Five things you didn’t know about… your radio.
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1. Radio is half-Irish
Like many great inventions, from the bicycle to the computer, there was overlapping work by many scientists, so it’s hard to say that radio was invented by one individual. One of the leading early pioneers was the inventor Guglielmo Marconi from Italy, who was half-Irish.
His mother was Annie Jameson, granddaughter of the founder of the Jameson Whiskey distillery. His wife was also Irish.
He conducted many of his groundbreaking experiments in Ireland and in 1907 he established the first commercial transatlantic radio communications service, between Clifden in Co Galway and Glace Bay in Newfoundland.
2. The first public broadcast in the world was from Dublin
It took place near the GPO during the Easter Rising. Wireless had already been used on ships as ship-to-shore “telegraph”. This is what is called a point-to-point message.
But the Irish rebels set up a radio broadcasting set to send a diffused broadcast to nearby ships, in the hope of getting word to some ship that would relay their story to the American press.
It broadcast reports on the fighting from Tuesday afternoon to mid-day on Wednesday of Easter Week 1916.
3. Mobile phones don’t talk directly to each other
Mobile phones don’t talk directly to each other — they talk to “cells” or blocks of local radio coverage. (Hence they are also called “cell phones”).
Your mobile phone transmits to a local cell site (transmitter/receiver) that connects back to the mobile company’s exchange, or “switch” using technologies like fibre optic and microwave links. The mobile switch then connects your call to another user on the same network or (through another operator’s switch) to another mobile or fixed phone.
When your mobile phone nears the edge of the cell site’s radio coverage area, the base station does a “handover” and connects you to the next cell. Usually without missing a word.
4. Radio waves can boil water – but not in the way you might thing
Microwave ovens use intense radio waves to heat food. But it is a common misconception that the radio waves are tuned to the resonant frequency of water molecules.
In fact the microwave frequencies used are actually about a factor of 10 below the resonant frequency.
5. A woman who failed a key exam discovered a new kind of star – using radio
Pulsars are a new type of star that were discovered 40 years ago by Northern Ireland scientist, Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She used radio telescopes to make the discovery while a postgraduate student.
Even though Jocelyn failed her 11-plus exam, she went on to become a leading radio astronomer.