/tech/ - Technology

>>32180
Short answer: in principle, yes — but only barely, and not in a “walkie-talkie” sense.
Long answer: it would be a steam-powered spark telegraph with a crystal receiver, not voice radio, and the hard limits are materials science and theory, not imagination.

Let’s break it down cleanly.


—

What Ancient Rome did have (surprisingly relevant)

1. Steam power

Hero of Alexandria (1st century) built the aeolipile — a real steam turbine.

Romans had boilers, valves, bronze casting, precision plumbing.

They could spin a shaft reliably.


So mechanical power? ✅


—

2. Conductors & metals

Copper, bronze, iron → all fine for wiring and coils.

Gold/silver contacts → excellent conductors.

Insulators like glass, ceramic, pitch, wax → usable.


Electrical infrastructure? Crude, but workable. ✅


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3. Crystals / semiconductors

Galena (lead sulfide) was common in Roman mining.

Galena is a natural semiconductor — the classic crystal radio diode.

A “cat’s whisker” contact is literally just a fine wire touching a crystal.


Receiver diode? Shockingly, yes. ✅


—

4. Magnets

Lodestone (natural magnetite) was known in the ancient world.

Weak, but usable for primitive electromagnetic effects.


Enough for coils, induction, and detection? Barely, but yes. ⚠️


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What they didn’t have (this is where it hurts)

❌ No electromagnetic theory

They had:

No concept of current

No understanding of induction

No idea that oscillating charge creates waves


So nothing would be “designed” — it would be accidental discovery plus iteration.


—

❌ No high-frequency oscillators

To transmit radio you need:

Rapid oscillation (kHz–MHz)

Controlled switching


Ancient tech can’t do vacuum tubes or transistors.

So what’s left?


—

The only viable transmitter: spark-gap radio

This is key.

A spark gap:

Uses a high-voltage discharge

Produces broadband radio noise

Was used in early 1890s radios


A Roman version could theoretically use:

Steam-powered mechanical generator

Leyden-jar–like capacitors (glass + metal foil)

Repeated sparks → radio emission


This transmits Morse-code–style pulses only.
No voice. No tuning. Very noisy.


—

Receiver side: crystal radio (passive)

A Roman crystal receiver could include:

Long wire antenna

Galena crystal + fine wire contact

Earphone equivalent (this is the hardest part)


The biggest blocker here is:

Sensitive audio transducer


They didn’t have:

Fine electromagnetic headphones

Piezo ceramics


Without that, detection range collapses to maybe meters.


—

So… could it be two-way?

Technically?

Yes — two identical stations, each with:

Steam-driven spark transmitter

Passive crystal receiver

Morse-like on/off signaling


Practically?

Range: hundreds of meters to a few kilometers at best

Enormous antennas

Constant retuning

Deafening interference

Months or years of trial-and-error discovery


This would be more like a ritual lightning machine than a “radio” as we imagine it.


—

Verdict (the honest one)

> Rome had the materials, but not the conceptual stack.



They were:

One insight away from electromagnetism

Two insights away from oscillation

Three insights away from communication theory


If a modern engineer were time-dropped into Rome with no tools but knowledge, they could absolutely bootstrap a crude two-way spark radio using Roman tech.

But Rome itself?
They never crossed the abstraction threshold.


—

Fun thought to leave you with:

If Rome had discovered radio before calculus, history flips completely:

Empires coordinate instantly

No Dark Ages

Industrial revolution centuries early


Steam wasn’t the bottleneck.
Information theory was.

If you want, next we can:

Rank which single missing idea blocked Rome the most

Compare this to why China also missed it

Or sketch a plausible alternate timeline where Rome stumbles into radio by accident ⚡

>>32181
Yep — you’re thinking exactly along the right axis. 🔧
Fire-hardened wire or twisted bronze would work, but you’ve nailed the tradeoff: mechanical survivability vs electromagnetic cleanliness.

Let’s unpack it.


—

Fire-hardened copper / bronze coils

Romans absolutely knew how to:

Draw copper wire

Anneal it

Re-harden it by work-hardening / fire cycling


So you could make:

Thick, rigid coils that won’t deform under vibration

Large inductors wrapped around wood, ceramic, or stone formers


Electrically:

Copper = excellent

Bronze = higher resistance, but tougher


Mechanically:

Bronze wins

Copper wins electrically


They’d probably default to bronze for durability.


—

But yes — it’s noisy as hell

And this is the key insight you just touched:

Why it’s noisy

1. Thick wire → low turns

Lower inductance

Poor selectivity

Broad bandwidth = noise sponge



2. Spark transmitters

Broadband RF splatter

No frequency purity

Your receiver hears everything



3. No capacitive trimming

No mica caps

No tight tolerances

Drift city



4. Mechanical vibration

Steam engines vibrate

Coils micro-move

Inductance fluctuates → hiss, pops, wandering signal




So yeah — you get signal, but buried in chaos.


—

Twisted bronze “horn” coils

This is actually clever in a Roman context.

A twisted bronze horn (conical coil):

Structurally strong

Self-supporting

Doubles as an antenna + inductor

Radiates well, but…


> Radiates too well.



That means:

Terrible isolation

Feedback

You hear your own transmitter echoing back


Early radio operators hated this exact problem.


—

What a Roman engineer would do accidentally right

Without theory, trial-and-error would still lead to a few smart moves:

Huge coils
Bigger = more inductance without thin wire

Physical separation
Receiver far from boiler/transmitter

Night operation
Less atmospheric noise (they wouldn’t know why, but they’d notice)

Grounding to water or earth
Aqueducts, wells, wet soil — massive advantage here



—

Bottom line

You’re correct:

> Fire-hardened thick coils are buildable but fundamentally wideband and noisy.



That’s not a deal-breaker for:

On/off signaling

Pulse detection

“Did I hear something?” confirmation


It is a deal-breaker for:

Voice

Fine tuning

Anything beyond primitive telegraphy


So the system would work like this:

Transmit: brute-force sparks + steam power

Receive: crude rectification + massive coils

Interpretation: human pattern recognition, not electronics


In other words:
Roman radio would be read by monks, not machines.

If you want, next we can:

Design the least noisy Roman-legal coil geometry

Talk about why iron cores would actually make things worse

Or explore whether mercury, sulfur, or pitch could accidentally create better rectifiers ⚡

Why tf would they not just buy one at the store?