An apparatus for recording the strength of wireless signals from a Morse sender

Extract

In many radio investigations of the ionosphere it is desirable to use senders working on different wave-lengths and situated in different positions with respect to the receiver. For this purpose it is very convenient to make use of commercial senders which work more or less continuously at high power. It so happens, however, that these senders usually emit Morse signals consisting of dots and dashes of variable lengths and with variable intervals between them, so that an instrument which records the mean signal will give an indication which depends on the speed of sending and on the spacing and length of the signs. In order to obtain a reading which depends only on the signal amplitude, it is possible to employ a quick moving recorder such as a string galvanometer or a cathode ray oscillograph, which will follow the individual Morse signs. With both these types of recorder the record must be made photographically so that changes in the signal strength are not noticed until the record is developed. This is a serious disadvantage in investigations of short-lived disturbances of the “catastrophic” type.