Dr James Robert Erskine-Murray FRSE MIEE (1868-1927) was a Scottish electrical engineer and inventor. A protege of Lord Kelvin, he also worked with Marconi and was a pioneer in the development of the telegraph. He wrote extensively on telegraphy and wireless communication.
He was born in Edinburgh on 24 October 1868, the eldest son of Alexander Erskine Erskine-Murray [ sic ], Sheriff of Glasgow (1832-1907), and his wife, Helen Pringle, [1] daughter of Robert Pringle of Symington. [2] In 1886 he began study under Lord Kelvin at Glasgow University assisting Kelvin in electrical experiments from 1888 and graduating BSc in 1892.
He began lecturing in electricity at Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh in 1896. In 1897 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Lord Kelvin, John Gray McKendrick, William Jack and Joseph Bell. [3] He received a doctorate (DSc) in 1897 and in 1898 he became personal assistant to Guglielmo Marconi based at the Haven Hotel near Poole (often called The Haven Experimental Station). Here he was involved in Marconi's critical experiments regarding submarine telegraph cables. In 1899 he was moved to Marconi's Hall Street Factory in Chelmsford. [4] Later in 1900 he began lecturing in physics and electrical engineering at University College, Nottingham. In 1905 he transferred to George Coats Technical College in Paisley.
In 1913 he was elected vice president of the London Wireless Society, later renamed the Radio Society of Great Britain. In the same year he was joint founder of Clark, Forde, Taylor and Erskine-Murray. During the First World War he was attached to the Royal air Force with the rank of lieutenant commander, being placed in charge of wireless instruments and radio communications. In 1918 this evolved into the Wireless Experimental Establishment at Biggin Hill. In this year he took out a patent on electric vacuous bulb thermionic devices. In 1920 he succeeded Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton as president of the London Wireless Society. Through the 1920s he was the experimental engineer at the Royal Navy Barracks at Portsmouth. In 1922 he created an electronic device which acted as a navigation aid, a forerunner of the global positioning system. [5]
In 1899 he married Alleine Frederica Florinda Gildea, [6] daughter of Major General G F Gildea. [7] He died in Portsmouth on 12 February 1927. [8] Their only son, James Alistair Frederick Campbell Erskine-Murray (1902-1973) succeeded to the title 13th Lord Elibank in 1962 upon the death of an uncle. [9]
Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, 1st Marquis of Marconi was an Italian inventor, electrical engineer, physicist, and politician, known for his creation of a practical radio wave–based wireless telegraph system. This led to Marconi being credited as the inventor of radio, and winning the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". His work laid the foundation for the development of radio, television, and all modern wireless communication systems.
Sir John Ambrose Fleming was an English electrical engineer and physicist who invented the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, designed the radio transmitter with which the first transatlantic radio transmission was made, and also established the right-hand rule used in physics.
Karl Ferdinand Braun was a German electrical engineer, inventor, physicist and Nobel laureate in physics. Braun contributed significantly to the development of the radio, when he invented the phased array antenna in 1905, which led to the development of radar, smart antennas and MIMO, and the television by building the first Cathode-ray tube. Braun also built the first semiconductor.
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.
Wireless telegraphy or radiotelegraphy is transmission of text messages by radio waves, analogous to electrical telegraphy using cables. Before about 1910, the term wireless telegraphy was also used for other experimental technologies for transmitting telegraph signals without wires. In radiotelegraphy, information is transmitted by pulses of radio waves of two different lengths called "dots" and "dashes", which spell out text messages, usually in Morse code. In a manual system, the sending operator taps on a switch called a telegraph key which turns the transmitter on and off, producing the pulses of radio waves. At the receiver the pulses are audible in the receiver's speaker as beeps, which are translated back to text by an operator who knows Morse code.
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.
Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz's proof and at his 1894 Royal Institution lectures, Lodge demonstrated an early radio wave detector he named the "coherer". In 1898 he was awarded the "syntonic" patent by the United States Patent Office. Lodge was Principal of the University of Birmingham from 1900 to 1920.
An earth battery is a pair of electrodes made of two dissimilar metals, such as iron and copper, which are buried in the soil or immersed in the sea. Earth batteries act as water-activated batteries. If the plates are sufficiently far apart, they can tap telluric currents. Earth batteries are sometimes referred to as telluric power sources and telluric generators.
Sir William Henry Preece was a Welsh electrical engineer and inventor. Preece relied on experiments and physical reasoning in his life's work. Upon his retirement from the Post Office in 1899, Preece was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 1899 Birthday Honours. That same year, he was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society.
Silvanus Phillips Thompson was an English professor of physics at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury, England. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1891 and was known for his work as an electrical engineer and as an author. Thompson's most enduring publication is his 1910 text Calculus Made Easy, which teaches the fundamentals of infinitesimal calculus, and is still in print. Thompson also wrote a popular physics text, Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, as well as biographies of Lord Kelvin and Michael Faraday.
The Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) is the United Kingdom's recognised national society for amateur radio operators. The society was founded in 1913 as the London Wireless Club, making it one of the oldest organisations of its kind in the world. Through its work, it represents the interests of the UK's 80,000 licensed radio amateurs in the United Kingdom and certain dependent territories of the United Kingdom at the International Amateur Radio Union, acting as a medium for communication between the licensed operators and the UK government.
Peter Pendleton Eckersley was a pioneer of British broadcasting, the first Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Company Limited from 1922 to 1927 and Chief Engineer of the British Broadcasting Corporation until 1929.
The invention of radio communication was preceded by many decades of establishing theoretical underpinnings, discovery and experimental investigation of radio waves, and engineering and technical developments related to their transmission and detection. These developments allowed Guglielmo Marconi to turn radio waves into a wireless communication system.
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.
Adolf Karl Heinrich Slaby was a German electronics pioneer and the first Professor of electro-technology at Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg.
Sir John Carruthers Beattie was the first principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town (1918–1937).
William Falconer King FRSE FRMetS was a Scottish engineer. He was a pioneer in the laying of submarine telegraphy cables.
Francis Gibson Baily FRSE (1868–1945) was a British electrical engineer remembered for his research into electromagnetism. He was one of the first to suggest the use of water power to produce electricity and as such was the forefather of hydroelectricity. He emphasised the need to preserve natural beauty and also recognised the advantages of alternating current in generating schemes.
Nikola Tesla patented the Tesla coil circuit on April 25, 1891. and first publicly demonstrated it May 20, 1891 in his lecture "Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination" before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, New York. Although Tesla patented many similar circuits during this period, this was the first that contained all the elements of the Tesla coil: high voltage primary transformer, capacitor, spark gap, and air core "oscillation transformer".
Edward Edwin Glanville, was an Irish engineer who assisted Guglielmo Marconi in his experiments in wireless telegraphy.