Scalar wave technology in antiquity__________________________________ 617
30.5 Radio technical concepts
In planning and constructing radio technical networks only a few possible concepts exist.
It is interesting that at least one historical example can be specified for every concept. That
shows that all possibilities were tried at least once. The three most important concepts are
presented here:
A. Cellular phone.
Every bigger city between Euphrates and Tigris, which thought the world of itself, had
at its disposal already in antiquity a temple tower. Such a temple tower was a
,,telephone cabin" in the form of a pyramid as a transmitter and a receiver temple at the
top, to where the receptionist adjourned to the so-called temple sleep. Discipline was
required, since all the time only one priest was allowed to broadcast. All others could
listen to him doing so. If he was ready, he closed his contribution with a fixed symbol
or term (,,over") and the next one could continue. This is a classic link-up, where
anyone communicates with every network participant.
The stations all were strikingly similar in form and size of building, like one phone box
resembles another. In that way a further development of the cellular phone system
hardly was possible and that has a technical reason, as the building of a tower in
Babylon has shown us. This tower namely had gotten the ambitious builders too big, so
that the frequency of the Mesopotamian radio network had been left and instead a
foreign network could be received, the code of which no-one could understand. The
result was a confusion of language and the order to stop the building.
B. Broadcasting.
Millions of TV spectators every evening look in the ABC news or another daily journal
of a TV Channel. In the case of broadcasting thus many receivers listen to the news of a
powerful transmitter. With that the whole plenitude of power is concentrated in the
hands of the chief intendant. In antiquity he called himself high priest. If he went on the
air, he used the logo of the god that he had to represent. Today the logo of the
broadcasting company is shown in a corner of the TV screen. Even this very day
feedback from the receiver to the transmitter hardly is possible contingent on principle.
The problems with nationally controlled broadcasting, with politics controlled by the
media all are not new. The monotheism in ancient Egypt with the claim of lordship of
the main god Ammun Re is an example from antiquity.
C. Dispatch service.
In ancient Greece the technical structures and with that also the power structures had
been turned around. At that time a big network of broadcast stations, which continually
was extended by a policy of settlement ordered by the gods, supplied a central and
correspondingly powerful agency with information per radio.
Who wanted up to date news, could call for these in the agency with seat in Delphi, but
he had to pay for it. To accommodate the broadcasting fees in form of gold and gifts
whole treasury stores had to be built. Measured by the commercial success the ancient
news network has remained unmatched, and can't be compared with pay-TV or todays
dispatch services, like dpa. If the network however becomes too big, uncontrollable and
it lacks discipline, then it sometime will crack and the system crashes.
618
Wireless telegraphy
Fig. 30.6 A: Hera-temple of Selinunt 460-450 B.C.
(Corresp. to the plans of the Roman architect Vitruvius)
Fig. 30.6 B: Apollo-temple of Korinth
(Alternative interpretation, use of the Golden Proportion ).
: K.Schefold: Die Griechen und ihre Nachbarn, Propylaen Kunstgeschichte
Berlin Bd. 1, Abbildungen von Seite 241, 250
: Vitruvius (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio): Zehn Bucher uber Architektur, Ubers. von
Dr. K. Fensterbusch, Wissenschaftl. Buchges. Darmstadt 1987, 4. Aufl., 3.
Buch, 1. Kap.: Von den Symmetrien der Tempel, Seite 137
: Vitruvius (dito), 4.book, 4.Chap.: Vom Tempelinnern und dem Pronaon, p. 187
Scalar wave technology in antiquity ______________________________________ 619
30.6 Wireless telegraphy
Radio engineering 100 years ago also started with telegraphy. Thereby the high frequency
carrier is switched on and off. With this technique Marconi succeeded in a radio
transmission over the English Channel (1899) and over the Atlantic Ocean (1901).
As next step the amplitude modulation (AM) followed. Thereby the HF-carrier is
overlapped with the low-frequency signal of a sound carrier in such a way, that the
amplitude fluctuates on the beat of the LF-signal. As a disadvantageous effect, also noise
signals will overlap, from which the quality of reception will suffer.
Only the frequency modulation (FM), where the LF-signal is transmitted as temporal
fluctuation of the frequency, brings an improvement. The annoying amplitude noise hence
has no effect in the case of FM.
It easily can be recognized, how the development of the modulation techniques follows the
urge for technical improvement and optimization. That in antiquity hasn't been different,
for which reason the progress of development took place in the same order.
The broadcasting technology of the ancient gods started with the wireless telegraphy. This
is expressed in the architecture. Since electric resonant circuits or other frequency
determining equipment weren't at the disposal of the engineers in antiquity, the
determination and allocation of the broadcasting channels had to take place by means of
the wavelength. The formation of a standing wave in the Cella, the innermost sanctuary of
a temple, occurs if its length corresponds to half the wavelength of the HF-carrier.
The Roman architect Vitruvius calls the wavelength the ,,basic measure", from which
results "the system of the symmetries". He writes: ,,The design of the temples bases on
symmetry, to which laws the architects should adhere meticulously. "
. ,,The length of
the temple is partitioned in such a way that the width is equal to half the length, the Cella
itself including the wall, which contains the door, is one fourth longer than wide. The
remaining three fourths, which form the Pronaon, should protrude until the antae of the
wall and the antae should have the thickness of the pillars"
.
If we recalculate ourselves, then the partitioning in 3/4 to 5/4 produces a proportion,
which conies quite close to the Golden Proportion. In building a temple nothing is left to
chance, after all it concerns the construction of a tuned cavity, capable of self-resonant
oscillations with favourable emission behaviour.
From the outside one can't see if a telegraphy transmitter has been changed over to speech
transmission with AM. The HF-carrier merely isn't switched off anymore, i.e. the priests
let the temple oscillate without interruption. Newly added for AM is an electroacoustic
coupling. For that many temples were retrofitted with a mouthpiece. Newly built AM
transmitter temples conclude the Cella with a round apse. Because of this acoustically
conditioned construction the Cella length didn't have a fixed value anymore and the
transmission frequency had become variable. Measured in the middle of the apse the
wavelength was larger than at the sides, so that on the beat of the spoken word not only
the amplitude of the field distribution in the interior of the temple, but in addition also the
frequency of the selfresonant oscillation was changed.
A typical example of such an architectonic hybrid form of AM and FM is situated in
Rome. Because due to the frequency variation more than only one wave band was
occupied and the temple consistently carries the names of two deities. It is the temple of
Venus and Roma.