5 ms·

Another fun, somewhat related poster from 1944: Chart of Electromagnetic Radiations [0], and a "color-corrected" version [1]. [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photo

Another fun, somewhat related poster from 1944: Chart of Electromagnetic Radiations [0], and a "color-corrected" version [1]. [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/llnl/9403051123 https://www.flickr.com/photos/llnl/9403051123 [1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/acme-laboratories/31849902131 https://www.flickr.com/photos/acme-laboratories/31849902131

barbazoo 4y ago
I love this chart and would like to print it. Can anyone gauge if this is still somewhat current or if there's a better one?
- kzrdude 4y ago
  It's a lovely chart. Your question is a bit fun, since the chart is clearly old and that's part of its charm isn't it? I scanned through it looking for any obvious errors or things we've changed our understanding of a lot since then. There's one picture of using Radium radiation in hospital treatments that seems very old-fashioned.
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- retrac 4y ago
  It is copyright 1944. So it rather charmingly hand-waves away frequencies above 10 MHz or so. Such frequencies will be useful for television! And the plot stops at 100 MHz. (Nearly all radio used today is above 100 MHz.) That said, much does still hold true. Longwave is still used by giant shore installations to communicate with ships. (Mostly by coincidence. Long wavelengths can reach submerged submarines.) The aeronautic band is still used by aeronautic non-directional beacons. The AM broadcast band is still AM broadcast. Some of the amateur bands are still in the same place today. The physics and electronics depicted seem accurate. Its creators were clearly informed of the cutting edge in the 1940s; it depicts a magnetron, which had been invented about a decade before, and not widely used until high-power models were developed and then applied to radar c. 1940. A section about the health effects of ionizing radiation is conspicuously absent to my modern eye.
- kccqzy 4y ago
  Well at the very top the speed of light is wrong :) It's now 299792458 m/s.
  - belter 4y ago
    For the moment... "Variable speed of light" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light
InitialLastName 4y ago
There's also this: http://unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/downloads/spectrum_20090210.pdf http://unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/downloads/spectrum_20...
- varenc 4y ago
  I love that poster! Especially because it’s generated from LaTeX and open source: https://github.com/unihedron/spectrum https://github.com/unihedron/spectrum
maltalex 4y ago
Those are beautiful. Where can I find more charts like these?
- B4CKlash 4y ago
  There are few books by the American Statistician Edward Tufte worth checking out. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations, all exceptional works of art. The books act as both a teaching guide and a compendium of beautiful historical infographical-artifacts.
thrdbndndn 4y ago
> "color-corrected" version Not only it clips some colors for no reason (look at the blue background around "broadcasting radio" house -- the gradient transition is totally gone. I assume the editor just used lasso tool to select "white-ish" parts and replace them entirely with a single color, instead of using color level?), it didn't even correct the background to pure white (but some reddish color)? Ugh!
datasert 4y ago
Oh my, those charts are so beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

barbazoo 4y ago

I love this chart and would like to print it. Can anyone gauge if this is still somewhat current or if there's a better one?

kzrdude 4y ago
It's a lovely chart. Your question is a bit fun, since the chart is clearly old and that's part of its charm isn't it? I scanned through it looking for any obvious errors or things we've changed our understanding of a lot since then. There's one picture of using Radium radiation in hospital treatments that seems very old-fashioned.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
retrac 4y ago
It is copyright 1944. So it rather charmingly hand-waves away frequencies above 10 MHz or so. Such frequencies will be useful for television! And the plot stops at 100 MHz. (Nearly all radio used today is above 100 MHz.) That said, much does still hold true. Longwave is still used by giant shore installations to communicate with ships. (Mostly by coincidence. Long wavelengths can reach submerged submarines.) The aeronautic band is still used by aeronautic non-directional beacons. The AM broadcast band is still AM broadcast. Some of the amateur bands are still in the same place today. The physics and electronics depicted seem accurate. Its creators were clearly informed of the cutting edge in the 1940s; it depicts a magnetron, which had been invented about a decade before, and not widely used until high-power models were developed and then applied to radar c. 1940. A section about the health effects of ionizing radiation is conspicuously absent to my modern eye.
kccqzy 4y ago
Well at the very top the speed of light is wrong :) It's now 299792458 m/s.
- belter 4y ago
  For the moment... "Variable speed of light" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light

InitialLastName 4y ago

There's also this: http://unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/downloads/spectrum_20090210.pdf http://unihedron.com/projects/spectrum/downloads/spectrum_20...

varenc 4y ago
I love that poster! Especially because it’s generated from LaTeX and open source: https://github.com/unihedron/spectrum https://github.com/unihedron/spectrum

maltalex 4y ago

Those are beautiful. Where can I find more charts like these?

B4CKlash 4y ago
There are few books by the American Statistician Edward Tufte worth checking out. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, and Visual Explanations, all exceptional works of art. The books act as both a teaching guide and a compendium of beautiful historical infographical-artifacts.

thrdbndndn 4y ago

> "color-corrected" version Not only it clips some colors for no reason (look at the blue background around "broadcasting radio" house -- the gradient transition is totally gone. I assume the editor just used lasso tool to select "white-ish" parts and replace them entirely with a single color, instead of using color level?), it didn't even correct the background to pure white (but some reddish color)? Ugh!

datasert 4y ago

Oh my, those charts are so beautiful. Thank you for sharing.