The Race For Wireless

The book is not only a history of development of wireless communication, or the radio, as it was later named. It also presents portraits of fascinating visionaries, experimenters and scientists and the stories of their successes and failures. The history begins as a race between inventors, but later becames a race chiefly between corporations. Even today, there are a great number of contradictory opinions and common beliefs regarding the fatherhood of the wireless. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, the exchange of information was slow and unreliable. Many talented individuals worked concurrently in different parts of the world, trying to develop the same wireless apparatus and not knowing that they already had competitors. Sometimes, inflated egos undermined their success. Some of the inventors lacked integrity. Legal battles ensued. So, who was the first at the finish line? To determine who was the winner of the race for wireless, or who can be named the "father of the wireless", substantial amounts of historical and political background as well as a thorough analysis of inventions are included in this book. The story is based on published memoirs and papers, encyclopedias, and countless historical and technical materials in the public domain. In many cases it was necessary to filter out the emotional biases (of traditional or national origin) of the source material and to seek the correct chronology of discoveries. The author uses published patents - their dates of issue, technical claims and drawings - as the ultimate source of judgment. In the appendix, "The Vacuum Tube Sound", the author compares the quality of sound amplified by a vacuum tube amplifier with the quality of sound amplified by modern semiconductor amplifiers. What are the differences, if any? The answer may surprise you.

Conquering the Electron offers readers a true and engaging history of the world of electronics, beginning with the discoveries of static electricity and magnetism and ending with the creation of the smartphone and the iPad. This book shows the interconnection of each advance to the next on the long journey to our modern-day technologies. Exploring the combination of genius, infighting, and luck that powered the creation of today's electronic age, Conquering the Electron debunks the hero worship so often plaguing the stories of great advances. Want to know how AT&T’s Bell Labs developed semiconductor technology—and how its leading scientists almost came to blows in the process? Want to understand how radio and television work—and why RCA drove their inventors to financial ruin and early graves? Conquering the Electron offers these stories and more, presenting each revolutionary technological advance right alongside blow-by-blow personal battles that all too often took place.

"Traces the history of early twentieth century attempts to bridge the Atlantic by radio telegraphy. In particular, chronicles the challenge to the Marconi Company by the Universal Radio Syndicate headed by one Arthur Baxendale"--

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First IFIP TC6 Working Conference on Wireless On-Demand Network Systems, WONS 2004, held in Madonna di Campiglio, Italy in January 2004. The 25 revised full papers presented together with 7 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 77 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on localization and mobility management; MAC and radio resource management; Bluetooth scatternets; ad-hoc routing; security, applications, and service support; MAC analytical models; and on-demand Internet access.

A history of our time.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the First Annual International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems, and Applications, WASA 2006, held in Xi'an, China in August 2006. The book presents 63 revised full papers together with 2 invited keynote speech abstracts, organized in topical sections on wireless PAN and wireless LAN, wireless MAN and pervasive computing, data management, mobility, localization and topology control, performance modeling and analysis, security and more.