Thursday, May 18, 2006

WBS Technical School

Course: RF451 Department of Electromagnetic Waves
Title: RF and Global Communication
Professor: Nikola Tesla
World Broadcast System Technical School
Office Hours: By appointment only!

Textbooks:
*Nikola Tesla on His Work w/Alternating Currents/Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony & Transmission of Power
http://www.tfcbooks.com/mall/more/314ntac.htm#more-ntac
*Autobiography available at: http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jul/teslaautobio.html

*Electronicmagnetic Handbook
http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/tel/morse/morse.htm


Course Objective: GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS
Radio Waves – The Sound Heard Across the World
The goal of this course is to introduce students with an overview of technology, advances in radio wave technology, programming options, intellectual property (disputes), sound philosophers, micro and macro broadcasting (World Broadcast System), sound, image, and text transmission, information and noise theorists (such as The Arts of Noises and the Futurist Manifesto).

Key Concepts:
Power and Information Ages (convergence)
Electromagnetism, Radio Waves, Frequency
Global Communication (Micro vs. Macro Broadcast)
Machine – Sound Assimilation
Nature – Sound Preservation
Public vs. Private Spaces
Deep Listening
Globalization – Sound, Multiplicity of Languages, Galactic Network of Programming
Modernity, Transcendentalism – Thoreau, Fuller

Practicum Experiences available at World Broadcast System
http://www.luminet.net/~wenonah/new/tesla.htm

Field Trips:
Tower of Dreams, Niagara Falls
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_todre.html
Wardenclyffe Tower
http://www.teslascience.org/archive/archive.htm
Museum
http://www.tesla-museum.org/

TOPICAL OUTLINE
subject to revision as new technologies emerge….

Part I: Understanding the Technology
-Historical Overview of Technology
-Electric Magnetism and Radio Waves
-Legal Considerations

Week One
My Humble Beginnings
http://chem.ch.huji.ac.il/~eugeniik/history/tesla.htm (good reading)
My Apprenticeship with Thomas Edison
http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/96jul/teslaautobio.html
His Lab/Early Sounds: http://www.nps.gov/edis/home.htm
My Fan Site: http://www.teslasociety.com/biography.htm
Early Philosophers of Technology
http://www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/rojc/mdic/early.html

Week Two
Significance of 1893 - Social/Technological Context
I demonstrated wireless radio in Philadelphia and St. Louis - by the end of the year I have established the principles necessary to transmit signals through space using highly sensitive electromagnetic receivers. (continued, Week 5)
Other Events -
Feb. 1: Thomas Edison finishes construction of the first motion studio, West Orange, NJ.
April 8: First recorded college basketball game occurs in Beaver Falls, PA,
May 1: World's Fair, a.k.a. World's Columbian Exposition, opens to the public in Chicago,
May 5: Panic of 1893, Crash on New York Stock Exchange starts a depression.
May 9: First public demonstration of Edison's 1½ inch system of Kinetoscope.
May 10: The U.S. Supreme Court legally declares the tomato to be a veggie.
May 24: The Niagara Falls Park and River Railway opens.
Nov. 7: Colorado (US) and New Zealand women are granted right to vote.
http://www.aspenhistory.org/womsuf.html

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_radio
Or, you can believe Marconi’s side of the story: http://history.acusd.edu/gen/recording/radio.html

Week Three
Electronic Fundamentals

Guest Speaker: Heinrich Hertz (1847 - 1894)
http://www.sparkmuseum.com/HERTZ.HTM
Electromagnetic Waves
James Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz
Velocity – Radio Waves = Light
1 H = 1 F = 1 cycle per second
http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/consider.html
Regeneration Theory
http://www.teslascience.org/
Radio Fundamentals
http://www.netwalk.com/~fsv/homepage2.htm
How Things Work – Radio
http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/radio.html
How Stuff Works - Radio
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/radio.htm
Radio Waves
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/spaceweather/wave_modulation.html
NASA (coming soon, see web site)
http://imagers.gsfc.nasa.gov/ems/radio.html

Week Four
Charles Babbage, Ada Bryon, and The Machine that Changed the World:
Calculation Analysis, Music and Graphic Composition
Guest Speaker: Annabelle, daughter of Ada Bryron (1815-1852)
http://www.sdsc.edu/ScienceWomen/lovelace.htmlhttp://www.well.com/user/adatoole/bio.htm First Computer Programmer
http://women.cs.cmu.edu/ada/Resources/Ada/
Additional Women in Computing
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/past-women-cs.html#Edith%20Clarke
Note: Chicago’s Columbian Expo in 1893 included a Woman’s Building.

Week Five
The Wireless Telegraph - Arrival of E-Mail

Guest Speaker: NONE!
Marconi Who? His mother had to help him!http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/PamMack/lec122/radio.htm
The Arrival of Electronic telegraph (E-mail)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraph
Poldu Station (Marconi. Dec. 12, 1901)
http://www.hamradio.piatt.com/poldhu.htm

Recommended Reading: My Sisters Telegraphic
Women in the Telegraph Office, 1846-1950,
Thomas C. Jepsen http://www.ohiou.edu/oupress/sisterstelegraphic.htm

Week Six
Morse Code into Language and Music

Morse Code Encoder
http://www.cybercollege.com/frtv/code.htm
Morse into Music (see Side Links)

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/morsecode.htm

The Meaning Behind the Code
http://home.earthlink.net/~judlind/indexb.html

Morse Code and The Galatic Network
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1680529

Shakespeare in Morse Code
http://www.retards.org/radio/shakespeares_sonnets_cw/

Practice Resources: Coding and Decoding
Literature and Music of the Era

http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/1890m.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1890_in_music

http://www.radio.cz/en/html/hudba_20stoleti.html


Week Seven
Amateurs
and Dreamers
Guest Speaker: Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967), pioneer in amateur radio,
publisher of Modern Electrics, Radio Amateur News,
Science and Invention & Radio for ALL (1922) (See add'l links)
http://web.mit.edu/m-i-t/science_fiction/jenkins/jenkins_3.html
http://www.twd.net/ird/forecast/life.html

Week Eight
Legal Considerations

http://www.mercurians.org/nov98/misreading.html
Battle over the Airwaves
http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs703a,0,6830016.story?coll=ny-lihistory-navigation
The Power that Made Radio Realistic
http://www.fcc.gov/omd/history/radio/power.html


Part II - Organised Sound
-Noise vs. Music as Organized Sound
-Subjectivity, Perception, and Sound
-Voiced Expression, Extension of Humanity

Week Nine
Convergence of Sound, Nature, & Machine
Fuller and Thoreau

“Sounds” in Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854
http://www.walden.org/Institute/thoreau/writings/walden/Walden.htm
Thoreau Readings
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/
Chapter 1: “Niagara, June 10, 1843” in Summer on the Lakes, 1843,”
by Sarah “Margaret” Fuller
http://courses.washington.edu/hum523/fuller/NoFrames.html

Week Ten to Twelve
Noise Machines

Guest Speaker: Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924)
Prophet of Electronic Music
http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/busoni.html
Guest Speaker: Edgard Varesse (1883-1965)
http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/varese.html
Listen: (Americana & Deserts)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles/varese.shtml
Listen: (Nocturnal)
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=71
Guest Speaker: Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)
Author of Art of Noises
http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/noises.html
http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/machines/futurist/art_of_noise.html
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/intonarumori/audio/3/
http://www.l-m-c.org.uk/texts/russolo.html
http://www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk/futcat.html
Italian Futurists: http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/russolo.html
Photo Album http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/ruspic.html

Future Guest Speakers as they become available:
Guest Speaker: Henry Cowell (1897-1965)
Listen: (Tides & Exultation)
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/datesearch.pl?start=1911&end=1920
Listen: (Harp of Life)
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/datesearch.pl?start=1921&end=1930
Listen: (Ballad)
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/datesearch.pl?start=1951&end=1960

Guest Speaker: John Cage (1912-1992)
BBC Profile http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles/cage.shtml
Listen: (In the Name of the Holocaust, Nocturne, Primitive)
http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=1
Listen: 4'33" (performed by the staff of the Guardian newspaper)
Listen: (Suite for Toy Piano)
http://www.archive.org/details/OM5LengTanCageSuiteforToy
Interview: http://www.archive.org/stream/CottInterviews
Concert: Cage and Tudor
http://www.archive.org/details/CageTudorConcert

Guest Speakers: Schafer and Westerkamp (don't hold your breathe)
R. Murray Schafer (1933-)
http://www.patria.org
Hildegard Westerkamp (1946-)
http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/
Hi-fi vs. Low-fi environments
Sound Quality vs. Quantity
Silence is golden
Importing/exporting natural and manufactured sounds
Expanding boundaries of music
Modern noise as organized sound
Sound customs and cultures, gendered sounds (See Steven Feld)
http://www.unm.edu/~anthro/faculty/profiles/feld.htm
Intersections of nature and post-modernity - remixing realities
Listen: (Bernie Krause's Gorillas in the Mix)
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/music/B0000009NB/samples/701-1943622-5453133
Future Reading: Birds Mimic Ring Tones
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7242_1434263,00180021.htm

Week Thirteen-Fouteen
Tapping into Your Imagination – Did you Know?
Guest Speaker: Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)
- speaks on the harnessing radio waves, mental radio of the future,
his speculative work on Mental Radio (1930)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair
Race of Robotics (Tesla)
http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_robots.html
Future of Internet
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail717.html
Sci Fi Laws
http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/physics/211/funstuff/scifiphys.html
Cell Phones
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa022801a.htm
HyperSound
http://www.reallycooltoys.com/news/news10.html
http://www.everythingisnt.com/archives/00000943.htm
Planetary Telepathy
http://www.ozi.com/ourplanet/www.html

Tesla's Flick Picks - Soon to Be Released
Metropolis (1927)
http://www.kino.com/metropolis/
Kubrick’s 2001 (1968)
http://www.kubrick2001.com/
Radio Waves and ET (1982)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3618400.stm
http://www.et20.com/
Contact (1997)
http://www.turning-pages.com/contact/ (The Signal)
http://www.concatenation.org/artindex.html
A.I. Artifical Intelligence (2001)
http://www.a-i.com/show_tree.asp?id=12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
http://aimovie.warnerbros.com/

Week 15
Critical Perspectives - 20th Century Recap

"Imagine that a traveler from one-hundred years ago
arrives at our doorstep and asks us why the music of
the late twentieth century operates on the basic of
cyclic repetition"

(McClaren in Cox & Warner, Audio Culture, 2005, p.289)

Susan McClary, professor of musicology
Special Topic: Gender, Culture and Music http://www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/html_2001_2002/fac0502_mcclalry.html
http://www.sibetrans.com/trans/trans3/mcclary.htm

George E. Lewis, professor of music
http://aacmchicago.org/members/george_lewis_bio.html
Special Topic: An Afrological Perspective:
Charlie "Bird" Parker vs. John Cage

Week 16
Final Exhibition of Electromagnetic Project


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Additional Reading Materials
Italian Futurism
http://colophon.com/gallery/futurism/biblio.html
Modern Electrics (1908)
http://members.cox.net/dalehcook/radios/pages/mags2.shtml
Radio Craft (1929)http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/ny-tv-ads-pic,0,5161392.photo?coll=ny-television-headlines
http://members.cox.net/dalehcook/radios/pages/mags2.shtml
Women Inventors
http://www.hrw.com/science/si-science/chemistry/careers/innovative_lives/womeninventors.html

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My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.” More Tesla quotes, Source: http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/nikola_tesla

Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 - January 7, 1943)
Unmarried, Dedicated to Work, Prone to Depression and Impulsive Behavior, Wild Imagination often confused for madness, friend Samuel Clemens (1835-1910)
Personal Hobbies:
death ray, http://www.cheniere.org/books/part1/teslaweapons.htm
purple energy shield (healing), http://www.lifetechnology.org/teslashield.htm
favorite music: organised sounds (particularly Oxide Lullabies by Josh Gumiela)