P
phaeton
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
You guys all read books like "The Mad Scientist's Club" when you were
kids, right?
I recall that in this book they (the pre-adolescent boys in the Mad
Scientists Club) devised (among many other things) an intercom system
that allowed them all to communicate from house to house across a small
town, using its power grid.
I know there are in-house (room to room) intercom kits that you can
buy, and they work with some success, but is it possible on this scale?
Not that i'd try it, mind you. I suppose there are a lot of obstacles,
i.e. having to filter out a 60hz AC hum with a huge amplitude, for
starters. You'd be limited to AM instead of FM, I presume, blah blah.
I realize that it is a fictional book and it has a lot of, shall we say
"embellishments" for the sake of the story. For instance, they often
used lots of radio equipment, and while nothing seemed to have antennas
on it, nobody ever mentioned line-of-sight, signal gain, pine trees,
radio control frequencies vs. ham radio frequencies, the FCC or the
usual stuff, most everything had a perfect 5+ mile range. Maybe the
RF situation in the sky was different in the 1960s, eh?
I had completely forgotten about this 'intercom system' i read about 20
years ago, until I overheard (yet another) discussion about the
"broadband over powerlines" concept that people have been debating the
last few years.
For what it's worth, I remember that book fondly in my youth, and
lately I've been developing a small (but present) interest in
communications using unconventional means.
</lameness>
-phaeton
kids, right?
I recall that in this book they (the pre-adolescent boys in the Mad
Scientists Club) devised (among many other things) an intercom system
that allowed them all to communicate from house to house across a small
town, using its power grid.
I know there are in-house (room to room) intercom kits that you can
buy, and they work with some success, but is it possible on this scale?
Not that i'd try it, mind you. I suppose there are a lot of obstacles,
i.e. having to filter out a 60hz AC hum with a huge amplitude, for
starters. You'd be limited to AM instead of FM, I presume, blah blah.
I realize that it is a fictional book and it has a lot of, shall we say
"embellishments" for the sake of the story. For instance, they often
used lots of radio equipment, and while nothing seemed to have antennas
on it, nobody ever mentioned line-of-sight, signal gain, pine trees,
radio control frequencies vs. ham radio frequencies, the FCC or the
usual stuff, most everything had a perfect 5+ mile range. Maybe the
RF situation in the sky was different in the 1960s, eh?
I had completely forgotten about this 'intercom system' i read about 20
years ago, until I overheard (yet another) discussion about the
"broadband over powerlines" concept that people have been debating the
last few years.
For what it's worth, I remember that book fondly in my youth, and
lately I've been developing a small (but present) interest in
communications using unconventional means.
</lameness>
-phaeton