Place: 4274 Chamberlin (Refreshments will be served)
Speaker: Jim Reardon, UW Department of Physics
Abstract: From April 1917-March 1919 Prof. Earle Terry of the UW-Physics Department was able to continue research in wireless voice telephony--what we would now call AM radio--while all through the rest of the world, non-military radio research was halted by World War I. By the end of this time, he and graduate student Cyril Jansky were able to make triode vacuum tubes capable of dissipating more than 50 W, allowing his station 9XM to transmit voice intelligible at a range of 130 miles. Terry and Jansky freely shared their work with researchers at other Universities, which contributed to the proliferation of College and University radio stations in the 1920's, the ancestors of what we now know as public radio. The talk will feature a replica of the original 9XM transmitter, constructed as part of the celebration of the centennial of the Ingersoll Physics Museum.