In 1895, Jagadish Chandra Bose demonstrated publicly the use of radio waves in
Calcutta (now called as Kolkata), but he was not interested in patenting his
work and pursued it purely as a scientific endeavour. Bose ignited gunpowder
and rang a bell at a distance using microwaves (electromagnetic waves with the
wavelength in the range of millimetres), confirming that communication signals
can be sent without using wires.
Bose
demonstrated the ability of the electric rays to travel from the lecture room,
and through an intervening room and passage, to a third room 75 feet distant
from the radiator, thus passing through three solid walls on the way, as well
as the body of the chairman (who happened to be the Lieutenant-Governor). The
receiver at this distance still had the energy enough to make a contact which
set a bell ringing, discharged a pistol, and exploded a miniature mine. To get
this result from his small radiator, Bose set up a circular metal plate at the
top of a 20-foot pole in connection with the radiator and a similar one with
the receiving apparatus (the first modern day ‘antennae’).
Encouraged
by this success, Bose planned to fix one of these poles on the roof of his
house and the other on the Presidency College a mile away – but he left to
England before putting into place. The Daily Chronicle reported, “the inventor has transmitted signals to a
distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly
valuable application of this new theoretical marvel.”
After his presentations
at the Royal Institution, The Electric
Engineer expressed “surprise that no secret was at any time made
as to its construction, so that it has been open to all the world to adopt it
for practical and possibly money-making purposes.’ Bose was sometimes criticised as unpractical
for making no profit from his inventions but he was determined that whatever
offerings (like the flowers offered in Indian worship) his life could make
should be untainted by any considerations of personal advantage.
Many
contemporary scientists like J J Thomson and Poincare also described Bose’s
experiment and the apparatus (extremely compact for its time and also
considering that it was made in Calcutta with limited resources at that time
was truly a stroke of genius) in their textbooks. Bose was more than a year
ahead of Guglielmo Marconi in demonstrating the wireless technology. Bose
deserves to be the “Father of Wireless
Telegraphy”.
Bose also went
on to develop the use of galena crystals for making receivers for radio waves,
white light and ultraviolet light. Sir Neville Mott, who won the Nobel Prize in
1977 for his contributions to solid state electronics, stated that “J C Bose was at least sixty years ahead of
his time.. In fact, he had anticipated the existence of p-type and n-type
semiconductors.”
Primary reference: The Life and Work of Sir Jagadis C Bose by Patrick Geddes (Published in 1920)
