Gottfried,
Thanks for the link. I never would have guessed. I supposed it was Mr. Edison, like so much of the twentieth century, at least the first half or three quarters of it. Paulson had trouble getting financing to develop his invention. I don't suppose he would have had the same problem today.
An excerpt:
(b. Nov. 23, 1869, Copenhagen, Den.--d. July 1942, Copenhagen), Danish engineer
who in 1903 developed the first device for generating continuous radio waves, thus
aiding the development of radio broadcasting.
After his education Poulsen joined the Copenhagen Telephone Company as an
assistant in the technical section. While working there, he invented the telegraphone, an
electromagnetic phonograph capable of registering human speech by the alternating
magnetization of a wire. He applied for a patent on this device, a forerunner of the
modern magnetic sound recorder, in 1898; a working model created great interest at the
Paris Exposition in 1900.
Even with this encouragement, he could not find financial backers in Europe. In 1903,
with American associates, he founded the American Telegraphone Company for the
manufacture and sale of an improved version of his device. The telegraphone recorded
continuously for 30 minutes on a length of steel piano-wire moving at a speed of 84
inches (213 cm) per second. The device did not have wide application, however.
Also in 1903 Poulsen obtained an English patent on his adaptation of a "singing arc" for
radio purposes. Invented by the Englishman William Duddell, the singing arc could
generate continuous audio waves (hence its name). Poulsen transformed this device so
that it could generate radio waves; the arc was formed between a copper cathode
(positive terminal) and a carbon anode (negative terminal) in an atmosphere of a
hydrocarbon gas and a transverse magnetic field. Subsequent efforts with this device by
Poulsen and others made long-wave radio broadcasting possible by 1920.
Source: eb.com:180/cgi-bin/g?DocF=micro/478/59.html
Magnetic recording dates to 1898, when Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen developed a
method for recording sound on a steel wire. He stretched this wire across his laboratory
and put the recording apparatus on a trolley that traveled along that wire. He would run
along with the moving trolley, talking into its microphone to record sound on the wire.
To play back this sound, he would roll a second trolley containing the playback
equipment along the wire and it would reproduce the sound.
Having proven the principle of magnetic recording, Poulsen and others began to develop
wire recorders. In these devices, a wire rolling from one drum to another was used to
record and play back sound. In 1927, American inventor J. A. O'Neill replaced the wire
with a magnetically coated ribbon and since then magnetic tape recorders have
dominated the recording industry.
Source:
landau1.phys.virginia.edu |
