to have
Speaker 1: been pretty fluent in English before leaving in nineteen o nine,
Speaker 1: But will let that sit for now. Baltimore Poulson, Jensen's mentor,
Speaker 1: was an inventor who made significant contributions to fields like
Speaker 1: radio communication and magnetic recording. If you've listened to other
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff episodes, you've heard me talk about that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff before. We will touch on a few things
Speaker 1: throughout this episode in order to understand their significance as
Speaker 1: well as you know how they actually worked. Anyway, Jensen
Speaker 1: worked with Poulson, gaining valuable experience and knowledge in the
Speaker 1: field of radio physics and electronics. One invention in particular
Speaker 1: would become instrumental for our stories beginning, and that would
Speaker 1: be the arc radio transmitter. But all of this requires
Speaker 1: multiple explanations so that we can understand why it's important.
Speaker 1: So in the very early days of radio transmissions, engineers
Speaker 1: worked with something called spark transmitters, and this stuff ends
Speaker 1: up being really important because it does lead eventually to
Speaker 1: Jansen and print a meeting. So we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: trip down this rabbit hole to learn about the early
Speaker 1: days of radio. And by early I mean when folks
Speaker 1: first started discovering that this was a thing that we
Speaker 1: could create and detect radio waves. So in order to
Speaker 1: get that basic understanding, like this just becomes an onion,
Speaker 1: I get it, but you know, we have to have
Speaker 1: this basis of understanding. We're gonna start with James Clerk Maxwell. Now,
Speaker 1: you could technically go back earlier, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do that. So in the mid nineteenth century, Maxwell
Speaker 1: was looking at the work done by folks like Charles
Speaker 1: Augustine de Colombe, Michael Faraday, Andre Marie Empire, Franz Ernst Neuman,
Speaker 1: and Emile Lens. So see, like you could go further
Speaker 1: back but that would be an entire episode by itself.
Speaker 1: Maybe one day I will to just talk about the
Speaker 1: steps that led to us understanding and then leveraging things
Speaker 1: like radio waves. Any Maxwell was trying to suss out
Speaker 1: the math that would help explain the various observations that
Speaker 1: had been made by these earlier scientists, and most of
Speaker 1: those observations dealt with our growing understanding of electricity and
Speaker 1: magnetism and how those two things relate to one another,
Speaker 1: in other words, electromagnetism. So Maxwell developed a series of
Speaker 1: equations to describe the relationships between electricity and magnetism, and
Speaker 1: this became the foundation for our understanding of electromagnetism, and
Speaker 1: it also ended up creating certain predictions that Maxwell himself
Speaker 1: had no way of testing. There are entire college courses
Speaker 1: dedicated to Maxwell's equations, and there's no way I could
Speaker 1: do that subject matter justice in this episode. So what's
Speaker 1: important for us to realize is that another smarty pants
Speaker 1: by the name of Heinrich Hurtz. I'm sure that last
Speaker 1: name sounds familiar. He was able to create scientific experiments
Speaker 1: to look for something that Maxwell's equations had predicted. So
Speaker 1: he was actually putting these predictions to the test. Maxwell
Speaker 1: predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves. But that you know,
Speaker 1: that's a great prediction, But how would you know if
Speaker 1: you if you were around them. I mean, they are
Speaker 1: invisible apart from light, which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Speaker 1: But people weren't fully didn't didn't fully understand all this
Speaker 1: at this point, So they are effectively invisible to us,
Speaker 1: and we have no real way of interacting with them
Speaker 1: naturally on our own. But the Hurts came up with
Speaker 1: an experiment. He built an apparatus that included a spark gap.
Speaker 1: That is, it incorporated a pair of electrode terminals that
Speaker 1: are separated by a small gap of empty space just
Speaker 1: air between the two. But if you create a sufficient voltage,
Speaker 1: which remember an electrical circuit, voltage is equivalent to pressure,
Speaker 1: how much UNP is behind the current, if you had
Speaker 1: a sufficient voltage applied across the two terminals, so, in
Speaker 1: other words, the the difference between negative and positive charge
Speaker 1: just so great it allows for an electric discharge to
Speaker 1: pass between the terminals and essentially kind of equalize the pressure,
Speaker 1: so you get a spark. In other words, this is
Speaker 1: the basic principle for stuff like spark plugs in internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine vehicles. Anyway, Hurts created a device that had
Speaker 1: a spark gap in it. He could generate sparks with
Speaker 1: this device, but he also had a loop of wire,
Speaker 1: and the loop of wire ended with a little gap
Speaker 1: between two effectively terminals another spark gap. In other words,
Speaker 1: this one was not connected to a power source, however,
Speaker 1: and he discovered that when he generated a spark with
Speaker 1: his first device, this loop of wire would also have
Speaker 1: a spark get generated between its two ends as long
Speaker 1: as it was within a few meters of the first one. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, spark gap number one acted like a transmitter,
Speaker 1: and spark gap number two, this loop of wire was
Speaker 1: acting like a receiver. Now, I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into all the actual physics of this, because that would
Speaker 1: require even more discussion of stuff like resonance, capacitance and
Speaker 1: inductance um and and that would just be like this,
Speaker 1: this series would be forty episodes long. I will say
Speaker 1: that it isn't as simple as saying electricity happens over here,
Speaker 1: so it's also happening over here. That would be just
Speaker 1: playing wrong. Now, if you do want me to go
Speaker 1: into a more detailed explanation of how Hurts generated radio
Speaker 1: signals with this, even though he wasn't fully aware of
Speaker 1: exactly what it was he did. I'll do that in
Speaker 1: a future series, but for now we'll just leave it
Speaker 1: as Hurts created a device that generated radio waves and
Speaker 1: discovered a way to detect those waves using a loop
Speaker 1: of wire. But it Hurts didn't think there was any
Speaker 1: real practical use for this. He just saw it as
Speaker 1: a scientific experiment that validated Maxwell's hypothesis regarding electro magnetic radiation.
Speaker 1: He was just saying, this experiment, it proves that Maxwell
Speaker 1: was right, But I can't see any use for this
Speaker 1: apart from that. Now, as it would turn out, this
Speaker 1: would become the basis for early radio communication. Oh and
Speaker 1: by the way, this type of radio communication uh has
Speaker 1: been illegal in the United States since nineteen nine. The
Speaker 1: spark gap transmitter approach against the law in the United States.
Speaker 1: And you might wonder why why is that against the law? Well,
Speaker 1: the signals you generate with a spark gap radio transmitter
Speaker 1: have a very broad frequency range. So if you were,
Speaker 1: you know, close to a spark gap radio transmitter, like
Speaker 1: you're not part of this experiment, right, there's just one
Speaker 1: that's operating somewhere in your area. Well, you might find
Speaker 1: that the transmissions coming from that transmitter are overpowering other ones,
Speaker 1: like broadcast radio signals or you know, maybe later on
Speaker 1: television signals. It all depends on what frequency range it's
Speaker 1: broadcasting in, and radio interference, by definition makes it really
Speaker 1: hard to send and receive signals. So the US federal
Speaker 1: government told amateur radio enthusiasts, hey, there's no way you
Speaker 1: can guarantee your setup is not gonna mess with important systems,
Speaker 1: so please don't use spark gap transmitters. It's it's like
Speaker 1: firing off a blunderbus in a random direction. Not not great.
Speaker 1: It's not precise, so you can't like tune into a
Speaker 1: specific radio frequency. It's more like across this broad range
Speaker 1: of frequencies, that transmission is gonna criss cross all of them.
Speaker 1: So it's not a precise approach to transmission. So later
Speaker 1: engineers would build spark gap systems to transmit information wirelessly.
Speaker 1: But the spark gap method really only allows transmission of
Speaker 1: radio waves over that broad and somewhat random spectrum of frequencies,
Speaker 1: so suitable for sending like a coded message like those
Speaker 1: that are sent by Morse code, because you could just
Speaker 1: send little bursts of radio pulses. But it wasn't a
Speaker 1: good fit for other types of information like audio information.
Speaker 1: There was no way to send voice communications using spark
Speaker 1: gap technology, at least not effectively. And this is where
Speaker 1: Poulson comes in. So you know, you remember Paulson. We
Speaker 1: kind of left off on him a while ago. But
Speaker 1: Poulson developed something called an arc transmitter. And you might
Speaker 1: have heard me talk about transistors and how those would
Speaker 1: end up replacing for the most part, older vacuum tube technology. Well,
Speaker 1: vacuum tubes would end up replacing arc transmitters. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a step back from vacuum tubes were right
Speaker 1: in between, uh, you know, the spark transmitters and vacuum tubes.
Speaker 1: At this point, the arc lamp had been around for
Speaker 1: nearly a century. But I'll talk more about how we
Speaker 1: went from an arc lamp to an arc transmitter after
Speaker 1: we come back from this quick break. So our lamps
Speaker 1: had been around for almost a hundred years when Poulson
Speaker 1: starts taking a look at them for the potential of
Speaker 1: using them as a form of a radio transmitter. Let's
Speaker 1: start by defining what an arc lamp is in the
Speaker 1: first place. And I talked about these a bit in
Speaker 1: my episodes about stage lighting. Uh, they have something in
Speaker 1: common with spark gaps. So in our lamp typically has
Speaker 1: a pair of carbon rods. Doesn't always have to be carbon,
Speaker 1: but that's how the early ones were. And you create
Speaker 1: a high voltage between these carbon rods um and you're
Speaker 1: essentially feeding a high voltage current into rod number one
Speaker 1: and it's separated by a gap from rod number two,
Speaker 1: and the carbon in the first rod begins to vaporize.
Speaker 1: Because the carbon rod is gonna heat up due to
Speaker 1: its electrical resistance as this high voltage is pushing current
Speaker 1: through it, so heats up. Some of the carbon atoms
Speaker 1: begin to vaporize, and this allows electricity to flow in
Speaker 1: an arc from rod number one to rod number two.
Speaker 1: The carbon vapor effectively is completing a circuit. Now, this
Speaker 1: means that rod number one is slowly losing mass because
Speaker 1: particles are vaporizing off of the rod, and Rod number
Speaker 1: two is slowly gaining mass because those vaporized particles are
Speaker 1: forming deposits on the rod. And the length of that
Speaker 1: gap ends up being really important for carbon arc lamps.
Speaker 1: If it's too wide of a gap, well, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna get these little starts and stops as the arc forms,
Speaker 1: because the vapor between the two rods will get interrupted.
Speaker 1: So if the gap is too large, you just get
Speaker 1: kind of a sputtering lamp. If it's too close, well
Speaker 1: you'll get an arc that forms, but you'll have a
Speaker 1: limit to how much light is being produced and won't
Speaker 1: be very effective. All right, So that was the basic
Speaker 1: carbon arc lamp. Well, then a brilliant woman named Hertha Arton,
Speaker 1: who married a mathematician named William Martin Um had come
Speaker 1: up with more ideas. So William Martin he had started
Speaker 1: to look into the physics and peculiarities of arc lamps.
Speaker 1: You know, they were already a thing by the time
Speaker 1: he was looking into them. He didn't invent them. He
Speaker 1: was just curious about them because there were certain things
Speaker 1: about them that were interesting and not fully understood. However,
Speaker 1: he became discouraged after his research burned up because arc
Speaker 1: lamps are also dangerous and there was a fire. But
Speaker 1: Hertha took up the torch, so to speak. She was
Speaker 1: a keen student of mathematematics, herself and she continued her
Speaker 1: husband's research on her own. She noted that when she
Speaker 1: generated certain types of arcs at certain voltages, the current
Speaker 1: in the arc would decrease as she increased the voltage.
Speaker 1: And that seemed weird, right, Like she would increase the
Speaker 1: voltage or pressure, but the current, the amount of electricity
Speaker 1: flowing through the arc would decrease. What could is that
Speaker 1: to happen? Well, William, her husband, hypothesized that for you know,
Speaker 1: when he was seeing the current changing, there must be
Speaker 1: some sort of negative resistance, negative electrical resistance in the arc.
Speaker 1: This was not something that was accepted by the science
Speaker 1: community at large, to put it lightly, but one of
Speaker 1: his students, a guy named William Duddell, began studying arc
Speaker 1: lamps and he found something really weird. And he was
Speaker 1: looking at what happened if you changed the current flowing
Speaker 1: to an arc lamp, you know, at at different speeds,
Speaker 1: like if you're changing the current frequently or less frequently, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that affect the arc lamp? And this was
Speaker 1: direct current, right, That's the kind of current that always
Speaker 1: flows in the same direction. It's the type that you
Speaker 1: get if you are drawing electricity from a battery, because
Speaker 1: a battery has a negative terminal and a positive terminal,
Speaker 1: and that's that the electrons flow from the negative toward
Speaker 1: the positive and they're not going to change directions in
Speaker 1: a normal like circuit. But Duddle hooked up his arc
Speaker 1: lamp to a circuit that had a capacitor in it. Now,
Speaker 1: a capacitor consists of two conductive plates that have an
Speaker 1: insulator substance called a dielectric separating the two plates. So
Speaker 1: in the middle, kind of like a sandwich, you have
Speaker 1: conductive plate number one, you get your insulating material, then
Speaker 1: you have conductive plate number two. Now, this allows you
Speaker 1: to build up charges on either side of the plates.
Speaker 1: You can build up a very big negative charge on
Speaker 1: one side and a positive charge on the other, and
Speaker 1: they will hold that charge and opposite charges attract right
Speaker 1: the negative once quote unquote to get over with the
Speaker 1: positive and the positive ones to get over with the negative.
Speaker 1: So if you create a pathway so that the charge
Speaker 1: can actually move from either side and equalize, it will
Speaker 1: do so, and it will do it all at once.
Speaker 1: It will completely dump that charge as soon as there
Speaker 1: is a viable path to do so. So here's a
Speaker 1: simple version of a circuit with a capacitor. Let's say
Speaker 1: you got a battery and you connect a wire from
Speaker 1: the negative terminal of the battery to a light bulb.
Speaker 1: You connect the light bulb to a capacitor, and you
Speaker 1: connect the other side of the capacitor back to the battery.
Speaker 1: So what happens when you have completed this circuit, Well,
Speaker 1: electricity flows from the batteries negative terminal to the light bulb.
Speaker 1: Light bulb lights up, it continues on to the capacitor.
Speaker 1: Now electrons start to accumulate in that plate of the capacitor.
Speaker 1: That capacitor builds up a negative charge. Meanwhile, electrons on
Speaker 1: the opposite plate, the one on the other side of
Speaker 1: the circuit, they start to give up electrons that go
Speaker 1: back to the battery and it builds up a positive charge.
Speaker 1: So you have a positive charge on one side and
Speaker 1: then you have a negative charge on the other. The
Speaker 1: capacitor can actually charge all the way up to the
Speaker 1: same amount of voltage that the battery provides. So if
Speaker 1: it's a one and a half volt battery, the capacitor
Speaker 1: will charge up to one a half volts between the
Speaker 1: two plates, and as it charges up, the light bulb
Speaker 1: will gradually start to dim, and once the capascitor is
Speaker 1: fully charged, the light will just go out. Because the
Speaker 1: current no longer is flowing from the battery, the circuits
Speaker 1: kind of at a standstill. You have equal amounts of pressure,
Speaker 1: so everything just kind of holds. But let's say then
Speaker 1: you remove the battery. So you take the battery out
Speaker 1: of the circuit, the capacitor will still hold on to
Speaker 1: its charge. It still has that that voltage there. And
Speaker 1: if you were to actually put a wire in the
Speaker 1: place of where the battery had been, well, now you've
Speaker 1: completed a pathway so that the electricity can actually flow
Speaker 1: through the circuit, and the electrons on the negatively charged
Speaker 1: plate are gonna rush all at once back through this circuit.
Speaker 1: That means you're going to go back through the lightbulb
Speaker 1: and make the light bulb flash very quickly, and then
Speaker 1: the charge reaches equilibrium and the light bulb goes off
Speaker 1: and everything goes back to normal. The flash bulb, as
Speaker 1: we use in film cameras use capacitors in exactly this
Speaker 1: way to activate that light quickly so that you can
Speaker 1: take a flash picture. Okay, well, Dundal found something really
Speaker 1: weird when he attached his capacitor to his arc lamp.
Speaker 1: He had a loop of wire connected in this circuit
Speaker 1: where he had his capacitor in his arc lamp, and
Speaker 1: he found that this setup creates something really bizarre. First
Speaker 1: of all, it would start humming at a weird musical note,
Speaker 1: like it was a musical kind of hum and also
Speaker 1: it appeared that it was creating alternating current. There was
Speaker 1: an oscillation going on in the flow of current. So
Speaker 1: Dundle discovered if he straightened the loop of wire, the
Speaker 1: humming noise stopped and the arc lamp reverted to plain
Speaker 1: old direct current. So he figured something wild was happening,
Speaker 1: and he learned that the coil and capacitor were creating
Speaker 1: an oscillating signals. So let's go back to that that
Speaker 1: simple capacitor example we just made. You've built up a
Speaker 1: charge between two plates, and you connect the two plates
Speaker 1: together using a coiled wire so that you can have
Speaker 1: an instantaneous discharge, and electrons flow from the negatively charged
Speaker 1: plate and they go through the coiled wire towards the
Speaker 1: positive one. Well, as electrons go through a coiled conductor,
Speaker 1: it generates a magnetic field. That magnetic field actually encourages
Speaker 1: more charged to flow and it will reverse the charges
Speaker 1: that we had in the capacitor. So, in one instance,
Speaker 1: we had a positive plate and a negative plate. We
Speaker 1: connect them with this coil. The negative ends up becoming
Speaker 1: positively charged, the positive becomes negatively charged. They switch charges. Well,
Speaker 1: they're still connected by that coil of wire. So now
Speaker 1: that flow of electricity is going to reverse again. It's
Speaker 1: going to go back the other way, and because again
Speaker 1: through that process it creates a magnetic field, it reverses
Speaker 1: the charges again. So you have this oscillating effect. The
Speaker 1: electricity flows in one direction until the capacitor charges up
Speaker 1: flows the other direction, et cetera. Now y'all probably know
Speaker 1: there ain't no such thing as perpetual motion. That's also
Speaker 1: true in electrical systems as well. So you could connect
Speaker 1: a charged capacitor in a very simple circuit with a
Speaker 1: coil of wire and create alternating current. But the strength
Speaker 1: of that current decreases over time, and this is due
Speaker 1: to electrical resistance, which is essentially the friction in the
Speaker 1: world of electronics. So eventually that current does die down.
Speaker 1: You can't just have a perpetual electrical machine by connecting
Speaker 1: a coil of wire to a battery. People would have
Speaker 1: figured that out long ago if it were possible, But
Speaker 1: when connected to an arc lamp, things are end up
Speaker 1: being a little different. So the battery would start to
Speaker 1: charge up the capacitor. In the meantime, we would also
Speaker 1: charge up the arc, and the arc would eventually fire. Now,
Speaker 1: the firing of the arc wouldn't turn cause the capacitor
Speaker 1: to discharge, and that would start off this oscillating effect,
Speaker 1: and the arc would essentially amplify that discharge, taking energy
Speaker 1: from the battery and the process. So the arc was
Speaker 1: kind of like if you imagine someone on a swing
Speaker 1: set and they're they're not pumping their legs or their
Speaker 1: arms or anything. They're just they started a point they
Speaker 1: start swinging. Well, we know that if you start at
Speaker 1: a certain height and you swing down and you swing back,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna go back up to the same height
Speaker 1: you started at, right, Friction is gonna slow you down
Speaker 1: a little bit, You're not gonna go quite as high.
Speaker 1: So in this case, the arc was acting kind of
Speaker 1: like someone standing behind you and giving you just enough
Speaker 1: of a push so that you're maintaining the same height
Speaker 1: each time you swing. Back. That's essentially what the arc
Speaker 1: was doing, and Doubtal figured it out. He figured out
Speaker 1: that the arc was not just instigating this oscillating effect,
Speaker 1: but perpetuating it, amplifying it. So Duddle finds that this
Speaker 1: is what was generating that musical note when he turned
Speaker 1: on the art generator. And he also found that if
Speaker 1: he changed the size of the capacitor, or if he
Speaker 1: changed the length of the coil, it would make the
Speaker 1: note change. He could play a different pitch. So of
Speaker 1: course he created a very primitive electric musical instrument. And
Speaker 1: by changing the coil he was able to play out
Speaker 1: a wicked version of God's Save the Queen. Uh that
Speaker 1: that would be the God Save the Queen that sounds
Speaker 1: like my Country tis of the not God Save the Queen,
Speaker 1: as recorded by the punk rock band The Sex Pistols.
Speaker 1: But Duddle was only able to create oscillations of up
Speaker 1: to ten killer hurts or ten thousand cycles per second.
Speaker 1: That's way too low for radio waves. Radio waves we're
Speaker 1: talking about the hundreds of killer hurts, and Duddle was
Speaker 1: maxing out at ten killer hurts. So why does this
Speaker 1: have to do with Pulson? And moreover, how does it
Speaker 1: lay into the founding of magnavox. Well, Paulson heard about
Speaker 1: Duddle's work and he began to experiment with arc reactors himself,
Speaker 1: arc reactors that's like Marvel arc generators. He knew that
Speaker 1: Hertha had previously described the arc lamps tended to hiss
Speaker 1: in the presence of oxygen. He wanted to get that
Speaker 1: hiss out, so one thing he wanted to do was
Speaker 1: to cut down on the oxygen in the area of
Speaker 1: the arc itself. He did this pretty effectively by setting
Speaker 1: down what was called a vapor lamp um using hydrogen
Speaker 1: and going into that would be a whole thing. So
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna cut to the chase and just explain
Speaker 1: that this effectively consumed the oxygen that existed within the
Speaker 1: space of the arc, that in turn cut back on
Speaker 1: the hissing. Paulson also experimented by introducing magnetic fields around
Speaker 1: the arc, essentially just saying like, is there something that
Speaker 1: magnetic fields do that could be useful here? And eventually
Speaker 1: he discovered that in a specific or intation, he could
Speaker 1: use electro magnets to create a magnetic field that would
Speaker 1: allow his arc lamp to generate higher frequencies of oscillation
Speaker 1: high enough to create radio waves. The magnetic field would
Speaker 1: allow the alternating current to flow to the carbon rods,
Speaker 1: but effectively would block the direct current, so it removed
Speaker 1: some interference that would otherwise prevent him from making a
Speaker 1: stable radio frequency. And that was the final goal, was
Speaker 1: finding a device that would allow you to create a
Speaker 1: specific radio frequency or really more like a narrow band
Speaker 1: of radio frequencies, as opposed to the spark gap version,
Speaker 1: which was that broad uh random series of frequencies. This
Speaker 1: meant that instead of a shotgun blast, you had a
Speaker 1: more dialed in, targeted approach, and it also meant you
Speaker 1: could create a receiver with a tuner that could be
Speaker 1: attuned to that spe cific frequency band. By the way,
Speaker 1: this also means that you could have multiple transmitters, and
Speaker 1: you could have each transmitter setting transmitting out at a
Speaker 1: different frequency band, and the transmitters would not interfere with
Speaker 1: one another. So one person could be transmitting it, say
Speaker 1: five forty killer hurts, and someone else could be transmitting
Speaker 1: at six eight, and those two transmissions don't interfere with
Speaker 1: each other. They're in separate frequency bands, so a person
Speaker 1: on the other end would just need to tune into
Speaker 1: the proper frequency either five forty to hear person number
Speaker 1: one or six eighty to hear person number two, But
Speaker 1: you wouldn't hear both at the same time because you're
Speaker 1: you're refining it, you're tuning into that band. And now
Speaker 1: I mentioned those frequencies specifically because those are in the
Speaker 1: A M frequency range here in the US. However, I
Speaker 1: should also add Poulson's arc was capable of generating radio
Speaker 1: signals that around two hurts, so much lower frequencies than
Speaker 1: what we would typically talk about with commercial radio, but
Speaker 1: it still was radio waves. Well, if you were to
Speaker 1: use spark gap technology, you would overwhelm all other transmitters
Speaker 1: and receivers, right. That's that's why the FCC, or really
Speaker 1: the predecessor to the FCC, said don't use spark gap
Speaker 1: transmitters in the United States after nine. In fact, early
Speaker 1: on in in radio transmission, spark gap transmitters created some
Speaker 1: pretty massive problems, including uh, during the tragedy of the
Speaker 1: sinking of the Titanic. But that's another episode all by itself.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to Poulson. So, by the time Paulson
Speaker 1: was figuring out ways to demonstrate his art, transmitter. He
Speaker 1: had already you know, discovered that it worked, and he
Speaker 1: had built a model based finding different ways to try
Speaker 1: and get investors interested in it so it could become,
Speaker 1: you know, a fully fully fledged business. He brought on
Speaker 1: Jensen as his apprentice. You remember Jensen. I thought about
Speaker 1: him at the beginning of the episode. Anyway, Paulson was
Speaker 1: finding it challenging to get into the radio market because
Speaker 1: there was this other guy, Marconi, who was pretty dang
Speaker 1: ruthless when it came to trying to monopolize radio technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: marconi story, uh is one that a lot of people
Speaker 1: find irritating because of how Marconi helped squelch innovation. And also,
Speaker 1: Marconi and Tesla had a famous, uh let's call it
Speaker 1: disagreement as to who invented radio transmitting technology. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Marconi's kind of a He often can be presented as
Speaker 1: sort of a villain in these narratives. But Marconi had
Speaker 1: patents on stuff like spark gap transmitters and his entire
Speaker 1: business was flourishing on those, So he was not super
Speaker 1: keen on adopting a technology, even if it was a
Speaker 1: superior technology, if that technology didn't have his name on
Speaker 1: the patents. So Marconi did a pretty bang up job
Speaker 1: kind of keeping Pulson pushed to the sidelines. But then
Speaker 1: across the pond all the way in California, we get
Speaker 1: back to Cyril Lwell and he read about Poulson's discovery.
Speaker 1: L Well wanted to establish wireless communication systems in California,
Speaker 1: both as a way of sending wireless telegrams, but also
Speaker 1: primarily as a way of enabling ship to shore communication
Speaker 1: with the various boats that were off the West coast.
Speaker 1: So he purchased the patent rights to Poulson's invention for
Speaker 1: a cool half million, an enormous sum back in those days.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a lot. Now you offered me a
Speaker 1: half million, my eyes would probably roll back in my head.
Speaker 1: But back in those days it was a true fortune.
Speaker 1: And he formed a new company called the Pulson Wireless
Speaker 1: Telephone and Telegraph Company, and Baltimore Poulson would actually have
Speaker 1: a ten percent stake in this new business. Now, to
Speaker 1: help set everything up, Poulson sent young Jensen off to America.
Speaker 1: And now we finally get to the point where Jensen
Speaker 1: and Pridham met. The two engineers meet each other, they
Speaker 1: start to understand each other's work, they become friends. Apparently
Speaker 1: Printam was actually helping Jensen learn English, at least according
Speaker 1: to most of the sources that came across that weren't
Speaker 1: claiming that Jansen had mysteriously attended Amherst somehow. And Jansen
Speaker 1: brought with him the equipment needed to establish the communications
Speaker 1: systems in California, and he and pried Um effectively we're
Speaker 1: constructing these systems together. They were assembling things in California.
Speaker 1: In nine nine, the company would reorganize and it would
Speaker 1: become the Federal Telegraph Company or f TC. This one
Speaker 1: would become an important company for another emerging technology, that
Speaker 1: of the vacuum tube. But that's a different podcast. More importantly,
Speaker 1: for our story, that change meant that Prinum and Jansen
Speaker 1: weren't really necessary for this new version of the company,
Speaker 1: and the two would resign. We'll learn about what happened
Speaker 1: next when we come back after this short break. So
Speaker 1: where do Yensen and prin Him go once they have
Speaker 1: left FTC. Well, they kind of hoped they could continue
Speaker 1: to work with Poulson back in Denmark, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to establish some wireless communication systems in Canada. And Ireland,
Speaker 1: but Paulson had already made an agreement with a British
Speaker 1: company to work with Ireland and he wasn't really interested
Speaker 1: in expanding into Canada, so that became a non starter.
Speaker 1: They went all the way to Copenhagen to try and
Speaker 1: convince them, and that didn't work out, so they decided
Speaker 1: to return to California. Jensen had kind of fallen in
Speaker 1: love with the United States and to say that that
Speaker 1: was where he was going to pursue his his career.
Speaker 1: So they went back to the States, and when they
Speaker 1: returned to California, they encountered one of the most important
Speaker 1: components for any tech company ever, whether we're talking historical
Speaker 1: or startups of today. They met the money. So yeah,
Speaker 1: for a tech company to succeed, typically you need several
Speaker 1: things to be in place. For one thing, you need
Speaker 1: the tech. If the tech doesn't work, that makes it
Speaker 1: harder to succeed. Not impossible. I mean, we have seen
Speaker 1: a lot of scams out there and a lot of
Speaker 1: lousy products that get to the point of success. But
Speaker 1: that does make it, you know, harder on occasion. You
Speaker 1: also need good leadership, you need vision, and you need
Speaker 1: the cold, hard cash baby, you gotta have money to
Speaker 1: get things rolling. So the money in this case came
Speaker 1: from soap and candles. Seriously, there's this guy named Richard
Speaker 1: O'Connor and he had made a small fortune in San
Speaker 1: Francisco selling soaps and candles, and he was also an
Speaker 1: influential citizen in California. He had close ties to political
Speaker 1: leaders in the state. So a Connor met with the
Speaker 1: Incident and pried Um and the three hit it off. Now,
Speaker 1: O'Connor had previously been part of a group that had
Speaker 1: attempted to secure worldwide rights to Pulson's ar transmitter technologies,
Speaker 1: but that didn't work out for him that he still
Speaker 1: had high hopes to get invested into the fledgling field
Speaker 1: of radio communications. So a connor really wanted to get
Speaker 1: into radio, and to that end, he put Priedom and
Speaker 1: Ensign in charge of a new company called the Commercial
Speaker 1: Wireless and Development Company or c w d C. Now,
Speaker 1: the Incident PRIAM would mainly serve as the research and
Speaker 1: development arm of this business. So when I say in charge,
Speaker 1: I meant they were really in charge of doing laboratory
Speaker 1: kind of experimentation. So their main job requirement was to
Speaker 1: research radio physics and to patent anything that they might
Speaker 1: invent as a result of their research, and thus they
Speaker 1: would contribute to the company's success by filing patents, because
Speaker 1: one way to make money is you make you make
Speaker 1: these patents and then you license them out to other companies.
Speaker 1: If you yourself cannot create your invention, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: you just don't have the manufacturing capacity, but some other
Speaker 1: company can, then you can license your patent to that company.
Speaker 1: They can make the stuff you you have designed at
Speaker 1: scale and it becomes a real thing. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of what their job was, to research and patent stuff.
Speaker 1: So in the winter of nineteen eleven, O'Connor chose a
Speaker 1: bungalow in Napa, California to serve as company headquarters. The
Speaker 1: location was pretty remote, which would mean there'll be less
Speaker 1: chance for radio interference, and Jansen would also meet a
Speaker 1: woman named Vivian Steve's in Napa. The two would fall
Speaker 1: in love and get married and they started a family.
Speaker 1: So Prittam and Jansen almost invented an improved telephone receiver.
Speaker 1: Now I say almost invented because as it turned out,
Speaker 1: their idea actually followed similar ideas that others had already patented,
Speaker 1: but the possibility of them inventing something new would be
Speaker 1: what would drive them to create the company Magnavox. Alright,
Speaker 1: So incon and Brittam had observed that an invention Poulson
Speaker 1: had created one which had a thin wire that would
Speaker 1: move very quickly due to magnetic attraction. So let's say
Speaker 1: you've got an electro magnet's got two poles. You would
Speaker 1: be able to attract this wire in the direction of
Speaker 1: the different poles. They figured they could adapt that so
Speaker 1: that they can have a wire that would drive a
Speaker 1: diaphragm and generate sound waves. You know, push a diaphragm
Speaker 1: at the same frequency as incoming sound waves and you
Speaker 1: would create outgoing sound waves. In other words, they thought
Speaker 1: up a way to make what they called an electro
Speaker 1: dynamic speaker. See the way it works is that first
Speaker 1: you have a microphone and you speak into a microphone. This,
Speaker 1: you know, the air waves that you create, the air
Speaker 1: fluctuations end up causing a diaphragm inside the microphone to vibrate.
Speaker 1: This vibration causes movement between a permanent magnet or an
Speaker 1: electro magnet and a loop of conductive wire. Now, because
Speaker 1: of the effects of electro magnetism and induction. That movement
Speaker 1: induces current to flow through the wire as it moves
Speaker 1: through this magnetic field. This current essentially is a transformation
Speaker 1: of those original sound vibrations. You have transduced them. There's
Speaker 1: transducer you know, is part of a microphone, so you
Speaker 1: have created essentially a signal that represents sound. This signal
Speaker 1: can then go to a setup that's identical, but it's
Speaker 1: in reverse. So you fee this current to a device
Speaker 1: that then translates the electric current into physical movement again
Speaker 1: through the use of a conductive coil and a magnet
Speaker 1: which could be either eminent or electro magnet. And now
Speaker 1: the current going through the coil generates a magnetic field,
Speaker 1: and that magnetic field interacts with the permanent magnet and
Speaker 1: you get this attraction and repulsion and that creates the motion.
Speaker 1: The physical motion that transfers to the diaphragm, and the
Speaker 1: vibrating diaphragm then recreates whatever the original sound was. So
Speaker 1: it's this fascinating process where you are taking energy, converting
Speaker 1: it into a different type, and then converting it back
Speaker 1: into the original type. Typically, you also have to boost
Speaker 1: the electric signal through this process, because it usually is
Speaker 1: too weak to drive a diaphragm by itself. But you know,
Speaker 1: the basic idea was pretty solid, and it was also,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, an idea that other folks had kind
Speaker 1: of already come up with. So Jansen and pried Um they,
Speaker 1: you know, they thought that maybe they had come onto
Speaker 1: something new. They used a wire connected to a match stick,
Speaker 1: and the match stick, in turn was connected to a diaphragm,
Speaker 1: and they use that to create sound coming from a microphone.
Speaker 1: So as electricity moved through the wire, it would be
Speaker 1: attracted or repelled by some permanent magnets. And they found
Speaker 1: that it worked. They presented a transmission of human speech
Speaker 1: that was quote with exceptional strength and clarity end quote.
Speaker 1: They then refined that approach. They created a coil of
Speaker 1: copper wire and they used stronger electro magnets to create
Speaker 1: a speaker set in a soundbox to you know, help
Speaker 1: amplify the sound and direct the sound. And they still
Speaker 1: intended to use this as a telephone receiver, even though
Speaker 1: it was pretty big and clunky. But in the process
Speaker 1: of developing the invention, they were discouraged to receive a
Speaker 1: rejection from the Patent Office, and that's when they found
Speaker 1: out that their invention was similar to other patents that
Speaker 1: already existed to cover this particular approach. They were able
Speaker 1: to patent the voice coil version of their idea, but
Speaker 1: that was about it. They figured they had totally busted
Speaker 1: on this deal. They couldn't that this would be really
Speaker 1: that valuable because other people had patents that were too similar,
Speaker 1: so it would be really easy to create a different
Speaker 1: variation of the same invention. They just thought, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we we worked, we gave it our best shot, but
Speaker 1: we will we will not be able to get worldwide
Speaker 1: rights to this general invention, so there's no way this
Speaker 1: is going to become our fortune. And they almost dissolved
Speaker 1: the company at that point. Some of the investors were
Speaker 1: reportedly ready to call it quits too, but O'Connor, you know,
Speaker 1: the soap and candle guy who must have been fed
Speaker 1: up with wax, didn't want to pull the plug just yet.
Speaker 1: And then Jensen and Prinham happened to meet just the
Speaker 1: right person at just the right time. That person was
Speaker 1: Jensen's wife's uncle, so Vivian's uncle, Ray Gal breath Um.
Speaker 1: So I guess technically Jansen's uncle in law. Anyway, Galbreath
Speaker 1: said if the two adapted their invention that it could
Speaker 1: produce even louder noises, it might come in useful. And
Speaker 1: Galbreath liked to go to baseball games. The games he
Speaker 1: went to, there was this one feller there who would
Speaker 1: use a megaphone to make public announcements. But the megaphone,
Speaker 1: which was you know, just a you know, a horn
Speaker 1: that would naturally amplify your volume a little bit, it
Speaker 1: wasn't ideal because if you weren't sitting in front of
Speaker 1: the guy, like if you were off to the side
Speaker 1: at all, you really couldn't hear what he was saying
Speaker 1: very well, which meant he would have to move and
Speaker 1: say the same thing many times. And he said, you
Speaker 1: know what if you guys changed your invention so that
Speaker 1: someone like this feller could talk to a microphone instead
Speaker 1: of megaphone, and then the signal could transmit to sound
Speaker 1: boxes that played back the sound but at a much
Speaker 1: higher volume, making it easier to hear and understand, well
Speaker 1: you incident. Prinim thought that such an invention would have
Speaker 1: a fairly limited application. They could see it being used
Speaker 1: in things like railroad you know, stations to announce on
Speaker 1: oncoming trains and things like that. But they couldn't see
Speaker 1: themselves getting rich from it. But they were also at
Speaker 1: a loss over what to do next, So they got
Speaker 1: to work create being an electro dynamic loud speaker. They
Speaker 1: took their receiver and they paired it with a Gooseneck
Speaker 1: horn from an Edison phonograph, you know, like the kind
Speaker 1: has the old gramophones in it, you know, the horns
Speaker 1: that came up from the what looked like an old turntable.
Speaker 1: They incorporated a transformer to amplify the signal coming from
Speaker 1: the transmitter, and they ultimately made a speaker capable of
Speaker 1: transmitting with a potential output of around twenty five what's
Speaker 1: they didn't know at the time, but they had just
Speaker 1: made the most powerful speaker in the world up to
Speaker 1: that point. That I think is where we're going to
Speaker 1: have to finish this particular episode, except I will say this.
Speaker 1: I will say that that powerful speaker because it was
Speaker 1: so powerful, they thought of it as having a great voice,
Speaker 1: great as in like Oz the great and powerful great.
Speaker 1: So they decided they would name it uh Great Voice,
Speaker 1: but using Latin words which means they called it Magna Vox.
Speaker 1: I figured I had to get the name of the
Speaker 1: company in here by the end or else it was
Speaker 1: really gonna be a heck of a first episode in
Speaker 1: this series, right, So in our next episode, we're going
Speaker 1: to learn more about this loud speaker, about the early
Speaker 1: tests and how that was able to propel the company forward,
Speaker 1: and how Jensen and Printam would refine their designs. We'll
Speaker 1: learn about the company actually taking on the name Magna Vox,
Speaker 1: and we'll learn about what happened in the company in
Speaker 1: the following years and what other contributions were made in
Speaker 1: the in the world of electronics. But this was just
Speaker 1: the first episode in that series, so I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this one. Stick with us because we're gonna cover
Speaker 1: more about Magna Vox in the upcoming episodes, and if
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, as always, reach out to me
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle we use is text stuff h
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again release soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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