Gayle Mason’s Ham radio station could be rebuilt to provide a modestly powered AM radio transmitter, but what to use for an antenna? A natural antenna for an AM radio station is 140 feet tall. The folks in Grantville did not have such a tower, nor did they have the free steel to build one. The available steel was going into the ironclad ships and into railroad track.
Additionally, the government of the new U.S. wished to conceal its ability to talk to its remote diplomatic staff as long as possible. After months of discussion on Baen’s Bar by the “Barflies,” the concept of the Great Stone Radio Tower was born. Many European cathedral towers exceeded the height needed for the Voice of America transmitter tower. By building a stone antenna tower (and running copper wires down the outside to act as the active antenna elements), Grantville solved both the technical problem of building the tower, and the political problem of distracting the French and the English from the ability of Grantville to talk to its diplomats. Somehow the idea that long-distance radio requires huge massive antennas became commonplace.
By early 1634, the Voice of America will be on the air with a transmitter rebuilt from Gayle Mason’s high powered Ham radio transmitter, and the Great Stone Radio Tower.
The Barflies have long discussed, but no “official” author has yet mentioned, the idea that Gustavus Adolphus will not be satisfied with the Voice of America and will push for a second AM broadcast radio station to promote the concord of his nation and his faith. The Barflies refer to Gustav’s station as the Voice of Luther.
The Voice of Luther will go on the air in late 1634 or early 1635 using an all-down-time built transmitter using the same style transmitter as the first broadcast AM radio station. The details of the construction of a Fessenden Alternator are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that operating this station will involve speaking into a microphone directly inserted into the feed line from the transmitter to the antenna while it is carrying up to 10,000 watts of power. This is very dangerous. Operating broadcast radio stations in 1632 is not for the faint of heart. A wrong move will result in a fried DJ.
Acknowledgement and personal note:
The technical and historic background in the 1632 series is the result of the work of a huge number of participants in the 1632 Tech Manual at the Baen Books web site
This article attempts to summarize information from two sources: the background briefing documents prepared for Eric Flint and David Weber, and the collective wisdom of the Baen Barflies.
The combination of people, material, and environment presented by 1632 results in a rich playing field for people who want to work on alternate history. Certainly I have enjoyed the experience. I strongly invite any of you interested to join us. There is still a lot of work to do.
Rick Boatright
THEY’VE GOT BREAD MOLD,
SO WHY CAN’T THEY MAKE PENICILLIN?
by
Bob Gottlieb
The above is one of the more common questions asked by readers following the 1632 series, especially those who are interested in the subject of disease and medicine. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to the question. There are thousands and thousands of different kinds of mold. True, a few of them produce various effective medicines, like penicillin. But many are useless, even leaving aside those which produce hallucinogens like LSD, or which are outright poisons. The process of isolating a specific mold that produces an antibiotic is expensive, time consuming, and severely constrained by the availability of resources.
The purpose of this article is to give readers who lack technical education in the subject a general overview of the problem. Let’s begin by reviewing the major diseases which the characters in the 1632 series have to deal with.
Disease
There were a number of frequently fatal diseases sweeping across Europe during the Thirty Years War. The two most devastating were bubonic plague and typhus. In addition, there was smallpox, syphilis, influenza, tuberculosis, and any number of infections caused by wounds, badly stored food, and general unsanitary conditions.