Before revision: In effect, it was a highly sensitive thermoresistor, which could recover amplitude-modulated signals, something that the coherer (the standard detector of the time) could not do.Tapan K. Sarkar, Robert Mailloux, Arthur A. Oliner, Magdalena Salazar-Palma, Dipak L. Sengupta, "History of Wireless", , January 2006, Wiley-IEEE Press, page 369.
After revision: In effect, it was a highly sensitive thermoresistor, which could demodulate amplitude-modulated signals, something that the coherer (the standard detector of the time) could not do.Tapan K. Sarkar, Robert Mailloux, Arthur A. Oliner, Magdalena Salazar-Palma, Dipak L. Sengupta, "History of Wireless", , January 2006, Wiley-IEEE Press, page 369.