Wave Transmitter is an early radio equipment, developed by Roberto Landell de Moura in the 1890s, capable of transmitting audio via electromagnetic waves, with its first documented public demonstration having occurred on July 16, 1899.
Wave Transmitter is an early radio equipment, developed by Roberto Landell de Moura in the 1890s, capable of transmitting audio via electromagnetic waves, with its first documented public demonstration having occurred on July 16, 1899.
Landell, after theorizing his devices in Porto Alegre, began his preliminary research upon arriving in São Paulo in 1893, aiming to achieve wireless transmission over distances of 8 to 12 kilometers, and achieving good results, according to a report from the New York Herald in 1902, in the first months of work. [1]
The Literary and Statistical Almanac of 1903, reproducing an article from Correio do Povo, described the following inventions of Father Landell that preceded and supported the development of the Wave Transmitter: the telauxiophone, a wired telephone with unlimited telephony; the kaleophone, which also depends on wires, but to make a connection, it is necessary to "make the articulated or instrumental sound heard"; the anematophone and the teletiton, which are wireless telephones that, according to the article, "reveal entirely new laws"; and the ediphone, which would be capable of cleaning the noise of the transmission. [2] The term wireless telephony was the name at the time for the technology that would become radio, as it was a variant of the already existing wired telephone. [3]
On 14 June, 1899, the Jornal do Commercio, republishing an article from "O Diário Espanhol," reported that Landell had managed to transmit the human voice over a distance greater than seven thousand meters, with several receivers placed a few meters apart from each other to verify the clarity of the transmission, and that this research had already been taking place for several years. [4] [5]
The Wave Transmitter, originally called the Gouradphone, [6] [a] built in an artisanal way, [8] used an electromechanical microphone, invented by Landell, capable of collecting, according to Claudia Zaltrão, "sound waves through a resonance chamber," whose metallic diaphragm "opened and closed the primary of a Ruhmkorff coil, and induced a high voltage in the secondary of that coil which was radiated either through an antenna or two sparking spheres." [9] The two spheres are called "phonetic interrupter," which, when exposed to the vibrations of the human voice or other sounds, create a series of electric sparks or flashes of light that, when they reach the receiver, are made understandable through a telephone, a lamp, or a Morse code device. [10] However, the radiated voice did not contain the characteristics of the speaker's timbre, requiring training to understand the content of the messages. However, the signal contained many harmonics, allowing it to be detected over a wide range of frequencies. [11]
According to the Cientec team, who replicated the invention, the "phonetic interrupter" was Landell's true innovation, as the other parts of the equipment were already known. [12] According to a report from A Federação, 1905, the transmission of light waves would reach 30 to 50 kilometers and would not have climatic interference, as the beam of light would be modified both by mechanical vibration and by the electrical vibrations produced by the voice. [13]
The device also used both radio waves and light beams, in addition to using continuous waves, with Landell advocating the use of short waves for long-distance communication, [14] something that Marconi only recognized as useful in 1916. [15] D'Arisbo notes that the device for transmitting light waves would be different from that for transmitting electromagnetic waves, [16] while the patent issued in the US explains that the vibrations of the phonetic interrupter are transformed into both electrical and light waves, [17] [b] with Bruscato explaining that the "telephone" and the "wireless telegraph" are those that used light beams. [19] The biographer Hamilton Almeida reports that Landell took more than 10 years to develop his equipment, having started to develop his ideas around 1886, after returning from his studies in Rome. [20] Essentially, Landell sought to establish a point-to-point connection with electromagnetic waves, [21] with the Wave Transmitter radiating information in all directions. [22] Drawing a comparison between the experiments of Landell and Marconi, researchers César Augusto dos Santos and Otto Albuquerque explain as follows: [23]
Landell's patent, in 1901, according to Albuquerque, had priority of speech transmission in a photonic-electronic system, while Marconi's patent focused only on the transmission of signals in Morse code. Both researchers agree that Marconi and Landell conducted similar experiments, but with different aims, with Santos explaining that "the priest-scientist was the first radio amateur in voice telegraphy and the first broadcaster with continued contacts in the country and abroad." [23]
On 16 July 1899, at the Colégio de Santana, São Paulo, where Landell was a parish priest, [24] The equipment had its first public demonstration, where the sounds of the human voice and the Brazilian National Anthem were transmitted wirelessly, up to the Ponte das Bandeiras, about four kilometers away. The experiment was witnessed by several members of the scientific community and the press, being reported by various Brazilian newspapers, such as O Commercio and Jornal do Commercio. [25]
On that day, Landell was alongside representatives of the Telephone Company, National Telegraph, members of the press, and other people, on top of a hill on Voluntários da Pátria street, in the Santana neighborhood, where the classroom was located and where Landell gave his lecture, explaining that his technology was different from Marconi's, and then spoke through the equipment, whose receiver was about three kilometers away, with the operators responding to him with the transmission of the National Anthem played by a gramophone. [26] [27] The experiment was reported by several newspapers in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. [28] However, according to the biographer Hamilton Almeida, several members of the press did not understand the significance of the event, [29] and that the press at the time did not have had published the results of the experiments. [30]
A year later, on 3 June, 1900, Landell conducted his second public experiment, connecting the Colégio de Santana with the Avenida Paulista, [c] a distance of eight kilometers. The experiment was witnessed by, among others, the businessman and British consul Percy Charles Parmenter Lupton. Only the Jornal do Commercio of Rio de Janeiro published the experiment, [29] in this way: “Last Sunday, on the heights of Santana, city of São Paulo, Father Landell de Moura conducted a private experiment with several devices of his invention. With the intention of demonstrating some laws he discovered in the study of the propagation of sound, light, and electricity through space, which were crowned with brilliant success.” [32] On the 16th of the same month, the Jornal do Commercio published a letter in which Landell presented his devices to the British consul and, if he did not find anyone who would offer him any advantage, Landell would offer them to the British government or to some university institution. According to Almeida, the appeals went unanswered. [33] Internationally, the experiments of 1899 and 1900 would only be matched by the Canadian Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, [34] on 23 December 1900. [35]
Various authors, such as Fornari, the first biographer of Landell de Moura, claim that the scientist had conducted voice transmission experiments between 1893 and 1894, while César dos Santos notes the lack of documentary evidence for these experiments. [36] Hamilton Almeida found later reports from the 1920s and 1930s, published in Jornal da Manhã,União, Correio do Povo, and in the book The Brazil of To-day by Artur Dias, where witnesses report that other experiments may have occurred between 1890 and 1896, but notes that only the experiments of 1899 and 1900 have concrete evidence. [37] [d] while in Ferraretto's view, only the news from the Jornal do Commercio of 10 June 1900, would be more convincing, [39] opinion shared by Silva, Loguércio & Minuzzo 2012 , p. 89
The invention was protected by Brazilian patent no. 3,279, dated 9 March 1901, [40] where it declared: “With this device, one can project the voice through space at very regular distances. It works in sun, rain, humid weather, and thick fog, as well as against the wind if we use automatic plates, and in these last two cases, the distance that can be reached is truly prodigious. At sea, when there is fog, and in calm regions, this device can provide excellent services.” [14] Jules Geraud, Leclerc & Cia. signed the document as his attorneys. [41] In Almeida's view, this document can be considered the "birth certificate of radio," considering that Fessenden only registered something similar, the Wireless signaling , in 8 March 1904. [42]
On 14 June 1901, Landell boarded the steamship Piemonte for Europe, from where he then went to the United States, where he sought to patent his inventions, having to present evidence of the working of his theories, [43] [44] considering that the originals were destroyed in an attack by "religious fanatics". [45] Despite this, the patents were published with the seal of no model. [46]
He set up his physics office in New York, making his first patent application at the United States Patent Office on 4 October 1901. During his stay in the U.S., he had to change his patent descriptions several times due to the requirements of the USPO. [47]
In 1904, he received three patents, with the wave transmitter being patent no. 771917. [14] [48] According to the American technicians who analyzed his research during the patent issuance process, his wireless transmission system was superior to what had already been developed, and regarding radiotelephony itself, he was "the discoverer and creator of the principles on which it is based." [49] [50] With the public announcement about his patents, several entrepreneurs offered to buy the rights, but Landell refused them, declaring: "'The inventions no longer belong to me. By the grace of God, I am merely their custodian. I will take them to my homeland, Brazil, which will be responsible for delivering them to humanity.'" [51]
At the end of 1904, he had to return to Brazil with a debt of US$4,000 ($135,644 in 2023), hoping to return to New York in a short time, and, according to Ernani Fornari, patent other six inventions, but he had to abandon his plans. [52] He sought to gain support from the Brazilian government to demonstrate his equipment offshore. However, when meeting with a government representative, he stated that the ships could be at any distance from each other, even suggesting the possibility of interplanetary communication, which was not well received by the government official. He also sought support from the Legislative Assembly of São Paulo to finance the commercialization of his invention, without success. [53] [51] According to Alencar, after the Brazilian government's refusal, Landell would have destroyed his experiments and given up scientific research. [54] After these events, the federal government began to invest in radio telegraphy for the Armed Forces. [55]
In the 1980s, a working group from Telebrás, when analyzing the patents issued by the United States, considered that Landell was the first to carry out continuous wave transmissions, using a valve equivalent to the three-electrode valve patented by Lee De Forest in 1907. [56] At the same time, Edson Benedicto Ramos Féris, then an engineer at the Telebrás Research and Development Center and a professor at USP, explained, after analyzing the patents, that the luminous system used by Landell was a predecessor of fiber optics, as, despite the differences, they are based on the same principle. [57] When discussing the importance of these patents, Hamilton Almeida, in a 1983 book, states that "the wave transmitter patented by Father Landell in the United States is the precursor of the radio." [58]
Regarding Landell's experiments, in 1993, the Italian work "Tu piccola scatola... La radio: fatti, cose, persone," by Laura De Luca and Walter Lobina, states that he conducted the "first radio transmission of which there is any record. The municipality of São Paulo witnessed the emission and reception of electromagnetic and luminous waves. Radio was born, but no one noticed.". [59] In the authors' view, the radio did not find an environment in the country where it could develop. [60] According to Professor Luiz Artur Ferraretto from UFRGS, with the experiences of 1899 and 1900, "Father Landell came close to what, more than a decade later, was named broadcasting." [61] Meanwhile, as Claudia Zaltrão acknowledges, Landell's name and his work remain forgotten in his own country and abroad, [62] while Almeida notes that in life, Landell's invention received recognition from inventors in the USA. [24]
In 1984, the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia (Cientec), from Rio Grande do Sul, after three months of work by engineer Antonio Carlos Solano and technicians José Clóvis Totel and Antônio Felipe Pepe, presented a functional replica of the Wave Transmitter. One of the many difficulties they faced was understanding the scale of the device and what materials to use in its construction. On 7 September of that year, at the closing of the Semana da Pátria (Week of the Motherland), the replica was presented to the public at an event where Governor Jair Soares conveyed the words "Porto Alegre." In 2004, another functional replica was made by Marco Aurélio Cardoso Moura, after two years of work. [63]
The 1984 replica had a range of up to 50 meters over a wide frequency band, including FM, with Ferraretto noting that at Landell's time the result would have been better due to the absence of external interference. However, it had difficulty reproducing the intonation of the human voice, a problem that led Landell to suggest a code of words for better communication. The 2004 replica had better reception with medium waves, around 540 kHz, in addition to recognizing FM - otherwise, the performance was similar to the 1984 replica. [64]
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