Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
by Ken Burns
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DVD details
Actor: Jr. Jason RobardsDirector: Ken Burns
Brand: Paramount
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-09-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: PBS
DVD Reviews of Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
DVD Review: By TV standards, excellent -- but any history of radio needs to include Tesla!
Summary: 4 Stars
When asked by reporters about what he thought of Marconi's first 'commercial'radio transmission,Tesla responded, " Good luck to Marconi. He's using 17 of my patents."
Three American pioneers in radio are portrayed in this 1-hr documentary. It is in Ken Burns' classic style with period music, photos and early sound / radio & film clips interwoven with historical facts and anecdotes. It is excellent in terms of general public TV programming. For more detailed & technical study of the controversies involved in development of radio, an introduction to Tesla's theoretical contributions & his disputes with Marconi would provide a more complicated but accurate history. If Marconi assembled available state-of-the-art components of radio to achieve transmission,then, did he invent radio? Most of the important components that he assembled were patented by Tesla.
FYI -- from [...]
"The simplified history: Tesla, the expert in high frequency power systems, follows a vision of worldwide instantaneous communication and invents a radio SPARK TRANSMITTER whose output power far outstrips anything of the period. This spark transmitter is based on several key Tesla techniques: rotary spark gap, lumped resonance (rather than antenna resonance,) capacitor energy storage, and an antennea with a ground connection. Tesla also invents a mechanical AC generator or "alternator" capable of broadcasting high power radio waves. Of course radio recievers already existed: the coherer, (NOT invented by Marconi but by Branly and others.) Earlier radio systems such as that of Hertz and Stubblefield also existed, but they had extremely limited range. Tesla's amazing spark transmitter put out 1000 to 10,000 times the power of existing transmitters, and made worldwide communication feasible."
Today we call this transmitter by the name "Tesla Coil."
This was the status in 1893, with several patents granted to Tesla in 1898 and on. Besides the spark transmitter, the high frequency alternator, and the grounded antenna, Tesla's inventions also included the four tuned circuits of all modern radio systems: a transmitter and receiver at both ends of a radio link, all four using tuning.
Next stage: Marconi takes the Branly coherer and Tesla's spark transmitter and antenna inventions, commercializing them. But Tesla ignores this threat, believing that his completed "world system" will be far superior to Marconi's ocean-spanning demonstration. Therefore Tesla pursues centralized power transmission rather than simple communications alone. He says something to the effect "good luck to Marconi, he's using seventeen of my patents." Perhaps Tesla had a point, since Marconi did see his own patents rejected numerous times by the US Patent Office. The patent officer thought it ridiculous that Marconi claimed not to know about Tesla Coils. But then mysteriously Marconi's patents were suddenly accepted.
Tesla also remained aloof from the community of early radio developers while single-mindedly pursuing his own vision. Nearly twenty years later Tesla finally takes Marconi to court. He can't afford powerful lawers and a long court case. He loses! As many other inventors have found, the winner in a patent battle is usually the side with the deeper pockets. Tesla couldn't afford to continue the court case. Also, though Tesla's patents were prior to Marconi, Marconi had the press behind him. Marconi also had both the US government as well as big business behind him. The country wanted point-to-point radio, while the inventor of the spark transmitter wanted only centralized power broadcast stations. Tesla also wanted to keep control of radio by patenting his work. One can imagine that the government and commercial sectors would search for a way to get such an important invention loose from Tesla's hands by breaking the patents. This probably was the reason why Marconi's US radio patents suddenly went through in the first place after being rejected. Finally, Tesla was an unknown in Radio when compared to Marconi, and the judge was very probably not a technical expert.
Tesla loses his R&D financing in later decades, while Marconi's international companies are wildly successful. It's not a conspiracy theory to say "whoever has the gold, makes the rules." Tesla is not vindicated until 1943, when the US Supreme court reverses the old decision, strikes down the Marconi patents, and awards priority to Tesla #645,576. This was no altruism, since large amounts of money rode on the possibility that Marconi's existing companies could lose their patents.
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Description of Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
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