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Wireless World Golden Jubilee review of 1921

Wireless World, April, 1961.
    
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A floating laboratory - Marconi's yacht Elettra

There had by now been several casual mentions in our pages of what is now called 'electronics'; Appleton, in a tailpiece to a book review, referred to the valve as 'an invaluable laboratory instrument' to the general physicist. The use of amplifying valves in conjunction with photo-electric cells for measuring light intensities had also been mentioned. Now came our first full-dress electronics article in a report of a paper read before the Wireless Society of London by Prof. R Whiddington on the measurement of physical quantities. He described the measurement of short distances by capacitance variation using the beat-note method with two oscillating valves. Sensitivity claimed was 50 to 100 times greater than that of the optical interferometer.

Broadcasting in America was already under way and regular 'Dutch concerts' from The Hague were started. The Marconi Company's transmissions from Writtle were licensed by the Post Office early next year. With increased interest in telephony loudspeakers became important. Most of them consisted essentially of a telephone earpiece with a horn, but the American Magnavox moving coil and the Western Electric balanced-armature types had appeared.

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