REFERENCES ON RADIO, WIRELESS, AND THE TIME IN WHICH TESLA WORKED

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>

   Some people (and authors too) seem to view Tesla's work as if it 
were conducted in a vacuum and that he was working in a completely 
new field.  They don't seem to realize that the latter part of the 
19th century was a time of very vigorous study, experiment, and 
exploitation of electricity and its applications and that he was but 
one (a preminent one to be sure) of many men working the field.  This 
started in the days of Ampere, Faraday, Henry, Morse and continues 
unabated today.  There were plenty of books published during the 
period which give a pretty good idea of the technical state of the 
world in which Tesla lived but most are hard to find today.  I'm 
fortunate enough to have acquired a few early references but others 
may not have the interest and want to invest the effort to access 
some of them.  I believe any real student of Tesla history, at least 
in relation to wireless and radio, would benefit from studying the 
following references which are still available:

More or less current references on early days of radio and wireless:
"THE DEVELOPMENT OF WIRELESS TO 1920"

edited by George Shiers

Arno Press (NY Times) 1977

Covers work by Lummis/Ward and Stubbelfield on from conduction and induction

systems through "Hertzian" systems.  Good and thorough discussion of 
the subject,

giving a good picture of the work before Tesla and the "state of the 
art" of the late 19th

century and later.

<>"Syntony and Spark

The Origins of Radio"

Hugh G. Aitken [professor of economics at Amherst and student of technology]

Wiley Interscience, J.Wiley, 1976

Discusses the same general subject with emphasis on the requirements for tuning

and of the various researchers who recognized it.

"The Continuous Wave

Technology and American Radio 1900-1932"

Hugh G. Aitken

Princeton University Press, 1985

Excellent presentation on the subject.  He places Tesla in historical 
perspective and

treats him realistically and very sympathetically.

Ed