This is the station of the Wireless Club of the University of Pennsylvania in January, 1910. The Club had formed three months earlier, and already attracted more than 50 members. City newspapers were following breathlessly, reporting night contact with the Hamptons, Cape Cod, the Philadelphia naval yard locally, and with numerous other collegiate stations. In April the Club joined forces with friends at MIT and formed the Intercollegiate Wireless Association, attracting notes of interest from Cornell, Princeton, and seven other colleges.
You can see the Tesla ‘tank’ coil here, the spark gap in front, the condenser pile to the left, underneath what looks like a loose coupler. To the right is the receiving apparatus, the nucleus of which is probably a ‘coherer’, on which I’ll do another post.
The Penn club still exists. See its superb history page, with all its linked resources, here.
The Radio Ranch 