In 1905, Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden came up with the idea of using two Alexanderson alternators operating at closely spaced frequencies to broadcast two signals, instead of one. Due to the filtering effects of the receiver, these signals generally produced a click or thump, which were audible but made determining dot or dash difficult. When detected on existing receivers, the dots and dashes would normally be inaudible, or "supersonic". In contrast to the spark gap, however, the output from the alternator was a pure carrier wave at a selected frequency. In 1904, Ernst Alexanderson introduced the Alexanderson alternator, a device that directly produced radio frequency output with higher power and much higher efficiency than the older spark gap systems. Simple radio detectors filtered out the high-frequency carrier, leaving the modulation, which was passed on to the user's headphones as an audible signal of dots and dashes. Since the output frequency of the alternator was generally in the audible range, this produces an audible amplitude modulated (AM) signal. The output signal was at a carrier frequency defined by the physical construction of the gap, modulated by the alternating current signal from the alternator. Virtually all modern radio receivers use the superheterodyne principle.Įarly Morse code radio broadcasts were produced using an alternator connected to a spark gap. It was long believed to have been invented by US engineer Edwin Armstrong, but after some controversy the earliest patent for the invention is now credited to French radio engineer and radio manufacturer Lucien Lévy. A 5-tube superheterodyne receiver made in Japan circa 1955 Superheterodyne transistor radio circuit circa 1975Ī superheterodyne receiver, often shortened to superhet, is a type of radio receiver that uses frequency mixing to convert a received signal to a fixed intermediate frequency (IF) which can be more conveniently processed than the original carrier frequency.
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