Product Code Database
The coherer was a primitive form of radio signal detector used in the first during the wireless telegraphy era at the beginning of the 20th century. Its use in radio was based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Édouard Branly and adapted by other physicists and inventors over the next ten years. The device consists of a tube or capsule containing two spaced a small distance apart with loose metal filings in the space between. When a radio frequency signal is applied to the device, the metal particles would cling together or "", reducing the initial high resistance of the device, thereby allowing a much greater direct current to flow through it. In a receiver, the current would activate a bell, or a Morse paper tape recorder to make a record of the received signal. The metal filings in the coherer remained conductive after the signal (pulse) ended so that the coherer had to be "decohered" by tapping it with a clapper actuated by an electromagnet, each time a signal was received, thereby restoring the coherer to its original state. Coherers remained in widespread use until about 1907, when they were replaced by more sensitive electrolytic and .
In 1890, French physicist Édouard Branly published On the Changes in Resistance of Bodies under Different Electrical Conditions in a French Journal where he described his thorough investigation of the effect of minute electrical charges on metal and many types of metal filings. In one type of circuit, filings were placed in a tube of glass or ebonite, held between two metal plates. When an electric discharge was produced in the neighbourhood of the circuit, a large deviation was seen on the attached galvanometer needle. He noted the filings in the tube would react to the electric discharge even when the tube was placed in another room 20 yards away. Branly went on to devise many types of these devices based on "imperfect" metal contacts. Branly's filings tube came to light in 1892 in Great Britain when it was described by Dr. Dawson Turner at a meeting of the British Association in Edinburgh.Hong, Sungook (2010) Wireless: From Marconi's Black-box to the Audion. MIT Press. p. 4. The Scottish electrical engineer and astronomer George Forbes suggested that Branly's filings tube might be reacting in the presence of Hertzian waves, a type of air-borne electromagnetic radiation proven to exist by German physicist Heinrich Hertz (later called radio waves).
In 1893 physicist W.B. Croft exhibited Branly's experiments at a meeting of the Physical Society in London. It was unclear to Croft and others whether the filings in the Branly tube were reacting to sparks or the light from the sparks. George Minchin noticed the Branly tube might be reacting to Hertzian waves the same way his solar cell did and wrote the paper " The Action of Electromagnetic Radiation on Films containing Metallic Powders". These papers were read by English physicist Oliver Lodge who saw this as a way to build a much improved Hertzian wave detector. On 1 June 1894, a few months after the death of Heinrich Hertz, Oliver Lodge delivered a memorial lecture on Hertz where he demonstrated the properties of "Hertzian waves" (radio), including transmitting them over a short distance, using an improved version of Branly's filings tube, which Lodge had named the "coherer", as a detector. In May 1895, after reading about Lodge's demonstrations, the Russian physicist Alexander Popov built a "Hertzian wave" (radio wave) based lightning detector using a coherer. That same year, Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated a wireless telegraphy system using Hertzian waves (radio), based on a coherer. The Russian radio pioneer Simeon Aisenstein used a coherer in his initial laboratory which established as hobby pursuit in 1904.
The coherer was replaced in receivers by the simpler and more sensitive electrolytic and around 1907, and became obsolete.
One minor use of the coherer in modern times was by Japanese tin-plate toy manufacturer Matsudaya Toy Co. who beginning 1957 used a spark-gap transmitter and coherer-based receiver in a range of radio-controlled (RC) toys, called Radicon (abbreviation for Radio-Controlled) toys. Several different types using the same RC system were commercially sold, including a Radicon Boat (very rare), Radicon Oldsmobile Car (rare) and a Radicon Bus (the most popular).
The operation of the coherer is based on the phenomenon of electrical contact resistance. Specifically as metal particles (cling together), they conduct electricity much better after being subjected to radio frequency electricity. The radio signal from the antenna was applied directly across the coherer's electrodes. When the radio signal from a "dot" or "dash" came in, the coherer would become conductive. The coherer's electrodes were also attached to a direct current circuit powered by a battery that created a "click" sound in earphones or a telegraph sounder, or a mark on a paper tape, to record the signal. Unfortunately, the reduction in the coherer's electrical resistance persisted after the radio signal was removed. This was a problem because the coherer had to be ready immediately to receive the next "dot" or "dash". Therefore, a decoherer mechanism was added to tap the coherer, mechanically disturbing the particles to reset it to the high resistance state. If a dash is being transmitted then the radio frequency is still being received when the tap happens, and the coherer immediately becomes conductive again and the whole process repeats for another mark on the tape. As a result, dash is marked on the tape as multiple dots close together.
Coherence of particles by radio waves is an obscure phenomenon that is not well understood even today. Recent experiments with particle coherers seem to have confirmed the hypothesis that the particles cohere by a micro-weld phenomenon caused by Radio Frequency electricity flowing across the small contact area between particles. The underlying principle of so-called "imperfect contact" coherers is also not well understood, but may involve a kind of tunneling of across an imperfect junction between conductors.
In operation, the coherer is included in two separate electrical circuits. One is the antenna-ground circuit shown in the untuned receiver circuit diagram below. The other is the battery-sounder relay circuit including battery B1 and relay R in the diagram. A radio signal from the antenna-ground circuit "turns on" the coherer, enabling current flow in the battery-sounder circuit, activating the sounder, S. The coils, L, act as RF chokes to prevent the RF signal power from leaking away through the relay circuit.
One electrode, A, of the coherer, ( C, in the left diagram) is connected to the antenna and the other electrode, B, to ground. A series combination of a battery, B1, and a relay, R, is also attached to the two electrodes. When the signal from a spark gap transmitter is received, the filings tend to cling to each other, reducing the resistance of the coherer. When the coherer conducts better, battery B1 supplies enough current through the coherer to activate relay R, which connects battery B2 to the telegraph sounder S, giving an audible click. In some applications, a pair of headphones replaced the telegraph sounder, being much more sensitive to weak signals, or a Morse recorder which recorded the dots and dashes of the signal on paper tape.
The problem of the filings continuing to cling together and conduct after the removal of the signal was solved by tapping or shaking the coherer after the arrival of each signal, shaking the filings and raising the resistance of the coherer to the original value. This apparatus was called a decoherer. This process was referred to as "decohering" the device and was subject to much innovation during the life of the popular use of this component. Nikola Tesla, for example, invented a coherer in which the tube rotated continually along its axis.
In later practical receivers the decoherer was a clapper similar to an electric bell, operated by an electromagnet powered by the coherer current itself. When the radio wave turned on the coherer, the DC current from the battery flowed through the electromagnet, pulling the arm over to give the coherer a tap. This returned the coherer to the nonconductive state, turning off the electromagnet current, and the arm sprang back. If the radio signal was still present, the coherer would immediately turn on again, pulling the clapper over to give it another tap, which would turn it off again. The result was a constant "trembling" of the clapper during the period that the radio signal was on, during the "dots" and "dashes" of the Morse code signal.
An automatic braking system for rail locomotives, patented in 1907, used a coherer to detect electrical oscillations in a continuous aerial running along the track. If the block ahead of the train were occupied the oscillations were interrupted and the coherer, acting through a relay, showed a warning and applied the brakes.
In 1899, Bose announced the development of an " iron-mercury-iron coherer with telephone detector" in a paper presented at the Royal Society, London. He also later received , " Detector for electrical disturbances" (1904), for a specific electromagnetic receiver.
Coherers were also finicky to adjust and not very sensitive. Another problem was that, because of the cumbersome mechanical "decohering" mechanism, the coherer was limited to a receiving speed of 12 – 15 words per minute of Morse code, while telegraph operators could send at rates of 50 WPM, and paper tape machines at 100 WPM.
More important for the future, the coherer could not detect AM (radio) transmissions. As a simple switch that registered the presence or absence of radio waves, the coherer could detect the on-off keying of wireless telegraphy transmitters, but it could not rectifier nor demodulation the waveforms of AM broadcasting radiotelephone signals, which began to be experimented with in the first years of the 20th century. This problem was solved by the rectification capability of the hot wire barretter and electrolytic detector, developed by Reginald Fessenden around 1902. These were replaced by the crystal detector around 1907, and then around 1912–1918 by vacuum tube technologies such as Fleming valve and Lee De Forest's Audion (triode) tube.
|
|
