Published in 1923,by A. Rogers & Co. London, Crystal Sets, etc.  was the definitive book at the time on this technology which put wireless access in the hands of the working classes. It was so sucessful it was republished in 1924. 

Practical Television was one of the first English books on television, published by Ernest Benn in London, and Van Nostrand in New York, in 1928. It only had 175 pages ,but was illustrated throughout. It also had 13 photographic plates, and 4 adverts. It has often been described as "a full and fundamental treatment, still in the days when essential Baird experimental apparatus included  warm clothing". It also has an appendix adding Baird's transatlantic transmission.

Although this is a very early work, it was not the first. The great A A Dinsdale published his Seeing by Wireless, First Principles of Television in 1926  . it was reprinted by Arno Press, 1971

A second edition of Practical Television was published in London and New York, with nearly double the content of the original edition.

The Crystal Set and Edgar T Larner: article to be added soon

Meanwhile why not visit http://www.sparkmuseum.com/CRYSTAL4.HTM for a feast of pictures and descriptions of British Crystal Sets.

 More to come…

Edgar worked for the General Post Office (GPO) as a scientist/enginneer. From 1896 the GPO took over all trunk (long distance) calls and later in 1905 most of the local tlephone service in Great Britain.

On the 1st january 1926, The Post Office long-wave wireless station at Hillmorton, near Rugby with worldwide range, was brought into service. It was known as the Rugby Radio Station. This station used a huge water-cooled transmitter (with a call sign: GBR), dissipating 10kW and using 54 thermionic valves on a wave length of 18,750 metres. Initially, it commenced transmission in Morse code on 16kHz with an aerial power of 350kW. At the time it was the world's most powerful transmitter using thermionic valves. Later in the same year two-way conversation by radio telephone was also established for the first time between this station in England and the USA.

Heinrich Hertz

Heinrich Hertz was the first man to both send and receive radio waves, although James Clerk Maxwell had mathematically predicted their existence back in 1864.  Between 1885 and 1889, as a professor of physics at Karlsruhe Polytechnic, Hertz produced electromagnetic waves in the laboratory and measured their wavelength and velocity. He was able to show that the nature of their reflection and refraction was the same as those of light, confirming that light waves are electromagnetic radiation obeying the Maxwell equations.

Preece, Fleming and development of the vacuum valve

It was in 1883, while he was researching the cause of his version of Swann’s light bulbs darkening and any possible solutions to prevent this occurring, that Edison sealed a metal plate between the filament wires in one of his bulbs. He thus discovered that current would flow if the plate was connected to the positive side of the filament battery, but not when the negative side was connected. However Edison failed to see the potential of this discovery but described it to William Preece in a meeting the following October. Preece decided to investigate this, a lot further and presented his findings to the Royal Society, in the March of 1885. Present at this lecture was a Professor J.A. Fleming.  After a detailed and comprehensive study of the effect that Preece had described, Fleming himself presented his paper in February of 1890.  Wireless/radio transmissions were in their very early days and there seemed to be no obvious use of this application at the time. This changed as wireless engineering progressed and evolved. The net result was the Fleming Oscillation Valve.

 

These days of digital programmes, much use is made of computer programming and elaborate software. It should be noted that the first true computer programmer and friend of Charles Babbage was Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron.The computer Language ADA is named after her. A good web site is : http://www.aimsedu.org/Math_History/Samples/ADA/Ada.html