Alexander Stepanovich Popov | |
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Born | Turyinskiye Rudniki settlement, Perm Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Krasnoturyinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia) | 16 March 1859
Died | 13 January 1906 46) St. Peterburg, Russian Empire | (aged
Known for | Radio |
Awards | Order of St. Anna of 3rd and 2nd grades Order of Saint Stanislaus (Imperial House of Romanov) of 2nd grade Silver medal of Alexander III reign honour on the belt of Order of Alexander Nevsky Prize of Imperial Russian Technical Society |
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Alexander Stepanovich Popov (sometimes spelled Popoff; Russian : Алекса́ндр Степа́нович Попо́в; March 16 [ O.S. March 4] 1859 – January 13 [ O.S. December 31, 1905] 1906) was a Russian physicist, who was one of the first persons to invent a radio receiving device. [1] [2] [3]
Popov's work as a teacher at a Russian naval school led him to explore high frequency electrical phenomena. On May 7, 1895, he presented a paper on a wireless lightning detector he had built that worked via using a coherer to detect radio noise from lightning strikes. This day is celebrated in the Russian Federation as Radio Day. In a March 24, 1896 demonstration, he transmitted radio signals 250 meters between different campus buildings in St. Petersburg. His work was based on that of another physicist – Oliver Lodge, and contemporaneous with the work of Guglielmo Marconi.
Born in the town of Krasnoturinsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast in the Urals as the son of a priest, he became interested in natural sciences when he was a child. His father wanted Alexander to join the priesthood and sent him to the Seminary School at Yekaterinburg. [2] There he developed an interest in science and mathematics and instead of going on to Theology School in 1877 he enrolled at St. Petersburg university where he studied physics. [2] [4] After graduation with honors in 1882, he stayed on as a laboratory assistant at the university. However the salary at the university was inadequate to support his family, and in 1883 he took a post as teacher and head of laboratory at the Russian Navy's Torpedo School in Kronstadt on Kotlin Island. [2]
Along with his teaching duties at the naval school Popov pursued related areas of research. Trying to solve a problem with the failure in the electrical wire insulation on steel ships (which turned out to be a problem with electrical resonance) led him to further explore oscillations of high frequency electrical currents. [5] His interest in this area of study (including the new field of "Hertzian" or radio waves) was intensified by his trip in 1893 to the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in the United States where he was able to confer with other researchers in the field. [6]
Popov also read an 1894 article about British physicist Oliver Lodge's experiments related to the discovery of radio waves by German physicist Heinrich Hertz 6 years earlier. [6] On 1 June 1894, after the death of Hertz, British physicist Oliver Lodge gave a memorial lecture on Hertz experiments. He set up a demonstration on the quasi optical nature of Hertzian waves (radio waves) and demonstrated their transmission at distances up to 50 meters. [7] Lodge used a detector called a coherer , a glass tube containing metal filings between two electrodes. [4] When received waves from an antenna were applied to the electrodes, the coherer became conductive allowing the current from a battery to pass through it, with the impulse being picked up by a mirror galvanometer. After receiving a signal, the metal filings in the coherer had to be reset by a manually operated vibrator or by the vibrations of a bell placed on the table nearby that rang every time a transmission was received. [7] Popov set to work to design a more sensitive radio wave receiver that could be used as a lightning detector, to warn of thunderstorms by detecting the electromagnetic pulses of lightning strikes [1] using a coherer receiver. [1] [2]
In Popov's lightning detector the coherer (C) was connected to an antenna (A), and to a separate circuit with a relay (R) and battery (V) which operated an electric bell (B). The radio noise generated by a lightning strike turned on the coherer, the current from the battery was applied to the relay, closing its contacts, which applied current to the electromagnet (E) of the bell, pulling the arm over to ring the bell. Popov added an innovative automatic reset feature of a "self tapping" coherer where the bell arm would spring back and tap the coherer, restoring it to its receptive state. [3] The two chokes (L) in the coherer's leads prevented the radio signal across the coherer from short circuiting by passing through the DC circuit. He connected his receiver to a wire antenna (A) suspended high in the air and to a ground (earth) (G). The antenna idea may have been based on a lightning rod and was an early use of a monopole wire aerial. [8]
On 7 May 1895, Popov presented the paper "On the Relation of Metallic Powders to Electric Oscillations", which described his lightning detector, to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society in St. Petersburg. [6] Most Eastern sources regard Popov's lightning detector as the first radio receiver, [9] and the 7th of May has been celebrated since 1945 in the Russian Federation as "Radio Day". [2] However, there is no evidence Popov sent any type of message on that occasion. The first account of communication by Popov was a demonstration on 24 March 1896 at the Physical and Chemical Society, when some accounts say the Morse code message "ГЕНРИХ ГЕРЦ" ("HEINRICH HERTZ" in Russian) was received from a transmitter 250 meters away and transcribed on the blackboard by the Society president. [2] Historian Charles Susskind in 1962 concluded that Popov did not use radio waves for actual wireless communication before mid-1896. [4]
In 1895 Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi began work on a purpose-built wireless telegraphy system based on "Hertzian" (radio) waves, developing a spark-gap transmitter and a much improved automatically reset coherer receiver. By mid-1895 Marconi had transmitted messages 1/2 mile (800 meters). He then came up with the idea grounding his transmitter as well as his receiver, and by mid-1896 he was transmitting radio messages a mile and a half (2400 meters). [10] Popov and Marconi's early work seems to have been done without knowledge of each other's system, although reading Marconi's June 1896 patent disclosures led Popov to develop a long-range wireless telegraphy system. [4]
His paper on his experiments: "On the relation of metallic powders to electrical oscillations", was published 15 December 1895. He did not apply for a patent for his invention. [3] In July 1895 he installed his receiver and a siphon recorder on the roof of the Institute of Forestry building in St. Petersburg. [1] and was able to detect thunderstorms at a range of 50 km, [4] however he was also aware of its communication potential. His paper, read at the 7 May 1895 meeting, concluded [2] [4]
I can express my hope that my apparatus will be applied for signaling at great distances by electric vibrations of high frequency, as soon as there will be invented a more powerful generator of such vibrations.
In 1896, the article depicting Popov's invention was reprinted in the 'Journal of the Russian Physical and Chemical Society'. In March 1896, he effected transmission of radio waves between different campus buildings in St. Petersburg. In November 1897, the French entrepreneur Eugene Ducretet made a transmitter and receiver based on wireless telegraphy in his own laboratory. According to Ducretet, he built his devices using Popov's lightning detector as a model. By 1898, Ducretet was manufacturing equipment of wireless telegraphy based on Popov's instructions. At the same time Popov effected ship-to-shore communication over a distance of 6 miles in 1898 and 30 miles in 1899.
In 1900 a radio station was established under Popov's instructions on Hogland island (Suursaari) to provide two-way communication by wireless telegraphy between the Russian naval base and the crew of the battleship General-Admiral Apraksin. The battleship had run aground on Hogland island in the Gulf of Finland in November 1899. The crew of the Apraksin were not in immediate danger, but the water in the Gulf began to freeze. Due to bad weather and bureaucratic red tape, the crew of Apraksin did not arrive until January 1900 to establish a wireless station on Hogland Island. By February 5, however, messages were being received reliably. The wireless messages were relayed to Hogland Island by a station some 25 miles away at Kymi (nowadays Kotka) on the Finnish coast. Kotka was selected as the location for the wireless relay station because it was the point closest to Hogland Island served by telegraph wires connected to Russian naval headquarters. [11]
By the time the Apraksin was freed from the rocks by the icebreaker Yermak at the end of April, 440 official telegraph messages had been handled by the Hogland Island wireless station. Besides the rescue of the Apraksin's crew, more than 50 Finnish fishermen, who were stranded on a piece of drift ice in the Gulf of Finland, were saved by the icebreaker Yermak following distress telegrams sent by wireless telegraphy.[ citation needed ] In 1901 Alexander Popov was appointed as professor at the Electrotechnical Institute. In 1905 he was elected director of the institute. [12]
In 1905 he became seriously ill and died of a brain hemorrhage on January 13, 1906. [13]
In 1945 on the 50th anniversary of Popov's experiment the old Soviet Union made May 7th a new holiday, Radio Day, the day they claim Popov invented radio. Historians note this holiday may be more due to Cold War era politics than historical evidence. [14] [1] [3] Radio Day is still officially marked in Russia and Bulgaria.
A minor planet, 3074 Popov, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1979, is named after him. [15] At ITU Telecom World 2011, Igor Shchyogolev, Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation alongside Hamadoun Touré, Secretary General of the ITU, inaugurated the "Alexander Stepanovich Popov" conference room at ITU's headquarters in Geneva.[ citation needed ]
Books about A. S. Popov:
Golovin G.I. ("The life of wonderful people" Series, No. 141): Alexander Stepanovich Popov - 1945, 88 pp., 50
Films about A. S. Popov:
Alexander Popov (film) is a 1949 biographical film about the life and work of Alexander Stepanovich Popov.
In 1984, the USSR State Bank issued a jubilee coin with a face value of 1 ruble dedicated to A.S. Popov. [19]
Many stamps have been issued depict A.S.Popov bearing the honor of him inventing radio.
Some of his descendants escaped to Manchuria during the Bolshevik Revolution and eventually made their way to the United States. Among others were his cousin, Dr. Paul Popov, who became a prominent physician in San Francisco and Paul's son, Egor Popov (1913–2001), who became a UC Berkeley Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering. [20] [21]
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi was an Italian inventor and electrical engineer, known for his pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission, development of Marconi's law, and a radio telegraph system. He is credited as the inventor of radio, and he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".
The early history of radio is the history of technology that produces and uses radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy". Later radio history increasingly involves matters of broadcasting.
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose (;, IPA: [dʒɔɡodiʃ tʃɔndro bosu]; 30 November 1858 – 23 November 1937) was a biologist, physicist, botanist and an early writer of science fiction. He pioneered the investigation of radio and microwave optics, made significant contributions to plant science, and laid the foundations of experimental science in the Indian subcontinent. IEEE named him one of the fathers of radio science. Bose is considered the father of Bengali science fiction, and also invented the crescograph, a device for measuring the growth of plants. A crater on the moon has been named in his honour. He founded Bose Institute, a premier research institute of India and also one of its oldest. Established in 1917, the Institute was the first interdisciplinary research centre in Asia. He served as the Director of Bose Institute from its inception until his death.
The coherer was a primitive form of radio signal detector used in the first radio receivers during the wireless telegraphy era at the beginning of the 20th century. Its use in radio was based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Édouard Branly and adapted by other physicists and inventors over the next ten years. The device consists of a tube or capsule containing two electrodes spaced a small distance apart with loose metal filings in the space between. When a radio frequency signal is applied to the device, the metal particles would cling together or "cohere", reducing the initial high resistance of the device, thereby allowing a much greater direct current to flow through it. In a receiver, the current would activate a bell, or a Morse paper tape recorder to make a record of the received signal. The metal filings in the coherer remained conductive after the signal (pulse) ended so that the coherer had to be "decohered" by tapping it with a clapper actuated by an electromagnet, each time a signal was received, thereby restoring the coherer to its original state. Coherers remained in widespread use until about 1907, when they were replaced by more sensitive electrolytic and crystal detectors.
In radio communications, a radio receiver, also known as a receiver, a wireless or simply a radio, is an electronic device that receives radio waves and converts the information carried by them to a usable form. It is used with an antenna. The antenna intercepts radio waves and converts them to tiny alternating currents which are applied to the receiver, and the receiver extracts the desired information. The receiver uses electronic filters to separate the desired radio frequency signal from all the other signals picked up by the antenna, an electronic amplifier to increase the power of the signal for further processing, and finally recovers the desired information through demodulation.
Édouard Eugène Désiré Branly was a French inventor, physicist and professor at the Institut Catholique de Paris. He is primarily known for his early involvement in wireless telegraphy and his invention of the Branly coherer around 1890.
The invention of radio communication, although often attributed to Guglielmo Marconi, spanned many decades and involved many people, whose work included experimental investigation of radio waves, establishment of theoretical underpinnings, engineering and technical developments, and adaptation to signaling.
Alexander Popov is a 1949 biographical film directed by Herbert Rappaport about the life and work of Alexander Stepanovich Popov, who was the notable physicist and electrical engineer, and early developer of radio communication.
The magnetic detector or Marconi magnetic detector, sometimes called the "Maggie", was an early radio wave detector used in some of the first radio receivers to receive Morse code messages during the wireless telegraphy era around the turn of the 20th century. Developed in 1902 by radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi from a method invented in 1895 by New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford it was used in Marconi wireless stations until around 1912, when it was superseded by vacuum tubes. It was widely used on ships because of its reliability and insensitivity to vibration. A magnetic detector was part of the wireless apparatus in the radio room of the RMS Titanic which was used to summon help during its famous 15 April 1912 sinking.
Radio Day, Communications Workers' Day or Radio and Television Day is a commemoration of the development of radio in Russia. It takes place on 7 May, the day in 1895 on which Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrated a radio based lightning detector.
The timeline of radio lists within the history of radio, the technology and events that produced instruments that use radio waves and activities that people undertook. Later, the history is dominated by programming and contents, which is closer to general history.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to telecommunication:
Gustave-Auguste Ferrié was a French radio pioneer and army general.
Harry Shoemaker was an American inventor and pioneer radio engineer, who received more than 40 U.S. patents in the radio field from 1901 to 1905. His transmitter and receiver designs set the standard for the U. S. commercial radio industry up to World War One.
Camille Papin Tissot was a French naval officer and pioneer of wireless telegraphy who established the first French operational radio connections at sea.
Dmitry Aleksandrovich Lachinov was a Russian physicist, electrical engineer, inventor, meteorologist and climatologist.
Eugène Adrien Ducretet was a French scientific instrument manufacturer, who performed some of the first experiments on wireless telegraphy in France. His father, Louis Joseph Ducretet, was a Savoy textiles merchant who moved to Paris. He never completed a formal education, leaving primary school at age 15. After several years apprenticed to Paris engineer Paul-Gustav Froment, Ducretet opened his own workshop in 1864 at 21 Rue des Ursulines where with a few employees he manufactured classical physics research, teaching and demonstration apparatus, such as galvanometers, Wimshurst machines, and Crookes tubes. Over time his reputation grew and he became instrument supplier to several large Paris educational and scientific institutions. He was awarded a gold medal for his quality instruments at the 1878 Paris Universal Exposition and from then on his firm was a regular presence at important international expositions, winning another gold at the 1881 International Electricity Exposition in Paris. He was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1885.
Thomas Tommasina was an artist turned physicist who worked on atmospheric ionization and gravitational theories mainly after moving to Switzerland. An experimenter as well as a theoretician, he invented a radio-receiver-like device while studying ionospheric disturbances in the upper atmosphere and used it in long-range weather prediction.
The A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications is a museum of science and technology founded in 1872. It is located in the historic centre of Saint Petersburg, Russia, near Saint Isaac's Square.
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