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Also known as: Alexander Popov, Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Aleksandr Popov

Alexander Popov (1859–1906) was a Russian physicist and electrical engineer, one of the independent pioneers who built practical receivers for radio waves in the mid-1890s.1 His 1895 apparatus — a coherer-based detector connected to an elevated wire — worked both as a lightning detector and, soon after, as a wireless telegraphy receiver, and he is honoured in Russia as a founder of radio.

aerial coherer relay bell
Popov's receiver: an aerial captures an RF pulse, the coherer becomes conductive, and a relay rings a bell — the same chain whether the pulse came from lightning or a transmitter.

Life and work

Popov was born in the Ural region and trained in physics at Saint Petersburg University. He taught at the Russian Navy’s Torpedo School in Kronstadt, where much of his radio work was done. On 7 May 1895 he presented a paper to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society demonstrating a device that detected electromagnetic disturbances; in Russia that date is still marked as Radio Day.1

His receiver followed the same era as Oliver Lodge’s demonstrations and Guglielmo Marconi’s parallel development, all building on the wave-generation experiments of Heinrich Hertz. Popov later exchanged wireless messages over increasing distances for the Russian navy before his early death in 1906.

Contribution

Popov’s apparatus combined three elements that define an early radio receiver: an elevated aerial (an early antenna), a coherer to detect the presence of radio-frequency energy, and a tapper/relay that restored the coherer after each pulse and drove an indicator such as a bell or a chart recorder.

  • As a storm detector, the device registered the radio pulses emitted by distant lightning, and Popov used it to log approaching thunderstorms.
  • Adapted with a spark transmitter, the same receiver read Morse signals, making it a working wireless-telegraphy system.

The use of a grounded vertical wire as a receiving aerial was a practical advance that improved sensitivity and is a direct ancestor of the monopole antenna.

Legacy

Popov is celebrated across the former Soviet sphere as the inventor of radio, a claim that runs parallel to the credit given elsewhere to Marconi; historically both, along with Lodge and others, developed practical wireless nearly simultaneously from Hertz’s foundation. His lightning detector is also recognized as an early radio-astronomy and atmospheric-sensing instrument. Popov’s name is carried by a Russian technical university and by the annual Radio Day observance.

Sources

  1. Alexander Stepanovich Popov — Wikipedia, for his biography, the 1895 demonstration, and the lightning-detector receiver. ↩ ↩2

See also