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Ancient Web: Tetsuo Kogawa Put Micro-Radio Transmitter Workshops on the Web

Tetsuo Kogawa’s transmitter page begins with a question that explains the entire project: why make transmission technology less esoteric?

His answer is basically that radio has interesting possibilities for art.

Visit Tetsuo Kogawa’s micro-transmitter workshop

The page then gets extremely practical.

It includes a simple FM transmitter, component lists, basic tools, step-by-step pictorial instructions, tuning FAQs, antenna information, power-supply notes, TV transmitter designs, and more advanced one-to-three-watt FM material that explicitly warns builders not to proceed without a power meter and frequency counter.

Some schematics are offered as PDF, JPG, symbolic diagrams, and even VRML.

That last format alone dates the web neighborhood nicely.

A workshop that became an archive

The most useful part of the site is that it does not separate electronics from its cultural history.

Kogawa links the technical material to a chronology of transmitter workshops. The page points to an earlier private workshop on June 3, 1990, a first public workshop on April 28, 1991, and a first U.S. workshop at Paper Tiger Television on November 4, 1991.

Video survives alongside the circuit diagrams.

That gives the page a different character from a generic electronics tutorial. The transmitter is not presented merely as a gadget. It is part of a practice: build the device, understand enough radio to operate it, then use transmission as a creative medium.

The page’s construction also belongs to the old technical web. It assumes the visitor is willing to follow diagrams, read theory, acquire tools, solder components, troubleshoot, and learn from linked documents rather than watch a single polished video.

CacheRat’s 1,967 Ancient Web Domains research list contains many pages where technical knowledge and a particular subculture became inseparable.

Kogawa’s workshop is one of the better examples.

The web page does not merely tell you that micro-radio art existed.

It leaves the bench laid out.

Return to Tetsuo Kogawa’s micro-transmitter workshop