Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

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

[1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/acme-laboratories/31849902131





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


> "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!


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


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?


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.


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.


Well at the very top the speed of light is wrong :) It's now 299792458 m/s.


For the moment...

"Variable speed of light" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_light


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


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.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: