A Mechanical Radio, Kind Of

[The Mike Stuff] has an attention-grabbing proposition. He asserts that historical folks just like the Greeks may have constructed a type of radio that was purely mechanical. We aren’t certain we agree, however even when it have been potential, we’re certain it will have sounded terrible. You can see the small print within the video beneath.

The thought is that you may compress air with a waterwheel, blow it via a rotating disk with slots in it, and a valve to amplitude modulate the airflow via the disk. Horns like an previous gramophone speaker would amplify the sign at each ends. The demodulation is easy and doesn’t even require energy, like compressed air.

This is a enjoyable thought, however even [Mike] notes it wouldn’t be excellent. We suspect you’d simply hear a ten kHz buzz. On the opposite hand, this may be fairly straightforward to construct for those who wished to check it. Use an electrical motor to spin the disk — in any case, we’ll stipulate that you possibly can flip a disk with water energy, even when pace management is a little bit difficult.

If you construct it, we’d love to listen to about it. Just don’t use it to ship us an air-radio message. Try e-mail as an alternative. What do you suppose? Would this work? We get that if it did, it wouldn’t work effectively, however would it not work in any respect? Let us know what you suppose.

If you concentrate on it, constructing common receivers which can be of low performance is easy enough. With a little bit work, easy receivers can really work quite well.