Friday, March 30, 2007

Bzht

I stutter, and I write. I love people, and I’m too fuckety shy for eye contact. My cultural matrix is oral, oral, oral: chatter and stories are weapons and medicine.

Communication’s a big deal for me.

Spark-gap transmission was the start of radio telephony. Huge amounts of energy, intelligence and dirty-handed frustration went into wireless communication. There’s a lonely desperation to Fessenden’s snow, Marconi’s kite, Tesla’s vision. There’s such joy when the message is received. Small wonder Marconi’s Morse code signal to Poldhu was the letters C and Q.

Seek you.

The link below takes you to John Belrose’s article on spark-gap transmission. The photo of Marconi’s condenser under construction reminds me of the light show towards the end of Peter Gabriel’s "Signal to Noise" on the Growing Up Live concert DVD. Most of Belrose's discussion passes me by. Bits of it stick. Some of the "listen" links are dead, but there are examples of how spark sounded – huge effort, little apparent noise. And there’s a sample of Belrose on spark-gap transmission re-creating Fessenden’s first (and the first known) transmission of words without wires.

"One, two, three, four. Is it snowing where you are, Mr. Thiessen?"

The hiss and fuss of spark sounds like someone stuttering.

Is it snowing where you are?

http://www.physics.otago.ac.nz/ursi/belrose/spark.html

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Spark-gap transmission / Michelle Butler Hallett

Spark-gap transmission / Michelle Butler Hallett
in progress