The Future of AM radio

[A Joseph Ross]

A propos the recent thread on this subject, I recalled and looked up an 
interesting prophesy in Robert Heinlein's novelette, "Logic of Empire," 
first published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1941.  It was later 
reprinted in the collection "The Green Hills of Earth."

The story takes place on Venus, circa 2010, which is depicted as a 
tropical swamp, as was common before NASA probes showed otherwise.  
Wingate, a wealthy lawyer who doubts that there is slavery on Venus, is 
shanghaied to Venus as an indentured servant and endures the squalor of 
servitude to the company that runs Venus.  Eventually he escapes and 
finds a community of escaped slaves somewhere in the swamp.  There are a 
number of such communities, but they have only primitive means of 
communicating with one another.  They have radio, but they are afraid to 
use it for anything but a major emergency, for fear that the company 
will find them through their transmissions.

Having been a radio hobbyist in his youth, he was assigned to the 
community radio:

"He was intrigued by the problem of safety in radio communication.  An 
idea, derived from some account of the pioneer days in radio, gave him a 
lead.  His installation, like all others, communicated by frequency 
modulation.  Somewhere he had seen a diagram for a totally obsolete type 
of transmitter, an amplitude modulator.  He did not have much to go on, 
but he worked out a circuit which he believed would oscillate in that 
fashion and which could be hooked up from the gear at hand." ...

"His first hookup failed; his forty-third attempt five weeks later 
worked.  Doc, statkoned some miles out in the bush, reported himself 
able to hear the broadcast via a small receiver constructed for the 
purpose, whereas Wingate picked up nothing whatsoever on the 
conventional receiver located in the same room with the experimental 
transmitter."

Hmm.  "Totally obsolete."  Well, not quite yet.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.|92 State Street|Suite 700|Boston, MA 02109-2004
617.367.0468|Fx:617.507.7856|http://www.attorneyross.com