“A Brief Introduction to Radio Frequency Transmission Lines & the Smith Chart (Or, Did Queen Victoria Spur On Long-Distance Communications?)” with Bob Fontana, Ph.D.
All are welcome to tune in on Zoom for the October edition of the Rockville Science Cafe. This month’s talk (rescheduled from a previous date) will dive into the fascinating history of long-distance communications over trans-Atlantic cables. In the mid 1800s, signals sent across the cable were severely distorted and nearly unrecognizable at the end of their nearly 4000 mile voyage. But, Queen Victoria wanted to congratulate newly-elected President James Buchanan without taking the typical 14 days for a letter to reach him via steamship, and she believed that somehow the newly laid transatlantic cable must be able to get that message across. Her message to Buchanan consisted of 98 congratulatory words and took 16.5 hours to successfully transmit! Bob Fontana is a retired electrical engineer with a BSEE degree from Illinois Institute of Technology, a SMEE degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Bob holds Amateur Radio Extra Class license. His FCC call sign is AK3Y.
