KCØMAX's Weird Radio
The history of radio is full of strange and wonderful stuff. Here's just a taste...
The Elser-Mathes Cup (1928).
Tucked
away in ARRL headquarters in Newington, Connecticut, is a prize designed more
than 75 years ago to honor the first radio amateur to make contact with... Mars.
As related in the November 1969 issue of QST magazine, the Amateur Radio Relay
League's official publication, the cup was inspired by League co-founder Hiram
Percy Maxim, WIAW, who believed -- as did so many in the late 19th and early
20th centuries -- that Mars was inhabited. Maxim shared his interest in Mars
with Col. Fred John Elser, W6FB, who joined with Lt. Cmdr. Stanley Mathes, K1CY,
to create a trophy for the first two-way contact with the red planet. Mathes was
stationed in the Philippines at the time, and a native woodcarved bowl was
chosen for use as the trophy. The bowl represents Mars, the standing men are the
amateurs "bridging the gap of space." A plate fastened to the cup
still awaits the names and the call signs of those who were expected to make the
first interplanetary contact. Interest in Mars has again peaked with NASA's
successful placement of a pair of remote-controlled rovers on the planet, and
with a presidential announcement that putting humans on Mars within the next few
decades is a national priority. The prize-winning contact will probably involve
two human operators on different planets... not a human operator and a native
Martian, however (image courtesy ARRL).
The "Wow!" Signal (1977).
On
Aug. 15, 1977, the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University recorded
what may be one of the best candidates for an intelligent extraterrestrial
transmission. The signal was so strong that volunteer astronomer Jerry
Ehman circled it on the computer printout and wrote "Wow!" next to the
code. Click here for an
explanation of the code. Ehman had been working as an unpaid volunteer since the
National Science Foundation had cut funding to the Big Ear in 1972. Unfortunately,
although radio astronomers have repeatedly searched the section of sky where the
Wow! signal was recorded, they have found no subsequent transmissions. This has
led Ehman to now believe that perhaps the signal was from an arguably intelligent
species -- us. One likely explanation is that it was a terrestrial radio
signal bounced back to earth from a piece of space junk. But the explanation
that fascinates most is: What if it wasn't? (image
courtesy Ohio State University).
Hiram Percy Maxim, W1AW (1869-1936).
Hiram
Percy Maxim, who has rightly been called the "founder of organized
amateur radio," was born into a family of inventors. His father, Sir Hiram
(1840–1916) was the inventor of the Maxim machine gun. Sir Hiram was born in
the U.S., became a British subject in 1900, and was knighted in 1901. Among Sir
Hiram's other inventions were a smokeless powder, a delayed-action fuse, and an
airplane. In 1896, his company was consolidated with the Vickers firm. Hiram Percy
was born in Brooklyn and remained in the United States, where he graduated from
MIT. Among Hiram Percy's inventions were the Maxim silencer for explosive
weapons, in 1908, and silencers for internal combustion engineers. He is best
remembered as co-founder of the Amateur Radio Relay League and was affectionately
called "The Old Man," and OM is still an affectionate shorthand for
Morse operators -- 
whether
the recipient is old or not. On February 17, 1936, Hiram Percy Maxim died suddenly at age 66.
In 1936, the FCC assigned the call W1AW to the ARRL in memoriam, and in 1938 the
new station was dedicated at Newington, Conn. Thanks to careful attention to the building's historical significance,
according to the ARRL, the exterior
of the station
today looks much as it did at its 1938 dedication.
The Maxim legacy continues in
the use of the "Wouff-Hong " (above) and the "Rettysnitch"
(below), fierce-looking but tongue-in-cheek devices The Old Man devised to
enforce good operating principles and on-air decency among amateur operators. As
note above, Hiram Percy was fascinated with Mars, and the possibility 
that the
red planet was populated. The photo of Maxim used at the beginning of this entry
is the cover of his 1998 biography by Alice Clink Schumacher, published by Electric Radio Press, Inc. (ISBN: 0-9663433-0-1)
and available for $19.95 from the ARRL
website.
Update: The ARRL website in January 2005 featured a story which cited some who believe the ghost of the Old Man himself, Hiram Percy Maxim, haunts the WIAW station at Newington, Conn. Go here for the terrific story by ARRL contributing editor H. Ward Silver, NØAX.
SETI @ home (1996 to present).
With government funding cutbacks in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), David Gedye and Craig Kasnoff hit on the idea of using home computers via the Internet as a supercomputer to process data from the massive Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. "Thousands of computers could handle small pieces of the calculation. Eventually," according to the SETI @ home website, "this came together at the University of California at Berkeley with Project SERENDIP -- the Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed Intelligent Populations. Under the direction of David P. Anderson, Werthimer and their team designed the system called SETI @ Home that now allows computer users everywhere to participate in SETI." Now, there are over two million home users. At left is how the famous "Wow!" signal (see above) would be displayed on a home screen. If you'd like to be part of the greatest search in human history, go to the Planetary Society website at www.planetary.org. Go here to see what the famous "Wow!" signal would look like on a home screen.
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943).
Nikola Tesla was the genius who
arguably first discovered radio and gave us alternating current (AC) and, in
effect, lit the world. He had 700 patents in the US and Europe, and his
discoveries included the Tesla Coil, fluorescent light, wireless transmission of electrical energy,
remote control, the discovery of cosmic radio waves and use of ionosphere for scientific
purpose. Like many of his contemporaries, he was obsessed with Mars and spent 50
years in attempts to devise a means of interplanetary communication. Born in
Croatia, Tesla had the ability to visualize inventions in his mind, down to the
last detail. After coming to American, he was first employed by Thomas Edison, but the two inventors
soon parted, and in 1885 Tesla went to work for George Westinghouse, who had
bought Tesla's patent rights to AC power. A huge power struggle ensued between
Edison (a proponent of DC) and Tesla/Westinghouse's AC system. The first prison
electrocution, in 1890, was conducted using AC power -- which provided much
ammunition for the Edison camp to scare the public. The obvious advantages
transmitting AC over long distances, however, eventually won out. Tesla later
established his own laboratory, and worked on several mysterious machines,
including several manufactured "lightning" devices. While in New York,
he counted Mark Twain among his friends. He moved his lab to Colorado Springs, Colo.,
from 1899 to 1900, and this is where Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery-- terrestrial stationary waves.
He proved that the Earth could be used as a conductor and would be as responsive as a tuning fork to electrical vibrations of a certain frequency.
Also, he lit 200 lamps with wireless power from a distance of 25 miles, created
artificial lightning, and became convinced he had received signals from another planet.
This claim was met with derision in the scientific community. As he grew older,
he became more eccentric and compulsive, and could not eat a bowl of soup
without mentally calculating the metric volume. He was also penniless, although
he claimed he had developed a death-ray that could destroy squadrons of
airplanes hundreds of miles away. He died at Hotel New Yorker, Manhattan, on January 7, 1943.
His papers were seized by the government, which cited national security reasons.
Despite his fringe beliefs in later life, many Nobel prize winners have cited
Tesla for his pioneering work, and it is indisputable that many innovations of
21st Century technology have their foundations in Tesla's vision.
More Weird Radio to Come!
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