Archie Frederick Collins (born South Bend, Indiana

South Bend, Indiana

The city of South Bend is the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2010 Census, the city had a total of 101,168 residents; its Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 316,663...

  January 8, 1869.
Died Nyack, New York

Nyack, New York

Nyack is a village in the towns of Orangetown and Clarkstown in Rockland County, New York, United States, located north of South Nyack; east of Central Nyack; south of Upper Nyack and west of the Hudson River, approximately 19 miles north of the Manhattan boundary, it is an inner suburb of New...

 January 3, 1952) was an early experimenter in wireless telephony

History of radio

The early history of radio is the history of technology that produced radio instruments that use radio waves. Within the timeline of radio, many people contributed theory and inventions in what became radio. Radio development began as "wireless telegraphy"...

 and a prolific author of books and articles on a wide range of scientific and technical subjects.

Early life

Collins was the son of Captain Thomas Jefferson Collins and Margaret Ann (Roller) Collins. He attended the public schools and the Old University of Chicago

Old University of Chicago

The University of Chicago, now known as the Old University of Chicago , was a school founded by Baptists in Chicago in 1857...

, a Baptist

Baptist

Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...

 school which preceded the present University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

. He was the brother of author Dr. T(homas) Byard Collins. He began working for the Thomson-Houston Electric Company

Thomson-Houston Electric Company

The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was a manufacturing company which was one of the precursors of the General Electric Company.The Thomson-Houston Electric Company was formed in 1883 in the United States when a group of Lynn, Massachusetts investors led by Charles A...

 in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 in 1888, and gained practical knowledge of electrical technology and electrical appliances.

Family life

Collins married Evelyn Bandy June 28, 1897. They were parents of one son, Virgil Dewey Collins. Collins resided at a summer home called "The Antlers" in Rockland County, New York

Rockland County, New York

Rockland County is a suburban county 15 miles to the northwest of Manhattan and part of the New York City Metropolitan Area, in the U.S. state of New York. It is the southernmost county in New York west of the Hudson River, and the smallest county in New York outside of New York City. The...

 in the hamlet of Congers

Congers, New York

Congers is a hamlet , in the Town of Clarkstown Rockland County, New York, United States located north of Valley Cottage; east of New City, across Lake DeForest, south of Haverstraw and west of the Hudson River. It lies 19 miles north of New York City's Bronx boundary...

, and had a second residence in Florida. His winter residence was New York City.

Radio research

Collins said he invented a wireless telephone, or radio transmitter and receiver which used voice modulated high frequency currents in 1899. He wrote in 1905 that his 1899 system was tested in Philadelphia and transmitted speech 200 feet; that in 1900 he sent speech 1 mile, across the Delaware River

Delaware River

The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States.A Dutch expedition led by Henry Hudson in 1609 first mapped the river. The river was christened the South River in the New Netherland colony that followed, in contrast to the North River, as the Hudson River was then...

, and that in 1902 he transmitted speech 3 miles. He wrote in 1922 that he was "the first to connect an arc lamp with an aerial and a ground, and to use a microphone transmitter to modulate the sustained oscillations so set up. The receiving apparatus consisted of a variable contact, known as a pill-box detector, which Sir Oliver Lodge had devised, and to this was connected an Ericsson

Ericsson

Ericsson , one of Sweden's largest companies, is a provider of telecommunication and data communication systems, and related services, covering a range of technologies, including especially mobile networks...

 telephone receiver, then the most sensitive made." He received U.S. patent 814,942 on March 16, 1906, for his system of wireless telephony using an electric arc. He was the technical director for the Collins Wireless Telephone Company from 1904 to 1910. By 1908 Collins was broadcasting voice and music, reportedly with an arc transmitter

Arc converter

The arc converter, sometimes called the arc transmitter or Poulsen arc after its inventor Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen, is a device that used an electric arc to convert direct current electricity into radio frequency alternating current...

, from 51 Clinton Street in Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey

Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

, with a remote receiver through which interested parties could hear the transmissions. He was able to transmit wireless telephone messages from his Newark lab to the Singer Building

Singer Building

The Singer Building or Singer Tower at Liberty Street and Broadway in Manhattan, was a 47-story office building completed in 1908 as the headquarters of the Singer Manufacturing Company. It was demolished in 1968 and is now the site of 1 Liberty Plaza....

 in New York City, 12 miles distant, on July 9, 1908. Later that year he sent voice messages from Newark to Philadelphia, a distance of 81 miles. Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi

Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor, known as the father of long distance radio transmission and for his development of Marconi's law and a radio telegraph system. Marconi is often credited as the inventor of radio, and indeed he shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand...

 examined the Collins wireless telephone at the October 1908 New York Electrical Show and said "Wireless telephony is an accomplished fact, and to Mr. Collins is due the credit of its invention.... The clarity of the transmitted voice is marvelous." The apparatus used a Collins oscillation arc powered by 500 volts DC. Continuous high frequency oscillations were produced by inductance and capacitance shunted around the arc. A Bell telephone transmitter modulated the radio frequency waves. The receiver used inductance tuning coils and a Collins thermo-electric detector. In 1909, Collins told the New York Times he had operated four separate wireless telephone links at the same time between Portland, Maine

Portland, Maine

Portland is the largest city in Maine and is the county seat of Cumberland County. The 2010 city population was 66,194, growing 3 percent since the census of 2000...

 and a nearby island, creating an impression that wireless telephony was on the verge of replacing wired telephone systems. He exhibited his wireless telephone in 1909 at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

The Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition was a world's fair held in Seattle in 1909, publicizing the development of the Pacific Northwest.It was originally planned for 1907, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush, but the organizers found out about the Jamestown Exposition being held...

 and was awarded a gold medal. The Collins Wireless Telephone Company became part of the Continental Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1909. Ordinary carbon telephone microphones could only carry small currents, under half an Ampere

Ampere

The ampere , often shortened to amp, is the SI unit of electric current and is one of the seven SI base units. It is named after André-Marie Ampère , French mathematician and physicist, considered the father of electrodynamics...

 without overheating and failing. In the days before vacuum tubes, a carbon microphone was used to directly vary the transmitted radio signal. Collins developed multiple unit water-cooled microphones which could carry currents of 8 to 10 Amperes, to modulate the amplitude of the transmitted radio waves. While Collins continued experimenting with wireless telephony, demonstrations were done to advance the sale of stock, with extravagant and misleading claims for the technology. In December, 1911 Collins and other officials of the company were indicted for using the mails for stock fraud. The company had made extravagant claims for the ability of the wireless telephone equipment, given the primitive state of the art in range and selectivity. Nathan Stubblefield

Nathan Stubblefield

Nathan B. Stubblefield was an American inventor and Kentucky melon farmer. It has been claimed that Stubblefield invented the radio before either Nikola Tesla or Guglielmo Marconi, but his devices seem to have worked by audio frequency induction or, later, audio frequency earth conduction rather...

, another early wireless telephone experimenter, had resigned in protest from the company before the exposure of the stock promotion excesses and was not prosecuted. Collins served one year of a three year sentence.

Author

He began writing for the technical pres about wireless telegraphy and telephony and other scientific topics in 1901. He wrote articles about wireless telephony for Electrical World, Scientific American

Scientific American

Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...

, Encyclopedia Americana

Encyclopedia Americana

Encyclopedia Americana is one of the largest general encyclopedias in the English language. Following the acquisition of Grolier in 2000, the encyclopedia has been produced by Scholastic....

, and other encyclopedias. He wrote a great many technical articles and books on wireless telegraphy and wireless telephony in the first decade of the 20th century. He wrote about 100 books on scientific and technical subjects, hobbies, and sports, and over 500 articles in technical and scientific magazines and journals, well into the 1940s. His 1913 "Manual of Wireless Telegraphy and telephony" gives a detailed and illustrated explanation of his electric arc wireless telephone transmitter and receiver, along with a general coverage of the state of the art. He wrote scientific adventure series novels such as "Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator(1919)" which told of the training and adventures of a 15 year old wireless amateur. Many of his books, such as "The Boy Scientist," (1925) had lots of illustrations and few equations, with an emphasis on "hands-on" experimentation, at a level intended for high school students. After discussing the "Einstein Theory," Collins tells his readers how to build a spectroscope, a radio, and a x-ray machine

X-ray machine

An X-ray generator is a device used to generate X-rays. These devices are commonly used by radiographers to acquire an x-ray image of the inside of an object but they are also used in sterilization or fluorescence....

 for home experimentation. Collins encouraged his readers to use their home-built x-ray machine to examine their own bone structure with a fluoroscope. His failure to warn of the dangers of experimentation with x-rays was in line with popular interest in the invisible rays and lack of understanding of the dangers. He was the original author of "The Radio Amateur's Hand Book," in 1922, a handbook for radio "hams

Amateur radio operator

An amateur radio operator is an individual who typically uses equipment at an amateur radio station to engage in two-way personal communications with other similar individuals on radio frequencies assigned to the amateur radio service. Amateur radio operators have been granted an amateur radio...

" which was reprinted in at least 15 revised editions over the next 61 years. The late Alan MacDiarmid

Alan MacDiarmid

Alan Graham MacDiarmid ONZ was a chemist, and one of three recipients of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000.-Early life:He was born in Masterton, New Zealand as one of five children - three brothers and two sisters...

, who received the Nobel Prize in chemistry

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...

 in 2000, said that Collins' 1924 book "The Boy Chemist" so inspired him as a boy in New Zealand that he kept renewing it from the public library for almost a full year to complete all the experiments.

Affiliations and memberships

Collins was a Republican

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

. He was a lecturer for the New York Board of Education. He was a member of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers

American Institute of Electrical Engineers

The American Institute of Electrical Engineers was a United States based organization of electrical engineers that existed between 1884 and 1963, when it merged with the Institute of Radio Engineers to form the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers .- History :The 1884 founders of the...

. He was a member of the Royal Aero Club

Royal Aero Club

The Royal Aero Club is the national co-ordinating body for Air Sport in the United Kingdom.The Aero Club was founded in 1901 by Frank Hedges Butler, his daughter Vera and the Hon Charles Rolls , partly inspired by the Aero Club of France...

 and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society

Royal Astronomical Society

The Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...

, both of the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

External links

• • The Radio Amateur's Handbook, by A(rchie) Frederick Collins, 1922. Complete with illustrations.
  • Experimental television: a series of simple experiments with television apparatus; also how to make a complete home television transmitter and television receiver by A(rchie) Frederick Collins, Boston:Lothrop, 1932.