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I'm a little worried this article has become overmerged. There was once receiver (electronics) which made sense for some applications; there should also be receiver (telecommunications). Both are different than the receiver appliances that are discussed in this topic. -- Mikeblas 20:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I've removed some interesting text from this article about the history of radio. While unreferenced, it was pretty welll-written. I think it would be far more appropriate at the Radio article, which has a "History" section. -- Mikeblas 19:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Receiver (radio) "The first integrated stereo receiver was made by the Harman Kardon company, and came onto the market in 1958. It had undistingushed (sic) performance..."
Harman Kardon "One year after its founding, harman/kardon introduced the world's first true high-fidelity receiver, the Festival D1000. This monaural unit was not only aimed at non-technical consumers but also incorporated many now-familiar features such as the incorporation of a tuner, component control unit and amplifier on a single chassis."
I find on one hand ascribing "undistinguished performance" to the Festival D1000 in Receiver (radio), and then at Harmon Kardon labeling the Festival D1000 to be a "high-fidelity receiver" to be contradictory. - MSTCrow 03:14, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Added a needed history section focused specifically on the development of the radio receiver, based on a comprehensive overview document source. Will find more variety of sources to add. - LuckyLouie 19:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Since the first radio reciver was invented by a Russian, Popov, it's category is Russian inventions, just like Tank is in British inventions, since the first to built it was British, and thats why it's categorised in British inventions. Shpakovich ( talk) 21:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
All other common audio/visual components can use any of the identical line-level inputs on the receiver for playback, regardless of how they are marked (the "name" on each input is mostly for the convenience of the user.) For instance, a second CD player can be plugged into an "Aux" input, and will work the same as it will in the "CD" input jacks
... except mic inputs, which are found on some home stereos Tabby ( talk) 07:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
"by the mid 1930s virtually all receiving sets in Europe as well were using the superhet principle"
this is simply not the case. There are a number of standard radio configurations seen in the 30s as technology progressed, but only a small minority were superhets, which were at the time simply unaffordable to the great majority of buyers. A trip to any suitable museum will show you what was in general use at the time.
Superhets established dominance by the 50s. Tabby ( talk) 07:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I think that the article RF probe should be merged into this article as it is too short and not important enough to have it's own article page. OpinionPerson ( talk) 21:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
1. Elaborate more on the specifics of how it works. 2. I personally feel that we should erase the Manufacturers section. It's just free advertising for Panasonic, Aiwa, and whatever. Worst of all it's like the only manufacturers in the world are Panasonic, Aiwa, etc.
Exec. Tassadar ( comments, contribs) 12:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Recently the page was moved from Receiver (radio) to Radio (receiver) [1]. I understand the motivation, as the name Receiver means a lot of other things, but I don't think the new name is much better. "Radio" is insufficiently specific as it also refers to two-way radios like CB radios and walkie-talkies. It also is easily confused with the article Radio, referring to radio technology in general. I think Radio receiver would be better. This satisifies WP:COMMONNAME: "...the name that is most commonly used as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources", reliable sources in this case being the electrical engineering and telecommunications fields. Radio (receiver) can be a redirect. -- Chetvorno TALK 20:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. The redirect at the target had previously been a stub but had no significant content or history. None of the text from that stub appears to have made its way to the article being moved over it, nor would it add anything to do so. Andrewa ( talk) 15:29, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Radio (receiver) →
Radio receiver – Best name for the article.
2602:306:3653:8920:AC9C:7705:4648:749A (
talk)
21:27, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Completely rewrote and expanded the largely unsourced, uneven "History of radio receivers" section including adequate sourcing. Renamed section "History" to remove unnecessary redundancy per MOS:HEADINGS. I'm not done with it yet, I plan to add some sourcing, rewrite the "Semiconductor era" subsection, fill in some missing stuff like FM receivers, and improve the placement of the images. -- Chetvorno TALK 23:10, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Why is this article within the scope of WikiProject Russia, which is "a WikiProject dedicated to coverage of Russia"? Lambtron ( talk) 21:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
@ BrydoF1989: The reason I used the distinctive formatting is that the History section contains a lot of subsections under three main section headings, and without format differences the main section heads are hard to recognise among the subsections when scrolling through the article. You may have noticed, one problem with WP markup is that the visual difference between lower level subheadings is pretty small, just a slight difference in font size:
When separated by large blocks of text it is hard to distinguish what level a section head is at. -- Chetvorno TALK 07:48, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
Some old history that used to be at the title "Radio receiver" is now at Talk:Radio receiver/Old history. Graham 87 03:54, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
I am concerned about the recent edit to the introduction, which replaces this description of a receiver's operation:
with this:
I think the original wording is more accurate and should be restored. Here are my objections to the new wording:
-- Chetvorno TALK 19:02, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
It seems that portable radio redirects here. It would be nice to have some description of the evolution from vacuum tube based portable receivers though transistorized models. Gah4 ( talk) 02:06, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
I think the new description on familiar instead of common is good, though I am suspecting that TV sets are more familiar, and people do know that they need to tune (channel select) them. For things like WiFi, Bluetooth, and RF based remote controls, people don't normally tune them, so are less likely to think of them as radios. Can we mention both broadcast radio receivers and TV sets? Gah4 ( talk) 01:09, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
All data *must* be digital? A generation of radiosondes sent their measurements back in vain, then? -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 17:43, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 19:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
This section is largely inaccurate mostly because the modern interpretation of the historical sequence of events is not correct. Almost anyone today will tell you that De Forest invented the triode vacuum tube. He did not. He invented the audion tube which contained low pressure gas (probably air). It was a better detector that the diode type detectors previously available because it amplified the detected signal. However, the modus operandi of the audion was completely different to the vacuum triode. The audion was very non linear and as such was completely useless for further amplification. Even its amplified detected signal was heavily distorted. Speech was still intelligible though music would have been impossible to listen to (though at this time, any entertainment application for radio was still in the future).
The position was further confused because when Langmuir invented the vacuum triode, De Forest (who did not even understand how his own audion worked) believed that Langmuir had stolen his invention simply because they looked the same (and he did not understand how the vacuum triode worked either). It is now known that De Forest was only interested in exploiting any technology to make money (one area in which he did have expertise) and to earn himself fame to boot.
De Forest could not possibly have invented the vacuum triode when he invented the audion because the mercury diffusion vacuum pump which was required to produce the required vacuum was invented at about the same time in Europe, so he would have been unaware of it.
The audion was unstable but not for the reasons stated in the article. Like the X-ray tubes of the same period, the bulb of the device got hot and this caused the low pressure gas filling to be adsorbed into the glass and the metal components. Ironically, this caused the audion to slowly turn itself into a vacuum triode. De Forest lacked the technical knowledge to understand why his audions failed, which is probably why it never occurred to him to put a re-gassing device on the bulb similar to the ones fitted to the X-ray tubes of the time.
Another contributor wrote a potential article on the modus operandi of the audion and the differences to the vacuum triode. Unfortunately, I do not know if it still exists or where it was located (it never made it as an article, IIRC, mostly because references were hard to find).
Note: that Edwin Armstrong's paper on the audion was not produced as a scientific peer reviewed paper. It was produced as part of an evidence trail in another patent dispute where De Forest was claiming that he had invented something that he had not. The paper was intended to demonstrate to a judge that De Forest had insufficient technical understanding about his audion let alone anything else. It may, therefore, not be entirely correct.
De Forest famously stated that "I have no idea how it [the audion] works. It just does". 86.162.147.159 ( talk) 13:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
OK, there was the Mercury rectifier which traces back pretty far, and with different physics from the vacuum rectifier. There are, however, different questions. A favorite trick in chemistry patents is to add a methyl group somewhere, and patent the new molecule. That tends to work, even when the actual active mechanism is the same. So, the exact difference needed to get a new patent might be different from the actual physics. But an any case, we need a WP:RS. Gah4 ( talk) 21:40, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
the differences between the audion and the true high vacuum triode have been lost to historyIf there is no documentation in WP:RS of what you contend, protracted Talk page argumentation won’t change that. The citations provided above by Chetvorno support the existing text. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 13:30, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Reading through the article, it well describes that the De Forest tubes had residual gas. If we were litigating a patent dispute 100 years ago, the distinction might be worth discussing more. It is well enough discussed in the article for the needed detail. (Actually, I suspect that it is discussed more than it needs to be, but otherwise it is fine.) This could be discussed in Fleming valve, where it is actually applicable. That one doesn't seem so bad, though. All that is really needed here, is that modulating the grid voltage affects the plate current. That is, independent of the physics involved. Gah4 ( talk) 00:11, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
While looking for further information, I found
86.162.147.159 ( talk) 14:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
86.162.147.159: I agree with Gah4. I appreciate your experience, but some of your statements above are clearly wrong:
"The audion... was not an amplifying device in its own right."
It was not a good amplifier, due to the gas in the tube, as described above, but it was an amplifier, the first practical one. The reason the big corporate labs started research programs on the audion - Arnold in 1912 at AT&T and Langmuir in 1913 at GE - was it's audio amplifying ability, which was used to make the first telephone repeaters, not its radio detection ability:
Of course when they became available the hard vacuum tubes were better amplifiers, and triode development split into two lines: "hard" triodes which were used as amplifiers, and "soft" triodes which were used as radio detectors through the 1920s. MacNicol, "Radio's Conquest of Space", p. 168
"You couldn't even buy an audion on its own. It could only be bought as part of De Forest's RJ6 receiver..."
No, De Forest sold an audion "detector", the RJ-5, consisting of the tube mounted on a box with some biasing components. Beginning at the latest in 1914 he also sold an audion amplifier, the PJ-1.
Douglas, "Radio Manufacturers of the 1920s", p.163
--
Chetvorno
TALK
19:25, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
Google not very helpful here... 2001:8A0:5E4F:9001:7813:8C9C:99D6:2444 ( talk) 17:41, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Radio receiver article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I'm a little worried this article has become overmerged. There was once receiver (electronics) which made sense for some applications; there should also be receiver (telecommunications). Both are different than the receiver appliances that are discussed in this topic. -- Mikeblas 20:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
I've removed some interesting text from this article about the history of radio. While unreferenced, it was pretty welll-written. I think it would be far more appropriate at the Radio article, which has a "History" section. -- Mikeblas 19:06, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
Receiver (radio) "The first integrated stereo receiver was made by the Harman Kardon company, and came onto the market in 1958. It had undistingushed (sic) performance..."
Harman Kardon "One year after its founding, harman/kardon introduced the world's first true high-fidelity receiver, the Festival D1000. This monaural unit was not only aimed at non-technical consumers but also incorporated many now-familiar features such as the incorporation of a tuner, component control unit and amplifier on a single chassis."
I find on one hand ascribing "undistinguished performance" to the Festival D1000 in Receiver (radio), and then at Harmon Kardon labeling the Festival D1000 to be a "high-fidelity receiver" to be contradictory. - MSTCrow 03:14, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Added a needed history section focused specifically on the development of the radio receiver, based on a comprehensive overview document source. Will find more variety of sources to add. - LuckyLouie 19:10, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Since the first radio reciver was invented by a Russian, Popov, it's category is Russian inventions, just like Tank is in British inventions, since the first to built it was British, and thats why it's categorised in British inventions. Shpakovich ( talk) 21:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
All other common audio/visual components can use any of the identical line-level inputs on the receiver for playback, regardless of how they are marked (the "name" on each input is mostly for the convenience of the user.) For instance, a second CD player can be plugged into an "Aux" input, and will work the same as it will in the "CD" input jacks
... except mic inputs, which are found on some home stereos Tabby ( talk) 07:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
"by the mid 1930s virtually all receiving sets in Europe as well were using the superhet principle"
this is simply not the case. There are a number of standard radio configurations seen in the 30s as technology progressed, but only a small minority were superhets, which were at the time simply unaffordable to the great majority of buyers. A trip to any suitable museum will show you what was in general use at the time.
Superhets established dominance by the 50s. Tabby ( talk) 07:56, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
I think that the article RF probe should be merged into this article as it is too short and not important enough to have it's own article page. OpinionPerson ( talk) 21:25, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
1. Elaborate more on the specifics of how it works. 2. I personally feel that we should erase the Manufacturers section. It's just free advertising for Panasonic, Aiwa, and whatever. Worst of all it's like the only manufacturers in the world are Panasonic, Aiwa, etc.
Exec. Tassadar ( comments, contribs) 12:46, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
Recently the page was moved from Receiver (radio) to Radio (receiver) [1]. I understand the motivation, as the name Receiver means a lot of other things, but I don't think the new name is much better. "Radio" is insufficiently specific as it also refers to two-way radios like CB radios and walkie-talkies. It also is easily confused with the article Radio, referring to radio technology in general. I think Radio receiver would be better. This satisifies WP:COMMONNAME: "...the name that is most commonly used as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources", reliable sources in this case being the electrical engineering and telecommunications fields. Radio (receiver) can be a redirect. -- Chetvorno TALK 20:58, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: moved. The redirect at the target had previously been a stub but had no significant content or history. None of the text from that stub appears to have made its way to the article being moved over it, nor would it add anything to do so. Andrewa ( talk) 15:29, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
Radio (receiver) →
Radio receiver – Best name for the article.
2602:306:3653:8920:AC9C:7705:4648:749A (
talk)
21:27, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
Completely rewrote and expanded the largely unsourced, uneven "History of radio receivers" section including adequate sourcing. Renamed section "History" to remove unnecessary redundancy per MOS:HEADINGS. I'm not done with it yet, I plan to add some sourcing, rewrite the "Semiconductor era" subsection, fill in some missing stuff like FM receivers, and improve the placement of the images. -- Chetvorno TALK 23:10, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
Why is this article within the scope of WikiProject Russia, which is "a WikiProject dedicated to coverage of Russia"? Lambtron ( talk) 21:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)
@ BrydoF1989: The reason I used the distinctive formatting is that the History section contains a lot of subsections under three main section headings, and without format differences the main section heads are hard to recognise among the subsections when scrolling through the article. You may have noticed, one problem with WP markup is that the visual difference between lower level subheadings is pretty small, just a slight difference in font size:
When separated by large blocks of text it is hard to distinguish what level a section head is at. -- Chetvorno TALK 07:48, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
Some old history that used to be at the title "Radio receiver" is now at Talk:Radio receiver/Old history. Graham 87 03:54, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
I am concerned about the recent edit to the introduction, which replaces this description of a receiver's operation:
with this:
I think the original wording is more accurate and should be restored. Here are my objections to the new wording:
-- Chetvorno TALK 19:02, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
It seems that portable radio redirects here. It would be nice to have some description of the evolution from vacuum tube based portable receivers though transistorized models. Gah4 ( talk) 02:06, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
I think the new description on familiar instead of common is good, though I am suspecting that TV sets are more familiar, and people do know that they need to tune (channel select) them. For things like WiFi, Bluetooth, and RF based remote controls, people don't normally tune them, so are less likely to think of them as radios. Can we mention both broadcast radio receivers and TV sets? Gah4 ( talk) 01:09, 15 October 2019 (UTC)
All data *must* be digital? A generation of radiosondes sent their measurements back in vain, then? -- Wtshymanski ( talk) 17:43, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. — Community Tech bot ( talk) 19:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
This section is largely inaccurate mostly because the modern interpretation of the historical sequence of events is not correct. Almost anyone today will tell you that De Forest invented the triode vacuum tube. He did not. He invented the audion tube which contained low pressure gas (probably air). It was a better detector that the diode type detectors previously available because it amplified the detected signal. However, the modus operandi of the audion was completely different to the vacuum triode. The audion was very non linear and as such was completely useless for further amplification. Even its amplified detected signal was heavily distorted. Speech was still intelligible though music would have been impossible to listen to (though at this time, any entertainment application for radio was still in the future).
The position was further confused because when Langmuir invented the vacuum triode, De Forest (who did not even understand how his own audion worked) believed that Langmuir had stolen his invention simply because they looked the same (and he did not understand how the vacuum triode worked either). It is now known that De Forest was only interested in exploiting any technology to make money (one area in which he did have expertise) and to earn himself fame to boot.
De Forest could not possibly have invented the vacuum triode when he invented the audion because the mercury diffusion vacuum pump which was required to produce the required vacuum was invented at about the same time in Europe, so he would have been unaware of it.
The audion was unstable but not for the reasons stated in the article. Like the X-ray tubes of the same period, the bulb of the device got hot and this caused the low pressure gas filling to be adsorbed into the glass and the metal components. Ironically, this caused the audion to slowly turn itself into a vacuum triode. De Forest lacked the technical knowledge to understand why his audions failed, which is probably why it never occurred to him to put a re-gassing device on the bulb similar to the ones fitted to the X-ray tubes of the time.
Another contributor wrote a potential article on the modus operandi of the audion and the differences to the vacuum triode. Unfortunately, I do not know if it still exists or where it was located (it never made it as an article, IIRC, mostly because references were hard to find).
Note: that Edwin Armstrong's paper on the audion was not produced as a scientific peer reviewed paper. It was produced as part of an evidence trail in another patent dispute where De Forest was claiming that he had invented something that he had not. The paper was intended to demonstrate to a judge that De Forest had insufficient technical understanding about his audion let alone anything else. It may, therefore, not be entirely correct.
De Forest famously stated that "I have no idea how it [the audion] works. It just does". 86.162.147.159 ( talk) 13:25, 8 October 2022 (UTC)
OK, there was the Mercury rectifier which traces back pretty far, and with different physics from the vacuum rectifier. There are, however, different questions. A favorite trick in chemistry patents is to add a methyl group somewhere, and patent the new molecule. That tends to work, even when the actual active mechanism is the same. So, the exact difference needed to get a new patent might be different from the actual physics. But an any case, we need a WP:RS. Gah4 ( talk) 21:40, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
the differences between the audion and the true high vacuum triode have been lost to historyIf there is no documentation in WP:RS of what you contend, protracted Talk page argumentation won’t change that. The citations provided above by Chetvorno support the existing text. - LuckyLouie ( talk) 13:30, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
Reading through the article, it well describes that the De Forest tubes had residual gas. If we were litigating a patent dispute 100 years ago, the distinction might be worth discussing more. It is well enough discussed in the article for the needed detail. (Actually, I suspect that it is discussed more than it needs to be, but otherwise it is fine.) This could be discussed in Fleming valve, where it is actually applicable. That one doesn't seem so bad, though. All that is really needed here, is that modulating the grid voltage affects the plate current. That is, independent of the physics involved. Gah4 ( talk) 00:11, 13 October 2022 (UTC)
While looking for further information, I found
86.162.147.159 ( talk) 14:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
86.162.147.159: I agree with Gah4. I appreciate your experience, but some of your statements above are clearly wrong:
"The audion... was not an amplifying device in its own right."
It was not a good amplifier, due to the gas in the tube, as described above, but it was an amplifier, the first practical one. The reason the big corporate labs started research programs on the audion - Arnold in 1912 at AT&T and Langmuir in 1913 at GE - was it's audio amplifying ability, which was used to make the first telephone repeaters, not its radio detection ability:
Of course when they became available the hard vacuum tubes were better amplifiers, and triode development split into two lines: "hard" triodes which were used as amplifiers, and "soft" triodes which were used as radio detectors through the 1920s. MacNicol, "Radio's Conquest of Space", p. 168
"You couldn't even buy an audion on its own. It could only be bought as part of De Forest's RJ6 receiver..."
No, De Forest sold an audion "detector", the RJ-5, consisting of the tube mounted on a box with some biasing components. Beginning at the latest in 1914 he also sold an audion amplifier, the PJ-1.
Douglas, "Radio Manufacturers of the 1920s", p.163
--
Chetvorno
TALK
19:25, 24 October 2022 (UTC)
Google not very helpful here... 2001:8A0:5E4F:9001:7813:8C9C:99D6:2444 ( talk) 17:41, 26 December 2023 (UTC)