Masters of Space / Morse and the Telegraph; Thompson and the Cable; Bell and the Telephone; Marconi and the Wireless Telegraph; Carty and the Wireless Telephone

by Walter Kellogg Towers

XVII

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY ESTABLISHED

Marconi Goes to England—he Confounds the Skeptics—A Message to
France Without Wires—The Attempt to Span the Ocean—Marconi in
America Receives the First Message from Europe—Fame and Recognition
Achieved.

The time had now come for Marconi to introduce himself and his discoveries to the attention of the world. He went to England, and on June 2, 1896, applied for a patent on his system of wireless telegraphy. Soon afterward his plans were submitted to the postal-telegraph authorities. Fortunately for Marconi and for the world, W.H. Preece was then in authority in this department. He himself had experimented with some little success with wireless messages. He was able enough to see the merit in Marconi's discoveries and generous enough to give him full recognition and every encouragement.

The apparatus was first set up in the General Post-office in London, another station being located on the roof but a hundred yards away. Though several walls intervened, the Hertzian waves traversed them without difficulty, and messages were sent and received. Stations were then set up on Salisbury Plain, some two miles apart, and communication was established between them.

Though the postal-telegraph authorities received Marconi's statements of his discoveries with open mind and put his apparatus to fair tests, the public at large was much less tolerant. The skepticism which met Morse and Bell faced Marconi. Men of science doubted his statements and scoffed at his claims. The Hertzian waves might be all right to operate scientific playthings, they thought, but they were far too uncertain to furnish a medium for carrying messages in any practical way. Then, as progress was made and Marconi began to prove his system, the inevitable jealousies arose. Experimenters who might have invented the wireless telegraph, but who did not, came forward to contest Marconi's claims and to seek to snatch his laurels from him.

The young inventor forged steadily ahead, studying and experimenting, devising improved apparatus, meeting the difficulties one by one as they arose. In most of his early experiments he had used a modification of the little tin boxes which had been set up in his father's garden as his original aerials. Having discovered that the height of the aerials increased the range of the stations, he covered a large kite with tin-foil and, sending it up with a wire, used this as an aerial. Balloons were similarly employed. He soon recognized, however, that a practical commercial system, which should be capable of sending and receiving messages day and night, regardless of the weather, could not be operated with kites or balloons. The height of masts was limited, so he sought to increase the range by increasing the electrical power of the current sending forth the sparks from the sending station. Here he was on the right path, and another long step forward had been taken.

In the fall of 1897 he set up a mast on the Isle of Wight, one hundred and twenty feet high. From the top of this was strung a single wire and a new series of experiments was begun. Marconi had spent the summer in Italy demonstrating his apparatus, and had established communication between a station on the shore and a war-ship of the Italian Navy equipped with his apparatus. He now secured a small steamer for his experiments from his station on the Isle of Wight and equipped it with a sixty-foot mast. Communication was maintained with the boat day after day, regardless of weather conditions. The distance at which communication could be maintained was steadily increased until communication was established with the mainland.

In July of 1898 the wireless demonstrated its utility as a conveyer of news. An enterprising Dublin newspaper desired to cover the Kingstown regatta with the aid of the wireless. In order to do this a land station was erected at Kingstown, and another on board a steamer which followed the yachts. A telephone wire connected the Kingstown station with the newspaper office, and as the messages came by wireless from the ship they were telephoned to Dublin and published in successive editions of the evening papers.

This feat attracted so much attention that Queen Victoria sought the aid of the wireless for her own necessities. Her son, the Prince of Wales, lay ill on his yacht, and the aged queen desired to keep in constant communication with him. Marconi accordingly placed one station on the prince's yacht and another at Osborne House, the queen's residence. Communication was readily maintained, and one hundred and fifty messages passed by wireless between the prince and the royal mother.

While the electric waves bearing the messages were found to pass through wood, stone, or earth, it was soon noticed in practical operation that when many buildings, or a hill, or any other solid object of size intervened between the stations the waves were greatly retarded and the messages seriously interfered with. When the apparatus was placed on board steel vessels it was found that any part of the vessel coming between the stations checked the communication. Marconi sought to avoid these difficulties by erecting high aerials at every point, so that the waves might pass through the clear air over solid obstructions.

Marconi's next effort was to connect France with England. He went to France to demonstrate his apparatus to the French Government and set up a station near Boulogne. The aerial was raised to a height of one hundred and fifty feet. Another station was erected near Folkestone on the English coast, across the Channel. A group of French officials gathered in the little station near Folkestone for the test, which was made on the 27th of March, 1899. Marconi sent the messages, which were received by the station on the French shore without difficulty. Other messages were received from France, and wireless communication between the nations was an accomplished fact.

The use of the wireless for ships and lighthouses sprang into favor, and wireless stations were established all around the British coasts so that ships equipped with wireless might keep in communication with the land. The British Admiralty quickly recognized the value of wireless telegraphy to war vessels. While field telegraphs and telephones had served the armies, the navies were still dependent upon primitive signals, since a wire cannot be strung from ship to ship nor from ship to shore. So the British battle-ships were equipped with wireless apparatus and a thorough test was made. A sham battle was held in which all of the orders were sent by wireless, and communication was constantly maintained both between the flag-ships and the vessels of their fleets and between the flag-ships and the shore. Marconi's invention had again proved itself.

The wireless early demonstrated its great value as a means of saving life at sea. Lightships off the English coast were equipped with the wireless and were thus enabled to warn ships of impending storms, and on several occasions the wireless was used to summon aid from the shore when ships were sinking because of accidents near the lightship.

Following the establishment of communication with France, Marconi increased the range of his apparatus until he was able to cover most of eastern Europe. In one of his demonstrations he sent messages to Italy. His ambition, however, was to send messages across the Atlantic, and he now attacked this stupendous task. On the coast of Cornwall, England, he began the construction of a station which should have sufficient power to send a message to America. Instead of using a single wire for his aerial, he erected many tall poles and strung a number of wires from pole to pole. The comparatively feeble batteries which had furnished the currents used in the earlier efforts were replaced with great power-driven dynamos, and converters were used instead of the induction coil. Thus was the great Poldhu station established.

Late in 1901 Marconi crossed to America to superintend the preparations there, and that he himself might be ready to receive the first message, should it prove possible to span the ocean. Signal Hill, near St. John's, Newfoundland was selected as the place for the American station. The expense of building a great aerial for the test was too great, and so dependence was had upon kites to send the wires aloft. For many days Marconi's assistants struggled with the great kites in an effort to get them aloft. At last they flew, carrying the wire to a great height. The wire was carried into a small Government building near by in which Marconi stationed himself. At his ear was a telephone receiver, this having been substituted for the relay and the Morse instrument because of its far greater sensitiveness.

Marconi had instructed his operator at Poldhu to send simply the letter "s" at an hour corresponding to 12.30 A.M. in Newfoundland. Great was the excitement and suspense in Cornwall when the hour for the test arrived. Forgetting that they were sleepy, the staff crowded about the sending key, and the little building at the foot of the ring of great masts supporting the aerial shook with the crash of the blinding sparks as the three, dots which form the letter "s" were sent forth. Even greater was the tension on the Newfoundland coast, where Marconi sat eagerly waiting for the signal. Finally it came, three faint ticks in the telephone receiver. The wireless had crossed the Atlantic. Marconi had no sending apparatus, so that it was not until the cable had carried the news that those in England knew that the message had been received.

Because Marconi had never made a statement or a claim he had not been able to prove, he had attained a reputation for veracity which made his statement that he had received a signal across the Atlantic carry weight with the scientists. Many, of course, were skeptical, and insisted that the simple signal had come by chance from some ship not far away. But the inventor pushed quietly and steadily ahead, making arrangements to perfect the system and establish it so that it would be of commercial use.

Marconi returned to England, but two months later set out for America again on the liner Philadelphia with improved apparatus. He kept in constant communication with his station at Poldhu until the ship was a hundred and fifty miles from shore. Beyond that point he could not send messages, as the sending apparatus on the ship lacked sufficient power. Messages were received, however, until the sending station was over two thousand miles away. This seemed miraculous to those on shipboard, but Marconi accepted it as a matter of course. He had equipped the Poldhu station to send twenty-one hundred miles, and he knew that it should accomplish the feat.

A large station was set up at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and regular communication was established between there and Poldhu. With the establishment of regular transatlantic communication the utility of Marconi's invention, even for work at great distances, was no longer open to question. By quiet, unassuming, conscientious work he had put another great carrier of messages at the service of the world, and he now reaped the fame and fortune which he so richly deserved.