Papers by a Great Pioneer in Radio Communications

9  papers (1887-1895) by Edouard Branly, an important (and not very well known) pioneer of radio communication. All are removed from a larger bound volume.  $600

(1) "Sur l'emploi du gaz d'eclairage comme source constants dans les experiments de rayonnement", in Comptes Rendus, pp 847=850, in the weekly issue for 21 March 1887, extracted from larger bound volume.

(2) "Nouveau mode d'emploi du thermomomultiplicateur", in Comptes Rendus, pp 1059-1061, in the weekly issue for 12 April 1887, extracted from larger bound volume. 

(3) "Deperdition des deux electricites dans l'eclairement par des radiations tres refrangibles", in Comptes Rendus, volume 110, 1890, pp 751-754, in the weekly issue for 8 April 1890.  With the original printed wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume.

(4)  "Courants photoelectriques entre les deux plateaux d'un condensateur", in Comptes Rendus, volume 110, 1890, pp 898-901, in the weekly issue for 28 April 1890.  With the original printed wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume.

(5) "Deperiditions de deux electriques par les rayons tres refrangibles."  In Comptes Rendus, 11 January 1892, pp 68-70.  With the original printed wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume.

(6) Nouvelle conductibilite unipolar des gaz.  In: Comptes Rendus, pp 831-4, 4 April 1892.  With the original printed wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume.

(7) La conductibilite d;un gazcompris entre un mtal froid et un corps incandescent:.  In Comptes Rendus, pp 1531-1534, 27 June 1892. With the original printed wrappers, removed from a larger bound volume.

(8) "Sur la conductibilite des sustances conductrices discontinues", in Comptes Rendus, pp  348-349, volume 118, 1894.  Removed from larger bound volume.

(9) "Resistance electrique au contact de deux meteux", in Comptes Rendus, pp 869-872, volume 120, 1895. Weekly issue extracted from larger bound volume.

Branly's major contribution is in the field of communications, where he invented a device which came to be known as a "coherer"¹, a crucial development in wireless technology, and which is substantially the first solid-state device used in electronics.(This group does not include the groundbreaking paper in the CR for 1890.  

Branly was named by Marconi as his inspiration (and provided "one of the foundation stones for the Marconi system"² ) in the very first radio transmission across the English Channel--a finer memorial and acknowledgement would be difficult to imagine, unless you were imagining the Nobel Prize, which Branly was nominated for three times but which he did not receive.  He could rest his fame on the coherer, though, which stayed in widespread use until Oliver Lodge's "decoherer" was introduced in 1907, even though it seems (according to some) that Branly did not suggest in his paper that the device could be used as a detector of Hertzian waves. No matter--what he did do was make the "extremely important observation that an electric spark at a distance had the power of suddenly changing the conductivity of loose masses of powered conductors".³

On the other hand, Hugh Aitkin, in his book Syntony and Spark, the Origins of Radio (Princeton 1985), says that "the coherer was, if we may stretch a point, the first solid-state device used in electronics, antedating the crystal detector..." (page 104).

Branly was widely acknowledged during his very long life, and at the end of it all he received a very fitting send-off, with his funeral held at the Cathedral of Notre Dame with the president of France in attendance.

Notes

1. (Édouard Branly, the Coherer, and the Branly effect - History of Communications,Jean-Marie Dilhac, Communications Magazine, IEEE, Volume: 47 Issue: 9, September 2009, (quoting J. Terrat-Branly, Mon père, Édouard Branly, Corrêa, 1941). "Critical to the success of Marconi's pioneering work on radio telegraphy was the device needed to detect the radio telegraph messages on reception. Marconi finally settled on the "coherer." The invention of the device is often attributed to Oliver Lodge, a British physicist of the late 19th century. The detection properties of this device were, in fact, discovered by Edouard Branly, a French experimental physicist of the same period. As Dr. Dilhac makes clear in the following, Lodge himself attributed the signal detection properties of the coherer to Branly, coining the term coherer, and calling the device the "Branly coherer."

 

2.  This quote appears on page xv of J.J. Fahie's History of Wireless Telegraphy, (1901). Branly is featured as one of the 12 portraits of the great of wireless telegraphy in the book's frontispiece.  Fahie uses English language papers by Branly (from the Electrician) from 1891 as Appendix C in his book--no mention of the earlier and more-correct Comptes Rendus paper of 1890.

3.  Dunlap, Radio's 100 Men, 1927, page 79.