Preface to the lecture, 1

616 

Radio technical concepts

 

 

Fig. 30.5: _____ Three radio technical network structures, with an 

example from antiquity and from present time. 

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Scalar wave technology in antiquity__________________________________ 617 

30.5 Radio technical concepts 

In planning and constructing radio technical networks only a few possible concepts exist. 

It is interesting that at least one historical example can be specified for every concept. That 

shows that all possibilities were tried at least once. The three most important concepts are 

presented here:

 

A. Cellular phone.

 

Every bigger city between Euphrates and Tigris, which thought the world of itself, had 

at its disposal already in antiquity a temple tower. Such a temple tower was a 

,,telephone cabin" in the form of a pyramid as a transmitter and a receiver temple at the 

top, to where the receptionist adjourned to the so-called temple sleep. Discipline was 

required, since all the time only one priest was allowed to broadcast. All others could 

listen to him doing so. If he was ready, he closed his contribution with a fixed symbol 

or term (,,over") and the next one could continue. This is a classic link-up, where 

anyone communicates with every network participant.

 

The stations all were strikingly similar in form and size of building, like one phone box 

resembles another. In that way a further development of the cellular phone system 

hardly was possible and that has a technical reason, as the building of a tower in 

Babylon has shown us. This tower namely had gotten the ambitious builders too big, so 

that the frequency of the Mesopotamian radio network had been left and instead a 

foreign network could be received, the code of which no-one could understand. The 

result was a confusion of language and the order to stop the building.

 

B. Broadcasting.

 

Millions of TV spectators every evening look in the ABC news or another daily journal 

of a TV Channel. In the case of broadcasting thus many receivers listen to the news of a 

powerful transmitter. With that the whole plenitude of power is concentrated in the 

hands of the chief intendant. In antiquity he called himself high priest. If he went on the 

air, he used the logo of the god that he had to represent. Today the logo of the 

broadcasting company is shown in a corner of the TV screen. Even this very day 

feedback from the receiver to the transmitter hardly is possible contingent on principle. 

The problems with nationally controlled broadcasting, with politics controlled by the 

media all are not new. The monotheism in ancient Egypt with the claim of lordship of 

the main god Ammun Re is an example from antiquity.

 

C. Dispatch service.

 

In ancient Greece the technical structures and with that also the power structures had 

been turned around. At that time a big network of broadcast stations, which continually 

was extended by a policy of settlement ordered by the gods, supplied a central and 

correspondingly powerful agency with information per radio.

 

Who wanted up to date news, could call for these in the agency with seat in Delphi, but 

he had to pay for it. To accommodate the broadcasting fees in form of gold and gifts 

whole treasury stores had to be built. Measured by the commercial success the ancient 

news network has remained unmatched, and can't be compared with pay-TV or todays 

dispatch services, like dpa. If the network however becomes too big, uncontrollable and 

it lacks discipline, then it sometime will crack and the system crashes.

 

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618

 

Wireless telegraphy

 

 

Fig. 30.6 A:      Hera-temple of Selinunt 460-450 B.C.

 

(Corresp. to the plans of the Roman architect Vitruvius)

 

 

Fig. 30.6 B:     Apollo-temple of Korinth

 

(Alternative interpretation, use of the Golden Proportion  ).

 

: K.Schefold: Die Griechen und ihre Nachbarn, Propylaen Kunstgeschichte 

Berlin Bd. 1, Abbildungen von Seite 241, 250

 

: Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio): Zehn Bucher uber Architektur, Ubers. von 

Dr. K. Fensterbusch, Wissenschaftl. Buchges. Darmstadt 1987, 4. Aufl., 3. 

Buch, 1. Kap.: Von den Symmetrien der Tempel, Seite 137

 

: Vitruvius (dito), 4.book, 4.Chap.: Vom Tempelinnern und dem Pronaon, p. 187

 

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Scalar wave technology in antiquity ______________________________________ 619

 

30.6 Wireless telegraphy

 

Radio engineering 100 years ago also started with telegraphy. Thereby the high frequency

 

carrier is switched on and off. With this technique Marconi succeeded in a radio

 

transmission over the English Channel (1899) and over the Atlantic Ocean (1901).

 

As next step the amplitude modulation (AM) followed. Thereby the HF-carrier is

 

overlapped with the low-frequency signal of a sound carrier in such a way, that the

 

amplitude fluctuates on the beat of the LF-signal. As a disadvantageous effect, also noise

 

signals will overlap, from which the quality of reception will suffer.

 

Only the frequency modulation (FM), where the LF-signal is transmitted as temporal

 

fluctuation of the frequency, brings an improvement. The annoying amplitude noise hence

 

has no effect in the case of FM.

 

It easily can be recognized, how the development of the modulation techniques follows the

 

urge for technical improvement and optimization. That in antiquity hasn't been different,

 

for which reason the progress of development took place in the same order.

 

The broadcasting technology of the ancient gods started with the wireless telegraphy. This 

is expressed in the architecture. Since electric resonant circuits or other frequency 

determining equipment weren't at the disposal of the engineers in antiquity, the 

determination and allocation of the broadcasting channels had to take place by means of 

the wavelength. The formation of a standing wave in the Cella, the innermost sanctuary of 

a temple, occurs if its length corresponds to half the wavelength of the HF-carrier. 

The Roman architect Vitruvius calls the wavelength the ,,basic measure", from which 

results "the system of the symmetries". He writes: ,,The design of the temples bases on 

symmetry, to which laws the architects should adhere meticulously. "

. ,,The length of 

the temple is partitioned in such a way that the width is equal to half the length, the Cella 

itself including the wall, which contains the door, is one fourth longer than wide. The 

remaining three fourths, which form the Pronaon, should protrude until the antae of the 

wall and the antae should have the thickness of the pillars"

.

 

If we recalculate ourselves, then the partitioning in 3/4 to 5/4 produces a proportion, 

which conies quite close to the Golden Proportion. In building a temple nothing is left to 

chance, after all it concerns the construction of a tuned cavity, capable of self-resonant 

oscillations with favourable emission behaviour.

 

From the outside one can't see if a telegraphy transmitter has been changed over to speech 

transmission with AM. The HF-carrier merely isn't switched off anymore, i.e. the priests 

let the temple oscillate without interruption. Newly added for AM is an electroacoustic 

coupling. For that many temples were retrofitted with a mouthpiece. Newly built AM 

transmitter temples conclude the Cella with a round apse. Because of this acoustically 

conditioned construction the Cella length didn't have a fixed value anymore and the 

transmission frequency had become variable. Measured in the middle of the apse the 

wavelength was larger than at the sides, so that on the beat of the spoken word not only 

the amplitude of the field distribution in the interior of the temple, but in addition also the 

frequency of the selfresonant oscillation was changed.

 

A typical example of such an architectonic hybrid form of AM and FM is situated in 

Rome. Because due to the frequency variation more than only one wave band was 

occupied and the temple consistently carries the names of two deities. It is the temple of 

Venus and Roma.

 

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