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Old Marconi Patent Inspires Tiny New Gigahertz Antenna

Posted by samzenpus on from the getting-small dept.

agent elevator writes Gehan Amaratunga and a group of engineers in England noted that the Guglielmo Marconi's famous British patent application from 1900 had an interesting and little noticed detail. It depicted a transmitter linked to an antenna connected to a coil, which had one end dangling while the RF signal was fed to the middle of the coil. That detail inspired them to develop a way to reduce the size of a GHz antenna without significant transmission loss by using dielectrics as the radio wave emitting material instead of conductors.

3 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. My B.S. Detector is Going Off by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Informative

    Marconi's connection to the center tap of a coil with one end not connected worked by broken symmetry? Really? It wasn't just a method of tuning a coil to the correct reactance for a particular frequency?

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  2. Obviously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This means that Guglielmo Marconi's hard work was stolen without compensation and he has no incentive to invent anymore. Extends patents to 115 years!

  3. have to admit... by hitmark · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I read the title as "old macaroni patent" on first glance.

    --
    comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm