childhood inventions

I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else had mad inventions when they were a kid...

Bill

In message ,
writes
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge
of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it
was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the
hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a
view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to
fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I
would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a
filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything
else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each
receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up
enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I
remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that
means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else
had mad inventions when they were a kid...

ISTR that when I was also a lad (or, at least, a teenager) there were
several projects (probably Practical Wireless and similar) using an
OCP44 (or an OC44 with the paint scraped off) as the light-sensitive
diode detector, and a torch bulb as the transmitter. Obviously, the
frequency response was rather limited, but maybe they compensated by
applying lots of pre-emphasis to the audio.
--
Ian

wrote:
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I did something similar when I was a couple of years older with a neon
panel lamp mounted in a bicycle lamp as transmitter, and a photocell in
a toilet roll with a magnifying glass at one end as receiver. I had no
ambitions to broadcast to the estate, but was happy with a modulated
light beam that transmitted music across my bedroom...

Not exactly hi-fi, but it worked.

On 11/01/2013 13:17, wrote:
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else had mad inventions when they were a kid...

Bill




i invented flash before adobe - in my head.
it simply occured to me one day that websites could be far more animated
and exciting than they were (this was in dialup days) if they generated
their own graphics with polygons,with maths, instead of having to
download them at a great cost of time.
and then adobe programmed it and people hated them for it ever since.

--
Gareth.
That fly.... Is your magic wand.

"the dog from that film you saw" wrote in
message ...

i invented flash before adobe - in my head.
it simply occured to me one day that websites could be far more animated
and exciting than they were (this was in dialup days) if they generated
their own graphics with polygons,with maths, instead of having to download
them at a great cost of time.
and then adobe programmed it and people hated them for it ever since.

I hate the way Adobe Flash keep trying to con you into installing Google
Chrome with their unnecessary upgrades. Once installed Chrome is impossible
to get rid of without screwing other things up.

--
Max Demian

In message ,
writes
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge
of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it
was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the
hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a
view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to
fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I
would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a
filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything
else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each
receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up
enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I
remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that
means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else
had mad inventions when they were a kid...

I remember doing something similar in the physics lab at school when I
was about the same age. The school had just acquired a He:Ne laser and
we pointed it to a mirror glued onto a voice-coil. The reflected laser
beam travelled down the corridor to a photodiode behind some ground
glass. When audio was fed to the voice-coil the mirror moved,
deflecting the laser beam a little, modulating the signal on the
photodiode, the output of which was fed to an amplifier and speaker.

More than a decade later, at work, I designed and built an underwater
video transmission system for communication between submarines using
essentially the same technique, but with an acousto-optic modulator
instead of a voice-coil.
--
Kennedy

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:09:01 -0000, "Max Demian"
wrote:

"the dog from that film you saw" wrote in
message ...

i invented flash before adobe - in my head.
it simply occured to me one day that websites could be far more animated
and exciting than they were (this was in dialup days) if they generated
their own graphics with polygons,with maths, instead of having to download
them at a great cost of time.
and then adobe programmed it and people hated them for it ever since.

I hate the way Adobe Flash keep trying to con you into installing Google
Chrome with their unnecessary upgrades. Once installed Chrome is impossible
to get rid of without screwing other things up.

Chrome does not need to have the automatic upgrades option set and the
uninstaller at
http://support.google.com/chrome/bin...n&answer=95319
works perfectly.

Steve

--
EasyNN-plus. Neural Networks plus. http://www.easynn.com
SwingNN. Forecast with Neural Networks. http://www.swingnn.com
JustNN. Just Neural Networks. http://www.justnn.com

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 13:53:32 +0000, Ian Jackson
wrote:

In message ,
writes
I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge
of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it
was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the
hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a
view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to
fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I
would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a
filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything
else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each
receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up
enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I
remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that
means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else
had mad inventions when they were a kid...

ISTR that when I was also a lad (or, at least, a teenager) there were
several projects (probably Practical Wireless and similar) using an
OCP44 (or an OC44 with the paint scraped off) as the light-sensitive
diode detector, and a torch bulb as the transmitter. Obviously, the
frequency response was rather limited, but maybe they compensated by
applying lots of pre-emphasis to the audio.

OC44 was an rf transister, unlikley ro me a photo version (BICBW)
Are you sure you don't mean OCP71?
I used to mainly use the ORP12 LDR for my optical experiments.


--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%

In message , Graham.
writes



OC44 was an rf transister, unlikley ro me a photo version (BICBW)
Are you sure you don't mean OCP71?

Well spotted. Of course I mean the OC(P)71. I'm just making sure that
those at the back are awake.

I used to mainly use the ORP12 LDR for my optical experiments.



--
Ian

On Fri, 11 Jan 2013 05:17:15 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

I was brought up in a house that was a few hundred yards from the edge of a vast estate of council and NCB houses. If anyone's interested it was on Middlegate, Scawthorpe, Doncaster. We often used to walk up the hill to the field at the side of the quarry, from where there was a view across the estate and also across parts of Bentley. I used to fantasise about broadcasting to the estate from there, by light. I would set up a powerful lamp that would be modulated by audio. I knew a filament wouldn't respond quickly enough, but I didn't know anything else that would, so I just hoped that sopmething would turn up. Each receiver would have a large parabolic mirror mounted somewhere high up enough to see my lantern, with a photocell at the focal point. I remember talking to my science-inclined form master about this, so that means I must have been first year secondary. Twelve or thirteen I suppose.

I don't know why this came to mind, but I just wondered if anyone else had mad inventions when they were a kid...

Bill


Bill, look at the 6th image down this page.

http://www.bluehaze.com.au/modlight/...4Amateur79.htm

I remember reading about this at the time, and was never sure how
serious it was, I think it was more a concept than an actual practical
station.

At about that time I was conducting my own experiments with modulated
light with my friend Gerald Mitchell, who incidentally had a small
radio & TV repair business opposite my house.

We used a half duplex arrangement with an ORP12 mounted behind a 6V
torch bulb with a large condenser lens out of an old enlarger.

Results were good enough for speech, it was pretty immune to rain, but
snow was a challenge and fog would curtail operation for the duration.

Fluorescent and mercury vapour ware the way forward, but we never
graduated to that.



--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%