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Scanning Our Past
A Popov Lightning Recorder?—in South Africa!
The Historical Interest Group of the South African In-stitute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) has been collectinghistorical artifacts and documents over the past 20 years fora future museum of Science and Technology. Recently, arediscovery of a rare, almost century-old instrument basedon the work of the Russian wireless innovator AleksandrStepanovich Popov (Fig. 1) has shed new light on the earlydays of electromagnetic receivers.Amongst our collection of veteran apparatus there was apartly obscured instrument, which had glared down at meeach time I entered the room. I had told myself to ignore itasitwasonlyanotherrecordingammeter.Recently,however,mycuriositypeaked, andwithabitofastrugglewemanagedto bring it out into the open. Imagine our delight when wediscoveredthatwe had acohererwireless receiver in ourcol-lection!Fortunately,Itooktheexaminationastepfurtherandfinally realized that this must be the lightning recorder usedat the Transvaal Meteorological Station from 1904 (Fig. 2).Several people had been asking about this instrument, but noone knew exactly where it was. We were delighted to haverediscovered this rare device, which is now almost 100 yearsold. It may well be the oldest item in our collection and iscertainly the only surviving instrument from the beginningsof the weather station. Let me share a little background re-garding our history and technological development.Johannesburg was established as a mining camp in 1886and within four years, it became the second largest town inSouth Africa. In 1903, after the Anglo–Boer War, the BritishColonial Government built a meteorological station on a hillon the eastern outskirts of the town.The weather station eventually grew into an Astronom-ical Observatory, which subsequently became the home of the Associated Scientific and Technical Societies (AS&TS).The property includes Innes House, which is today the head-quarters of the SAIEE.I. W
HO
I
NVENTED
R
ADIO
?This instrument was manufactured in the days when radiocommunication was only just beginning. Heinrich Hertz hadstarted the ball rolling in 1888, and by 1895, several peoplewere experimenting with electromagnetic waves. Several of 
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9219(00)10765-0.
Fig. 1
. Aleksandr Stepanovich Popov.
these pioneers have been credited by various groups at var-ious times as “the inventor of radio.”The Russian candidate for this honor was AleksandrStepanovich Popov (1859–1905), who was an instructor inphysics at the Russian Navy’s Torpedo School in Kronstadtnear St. Petersburg. Popov had developed an interest in thework of Heinrich Hertz and had read about the electromag-netic experiments performed by Sir Oliver Lodge in 1894.This encouraged him to build his own electromagnetic re-ceiver using a coherer similar to that developed in 1890 bytheFrenchProfessorE.Branly.Branly’scohererconsistedof two electrodes placed at either end of an insulating tube withthe intervening gap loosely filled with metal filings (Fig. 3).The poor electrical contact between the particles resulted ina relatively high resistance between the electrodes, but after
0018–9219/00$10.00 © 2000 IEEE
1972 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 88, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2000
 
Fig. 2.
Hoser Victor lightning recorder (1904).
Fig. 3.
Coherer used on lightning recorder.
being subjected to an electrical impulse in excess of about5 V, a low-resistance path was established. This conductingpath persisted until the metal filings were physically dis-turbed, after which the high resistance returned. Fig. 4 [4]shows the coherer used by Popov, and although this is notquite the same as Branly’s, it would have functioned in thesame way.An electrical impulse picked up by the antenna (Fig. 4 and[4])wouldhavepassedthrough thecoherer,renderingit con-ducting and establishing a path for the battery to energizethe telegraph relay. The relay then set the trembler mecha-nism going so that it would ring the bell and at the same timedisturb the iron filings in the coherer. Once the coherer wasrendered nonconducting, the telegraph relay would have re-leased and the apparatus would have been ready to receive asucceeding impulse.By connecting a recorder in parallel with the trembler,Popov used this receiver to register lightning flashes. Hedemonstrated such equipment at a meeting of the St. Peters-burg Physical Society on May 7, 1895. He then installed oneof these recorders at the Meteorological Observatory of theForest Institution of St. Petersburg using an existing light-ning conductor as an aerial. He was able to record discharges
Fig. 4.
Circuit of lightning detector and form of coherer used byPopov.
occurring as far away as 30 km between July 1895 and De-cember 1897.Using a similar receiver on March 12, 1896, he is believedto have demonstrated a wireless telegraph link to a meetingof the St. Petersburg Physical Society. It is said that he trans-mitted the words “Heinrich Hertz” and that as the code char-acters were received, the chairman translated them into let-ters and chalked them up on a blackboard. Unfortunately, weonly have personal recollections of this event as the officialrecords do not confirm the demonstration.Marconi had started his work on wireless telegraphy atabout the same time as Popov but can only claim public dis-closure from the date of his June 1896 patent. The methodrevealed by the Marconi patent was very similar to that usedby Popov.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 88, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2000 1973
 
Fig. 5.
Circuit of the observatory lightning recorder.
Fig. 6.
Recorder mechanism (the coherer has been removed for clarity).
Clearly, these two contenders for the title of Inventor of Radio developed their ideas at about the same time. In bothcases, they made use of established techniques, and even if itcould be proven that one preceded the other, it would still bedebatable whether either of them could claim to have exclu-sively invented radio. It is, however, quite clear that Marconiproduced many practical systems of wireless telegraphy andled the field for a long time. It is equally clear that Popov de-veloped the first lightning recorder.II. J
OHANNESBURG
O
BSERVATORY
L
IGHTNING
R
ECORDER
To continue with our historical review, in 1903 theTransvaal Colonial Government ordered the equipment forthe Johannesburg Meteorological Station. A wide varietyof sophisticated instruments was provided, including thislightning recorder. The elegant engraved nickel label showsthat the instrument was made in Budapest by a companycalled Hoser Victor and the date inscribed on the bottom
1974 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 88, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2000
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