ComradeHuxley
Donor
This is a scenario from the google alternate history group, that I found very fascinating. Unfortunately aside from a little bit of an ACW discussion it died immediately and was never probably discussed elsewhere. What would be the effects if the following events played out:
“In 1842. Joseph Henry made major breakthroughs in the theory of electromagnets and magnetic induction. It turns out that some of his experimental apparatus was a tuned circuit
and he did make the sparks jump. He duly noted the effect (being a good scientist) in his journal but he did not have a theory with which to make sense out of it. That task was left to James Clerk Maxwell. “
Robert J. Kolker
“You need to know what a tuned circuit is. If Joseph Henry, who was as brilliant as Faraday could not exploit his accidental spark generator as a communication device in 1842, then who? Unless you have some notion that a wave is propagating through space there is no way to come up with a communicator. And in order to concluded there is a propagating electro-magnet wave front moving eternally through space you have to know what a displacement current is. It is not just a matter of generating sparks. You have to have some idea of how to build an antenna so you can send a signal a significant distance.”
Robert J. Kolker
“We might put a slightly earlier date on things here, and a firmer theoretical limit. Maxwell used Hamilton's theories of Quaternions to analyze the equations describing electrical activity, and produced his first voluminous work. Vector equation forms subsequently pared down the number and complications of these equations. However, the mathematical breakthrough to Quaternions wasn't made by Hamilton until 1843. The short bio blurb on him I have available says that he still was poor and his marriage to an invalid unhappy, and from 1845 to 1860, he drank himself to death. WI, in 1844, Hamilton had been invited to tour the US on a sabbatical, and he had met Henry, and been told of his results? Hamilton had already done significant work that helped better define the properties of light. He and Henry might have developed a working partnership,with Henry's experiments verifying Hamilton's work. Perhaps this would have meant a working theory by 1855 or so, and a transmitter in place at the Smithsonian.”
Tom Billings
“In 1842. Joseph Henry made major breakthroughs in the theory of electromagnets and magnetic induction. It turns out that some of his experimental apparatus was a tuned circuit
and he did make the sparks jump. He duly noted the effect (being a good scientist) in his journal but he did not have a theory with which to make sense out of it. That task was left to James Clerk Maxwell. “
Robert J. Kolker
“You need to know what a tuned circuit is. If Joseph Henry, who was as brilliant as Faraday could not exploit his accidental spark generator as a communication device in 1842, then who? Unless you have some notion that a wave is propagating through space there is no way to come up with a communicator. And in order to concluded there is a propagating electro-magnet wave front moving eternally through space you have to know what a displacement current is. It is not just a matter of generating sparks. You have to have some idea of how to build an antenna so you can send a signal a significant distance.”
Robert J. Kolker
“We might put a slightly earlier date on things here, and a firmer theoretical limit. Maxwell used Hamilton's theories of Quaternions to analyze the equations describing electrical activity, and produced his first voluminous work. Vector equation forms subsequently pared down the number and complications of these equations. However, the mathematical breakthrough to Quaternions wasn't made by Hamilton until 1843. The short bio blurb on him I have available says that he still was poor and his marriage to an invalid unhappy, and from 1845 to 1860, he drank himself to death. WI, in 1844, Hamilton had been invited to tour the US on a sabbatical, and he had met Henry, and been told of his results? Hamilton had already done significant work that helped better define the properties of light. He and Henry might have developed a working partnership,with Henry's experiments verifying Hamilton's work. Perhaps this would have meant a working theory by 1855 or so, and a transmitter in place at the Smithsonian.”
Tom Billings