Coherer

The coherer was a primitive form of radio signal detector used in the first radio receivers during the wireless telegraphy era at the beginning of the 20th century. Its use in radio was based on the 1890 findings of French physicist Édouard Branly and adapted by other physicists and inventors over the next ten years. The device consists of a tube or capsule containing two electrodes spaced a small distance apart with loose metal filings in the space between. When a radio frequency signal is applied to the device, the metal particles would cling together or "cohere", reducing the initial high resistance of the device, thereby allowing a much greater direct current to flow through it. In a receiver, the current would activate a bell, or a Morse paper tape recorder to make a record of the received signal. The metal filings in the coherer remained conductive after the signal (pulse) ended so that the coherer had to be "decohered" by tapping it with a clapper actuated by an electromagnet, each time a signal was received, thereby restoring the coherer to its original state. Coherers remained in widespread use until about 1907, when they were replaced by more sensitive electrolytic and crystal detectors. The behavior of particles or metal filings in the presence of electricity or electric sparks was noticed in many experiments well before Édouard Branly's 1890 paper and even before there was proof of the theory of electromagnetism. In 1835 Swedish scientist Peter Samuel Munk noticed a change of resistance in a mixture of metal filings in the presence of spark discharge from a Leyden jar. In 1850 Pierre Guitard found that when dusty air was electrified, the particles would tend to collect in the form of strings. The idea that particles could react to electricity was used in English engineer Samuel Alfred Varley's 1866 lightning bridge, a lightning arrester attached to telegraph lines consisting of a piece of wood with two metal spikes extending into a chamber.