asd@cbnewsj.att.com (Adam S. Denton) (11/01/90)
In article <1883@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us>, (C. Elliot Friday UMN ) writes: > [talking about weird electronics with bizarre and obviously-false claims] A long time ago ('82?) in Radio-Electronics, there was a construction article to build a "gravity-wave" detector! This simple circuit, the author claimed, detected `gravity waves' which travel throughout the universe instantaneously (much faster than the the speed of light)!! The circuit was simply a 1458 dual op-amp with a large (.22uF) capacitor across the inputs, together with a few biasing resistors. By charting the output voltage vs. time, you would notice that the output voltage did, in fact, move up and down very slowly, seemingly chaotically. The author claimed that his circuit output a particular voltage peak at the same time some solar phenomena was measured from the sun. Apparantly the author had never heard of flicker noise (aka 1/f noise). His circuit operated the op amp with open loop (very high!) gain. The output voltage was produced by the input noise voltages and noise currents of the op-amp's input transistors, resulting in very high low-frequency content random output noise. The big .22uF capacitor filtered out miscellaneous noise and ambient 60Hz hum, etc. The author even claimed his circuit produced best "results" if one used a cheap (741 or 1458) op-amp and not a more-expensive (i.e. FET input) op-amp. Gee whiz, naturally a low-noise op-amp will give much less noise output voltage! R-E actually ran this article, and the author was actually paid for this!! Imagine my surprise when in a few months, R-E ran another article by the same author with his same dual-op-amp circuit being used as a (drum roll please...) RADAR DETECTOR! You tuned the circuit by modifying the lengths of the leads on the .22uF capacitor! Yes, did you know the common 741 had a gain-bandwidth product in the GHz range???? I guess after that the author stopped fiddling around with op-amps and went to work on Cold Fusion... Adam Denton asd@mtqua.att.com
koch@motcid.UUCP (Clifton Koch) (11/01/90)
From article <1990Oct31.233529.25251@cbnewsj.att.com>, by asd@cbnewsj.att.com (Adam S. Denton):
-> In article <1883@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us>, (C. Elliot Friday UMN ) writes:
->> [talking about weird electronics with bizarre and obviously-false claims]
->
-> A long time ago ('82?) in Radio-Electronics, there was a construction article
-> to build a "gravity-wave" detector! This simple circuit, the author
-> claimed, detected `gravity waves' which travel throughout the universe
-> instantaneously (much faster than the the speed of light)!!
This didn't happen to be in the April issue, did it (as in April Fools Day)?tonyo@tekred.CNA.TEK.COM (Tony Ozrelic) (11/02/90)
I saw plans for a UFO detector once, although I cannot recall where; the premise was that UFOs mung up the local magnetic fields, so you can detect one by wiring an ordinary magnetic compass to an alarm. As the UFO passes over, the needle deflects from its ordinary north-south orientation and trips the alarm. Then the Men In Black take you away as you rush out the door with your camera. Then there was the gizmo that you put a photograph in and turned some knobs to "tune in" the Etheric Vibrations and cause something to happen to the object(s) pictured in the photo... Really Bad Stuff was supposed to happen if put a negative in the box instead of a positive... Then there's G. Pat Flanagan's Neurophone/Dolphin Communicator and, of course, Pyramid Power... tony o.
minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) (11/02/90)
In article <6507@tekred.CNA.TEK.COM> tonyo@tekred.CNA.TEK.COM (Tony Ozrelic) writes: >Then there's G. Pat Flanagan's Neurophone/Dolphin Communicator and, of course, >Pyramid Power... I wondered what happened to that "neurophone". I recall some person demonstrating it to me and Warren McCulloch in the '50s, but don't remember the details. I think it was a smooth electrode that you move across the skin near your ear, and it is modulated so that you actually hear some sounds. I think the inventor was a dolphin researcher who eventually drowned in some accident. Does anyone remember his name? Anyway, I remember concluding that the effect was real but not very hi-fi, and I concluded it was probably due to electrostatic forces pulling on the facial skin; the high-frequency carrier produced this traction, and the drag would be proportional to the audio frequency modulation, which would thus produce a sonic vibration in the skin very close to the ear, perhaps transmitted through the tissues. The inventor claimed hi-fi audition, but if that had been tru, I'd certainly remember the episode more clearly. Do you remember any more about it?
baker@wbc.enet.dec.com (11/02/90)
-Message-Text-Follows- In article <3897@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) writes: >>Then there's G. Pat Flanagan's Neurophone/Dolphin Communicator and, of course, >>Pyramid Power... > > >I wondered what happened to that "neurophone". I recall some person >demonstrating it to me and Warren McCulloch in the '50s, but don't >remember the details. I think it was a smooth electrode that you move . . . >Anyway, I remember concluding that the effect was real but not very >hi-fi, and I concluded it was probably due to electrostatic forces >pulling on the facial skin; the high-frequency carrier produced this >traction, and the drag would be proportional to the audio frequency >modulation, which would thus produce a sonic vibration in the skin >very close to the ear, perhaps transmitted through the tissues. > . . >Do you remember any more about it? I saw an implementation of this thing that used a pad which one pressed against the skin of the lower back (lumbar area). The pad contained a coil that was driven at some frequency in the range of 100 KHz and then amplitude modulated by an audio signal. Apparently, people could hear the audio signal directly; the device was tauted as a potential hearing replacement for deaf people. I rather doubt that this device used tissue conduction, but who knows. What impressed me most was that Pat Flanagan was only 16 when he invented it. I remember seeing him demonstrate it on a TV show, and later I found a multi-page spread in Life Magazine (or maybe the Saturday Evening Post). Art Baker
dmt@PacBell.COM (Dave Turner) (11/03/90)
In article <1990Oct31.233529.25251@cbnewsj.att.com> asd@cbnewsj.att.com (Adam S. Denton) writes: >A long time ago ('82?) in Radio-Electronics, there was a construction article >to build a "gravity-wave" detector! This simple circuit, the author >claimed, detected `gravity waves' which travel throughout the universe >instantaneously (much faster than the the speed of light)!! It was in the April, 1986 issue (p. 53) but it didn't have the usual reference to April 1 at the end. - On the otherhand, I can hear gravity waves! Does that ringing in my ear bother you? :-) -- Dave Turner 415/823-2001 {att,bellcore,sun,ames,decwrl}!pacbell!dmt
tonyo@tekred.CNA.TEK.COM (Tony Ozrelic) (11/03/90)
In article <3897@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes: >I wondered what happened to that "neurophone". I recall some person >demonstrating it to me and Warren McCulloch in the '50s, but don't >remember the details. I think it was a smooth electrode that you move >across the skin near your ear, and it is modulated so that you >actually hear some sounds. I think the inventor was a dolphin >researcher who eventually drowned in some accident. Does anyone >remember his name? >... >The inventor claimed hi-fi audition, but if that had been tru, I'd >certainly remember the episode more clearly. > >Do you remember any more about it? It seems to me that Flanagan claimed to invent it in the early 1960s, when he was a "boy genius". I may have a book that outlines some of the details; if I recall correctly, he claimed to discover the "Neurophone Effect" while fooling around with a step-up transformer connected to the output of a radio. The output of the transformer was somewhat high and the electrostatic effect of placing the electrodes near your ear made tinny sounds. He later "improved" the sound quality by modulating a (100kHz? 300kHz?) carrier with the audio (this might give you a "skin effect" in more ways than one :-). It always seemed to me that if the effect could give you quality audio, you would see Koss or Stax offering Neurophonic headsets. tony o.
random@cbnewse.att.com (David L. Pope) (11/07/90)
> -> A long time ago ('82?) in Radio-Electronics, there was a construction article > -> to build a "gravity-wave" detector! This simple circuit, the author > -> claimed, detected `gravity waves' which travel throughout the universe > -> instantaneously (much faster than the the speed of light)!! I happen to have saved a photocopy of said circuit. The article didn't out-and-out claim that it WAS a detector, just speculated that certain changing noise patterns in certain circuits may be coincidental with gravity waves, and showed some waveforms labeled as "moonquake" and "Jupiter wave". Random
gene@cooper.cooper.EDU (Gene (the Spook) ) (11/09/90)
in article <1990Nov6.214322.8051@cbnewse.att.com>, random@cbnewse.att.com (David L. Pope) says: > >> -> A long time ago ('82?) in Radio-Electronics, there was a construction article >> -> to build a "gravity-wave" detector! This simple circuit, the author >> -> claimed, detected `gravity waves' which travel throughout the universe >> -> instantaneously (much faster than the the speed of light)!! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sounds like subspace radio to me! ;^) Whoops! This ain't rec.arts.startrek! Oh my God! I'm lost! Spookfully yours, Gene
pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu (Eric Pepke) (11/10/90)
None of the following are really bogus, but they're all a bit weird. When I was a kid, I made a thunderstorm detector from an article in PopTronics. It contained an AM radio tuned to a dead area near the low end of the band. The idea was that a thunderstorm would produce static. The audio output of the AM radio charged a capacitor which, when it got to a certain point, would sound a buzzer. Another thing I used to do was very simple--take a telephone pickup coil (the old rectangular kind that sat under the phone) and hook it to a portable audio amplifier with the output going to an earphone. Walk through the house "listening" to televisions, lightbulbs, etc. This should be especially entertaining considering the current paranoia about VLF radiation. Another thing which makes a great kids' toy is to hook up some diodes pretty much at random in a series/parallel arrangement with some switches and potentiometers. Run a 60 Hz signal into one and and run the output to an oscilloscope. The threshold behavior of the diodes should make little crinkly bits on the sine wave and should make them look like mountains and valleys. Turning the knobs and flipping the switches should change the character of the shapes in entertaining ways. Eric Pepke INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET: pepke@fsu Florida State University SPAN: scri::pepke Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052 BITNET: pepke@fsu Disclaimer: My employers seldom even LISTEN to my opinions. Meta-disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
cscon143@uoft02.utoledo.edu (11/20/90)
In article <3052@cooper.cooper.EDU>, gene@cooper.cooper.EDU (Gene (the Spook) ) writes: > in article <1990Nov6.214322.8051@cbnewse.att.com>, random@cbnewse.att.com (David L. Pope) says: >> >>> -> A long time ago ('82?) in Radio-Electronics, there was a construction article >>> -> to build a "gravity-wave" detector! This simple circuit, the author >>> -> claimed, detected `gravity waves' which travel throughout the universe >>> -> instantaneously (much faster than the the speed of light)!! > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ If you're interested, the circuit can be found in Radio-Electronics Experimenter's Handbook 1989. > Sounds like subspace radio to me! ;^) > > Whoops! This ain't rec.arts.startrek! Oh my God! I'm lost! > > Spookfully yours, > Gene -- ******************************************************************************* ** cscon143@uoft02.utoledo.edu ** ** cscon143@uoft02.BITNET -Erik ** ** ** *******************************************************************************