A Popov lightning recorder? - in South Africa! [Scanning Our Past]

The Historical Interest Group of the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE) has been collecting historical artifacts and documents over the past 20 years for a future museum of Science and Technology. Recently, a rediscovery of a rare, almost century-old instrument based on the work of the Russian wireless innovator Aleksandr Stepanovich Popov has shed new light on the early days of electromagnetic receivers. The SAIEE discovered that they had a coherer wireless receiver in their collection. The SAIEE took the examination a step further and finally realized that this must be the lightning recorder used at the Transvaal Meteorological Station from 1904.