for detecting the very weak radio signals from long distance transmissions. It was this need that drove him to develop his magnetic detector. Marconi devised a more effective configuration with a moving iron band driven by a clockwork motor passing by stationary magnets and coils, resulting in a continuous supply of iron that was changing magnetization, and thus continuous sensitivity (Rutherford claimed he had also invented this configuration). The Marconi magnetic detector was the "official" detector used by the Marconi Company from 1902 through 1912, when the company began converting to the Fleming valve and Audion-type vacuum tubes. It was used through 1918. Description See drawing at right. The Marconi version consisted of an endless iron band (B) built up of 70 strands of number 40 gage silk-covered iron wire. In operation, the band passes over two grooved pulleys rotated by a wind-up clockwork motor. The iron band passes through the center of a glass tube which is close wound with a single layer along several millimeters with number 36 gage silk-covered copper wire. This coil (C) functions as the radio frequency excitation coil. Over this winding is a small bobbin wound with wire of the same gauge to a resistance of about 140 ohms. This coil (D) functions as the audio pickup coil. Around these coils two permanent horseshoe magnets are arranged to magnetize the iron band as it passes through the glass tube. How it works The device works by hysteresis of the magnetization in the iron wires. The permanent magnets are arranged to create two opposite magnetic fields each directed toward (or away) from the center of the coils in opposite directions along the wire. This functions to magnetize the iron band along its axis, first in one direction as it approaches the center of the coils, then reverse its magnetism to the opposite direction as it leaves from the other side of the coil. Due to the hysteresis (coercivity) of the iron, a certain threshold magnetic field (the coercive field, Hc) is required to reverse the magnetization. So the magnetization in the moving wires does not reverse in the center of the device where the field reverses, but some way toward the departing side of the wires, when the field of the second magnet reaches Hc. Although the wire itself is moving through the coil, in the absence of a radio signal the location where the