Composition > Illustrative Essay On Radio

[StarsFly]

Composition > Illustrative Essay On "Radio"

Goal: 2-3 page essay on a topic of your choice. Must provide relevant photo's.

My topic of choice is electromagnetism. I chose this topic because we live in a wireless age. I thought it'd be neat to provide some back round info on how it all started.

I want to break my paper down as follows,

Intro

I. Invention/discovery of the 1st true electrical storage device (Volta VS Galvani)

II. Discovery of electromagnetism (Orsted/Faraday)

III. ?

Conclusion


The dispute between Galvani & Volta is just too interesting to leave out. Plus I can take it a step further & show how "Galvanism" inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. I need tangibility. She thinks I'm too cryptic & confusing.

I'm not sure what to do for paragraph III. Dedicate it to Marconi? After all, it was he who took "hertzian waves" out of the laboratory & into the real world.

Lastly, "radio" may seem a bit outdated by today's standards. But it was the 1st "form" of wireless communication. The point I want to make here is not much has changed. ...okay I take that back! I mean the principle of induction has not changed.

Comments?

"Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio"

^Some more tangibility. Everyone knows this song. I know Van Morrison has "brown eyed girl" (...transistor radio), but I'm stopping around the branly/coherer, so that'd be a bit irrelevant.

 

[UltrafastPED]

Under (I) you should start with the Leyden jar; then note its shortcomings (limited current, changing voltage) which is why little progress was made until the invention of the battery.

(II) And don't forget Ampere and Joseph Henry! - they all worked on the connections between electricity and magnetism.

(III) Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves; Tesla and Marconi both invented early radios - but the most significant step was the invention of the super heterodyne system (AM radio) by Armstrong:
http://antiqueradios.com/superhet/

Armstrong later invented FM. His life was one long patent battle ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

 

[StarsFly]

We're all familiar with it; the hair on your hood straight from the dryer, a tingle on the tongue, the sudden, almost instantaneous discharge of a door handle after a swift walk across the carpet floor. It's a mysterious force-electricity. Tales of it's ___________ date back to ______________.

(Ancient Greece > Thales > lodestone & amber)

(Insert thesis here)

(Bridge to paragraph I)

I'm stuck on a thesis. Hmm...

"...though Thales had no idea this phenomena (amber & lodestones' "mysterious" properties) was actually just two manifestations of the same thing (electromagnetism)..."

That's not right either though. Amber; that's the electrostatic force.

"...Lodestone could be held in the hand, it's effects repeated at will. Amber on the other hand, was difficult to study > Instantaneous shocks. It would take another "x" years before a continuous/constant source of electricity would be invented ...that'd unify these thought to be two different forces of nature..."

"...Thales began studying amber/lodestone > he knew both had attractive forces, but if lodestone attracts iron, then why must amber not? & then I could bridge into the "continuous/constant" source of electricity (leyden/pile) that would come "x" yrs later that'd unify the sources together

& I need to somehow foreshadow the invention (discovery) of radio. "...revolutionize our modern world?" "would spark a revolution in wireless communication...

blah.