Inventions; Science; Technology -- Social aspects; Technology and civilization
Submarine and land telegraphy used to look on wireless, the youngest
sister, as the Cinderella of their name, but she has surpassed both
and captured the honors of the family. It was in 1898 that Marconi
made his first remarkable success in sending messages from England to
France. The English station was at South Foreland and the French near
Boulogne. The distance was thirty-two miles across the British channel.
This telegraphic communication without wires was considered a wonderful
feat at the time and excited much interest.
During the following year Marconi had so much improved his first
apparatus that he was able to send out waves detected by receivers up
to the one hundred mile limit.
In 1900 communication was established between the Isle of Wight and
the Lizard in Cornwall, a distance of two hundred miles.
Up to this time the only appliances employed were induction coils
giving a ten or twenty inch spark. Marconi and others perceived the
necessity of employing greater force to penetrate the ether in order
to generate stronger electrical waves. Oil and steam engines and other
appliances were called into use to create high frequency currents and
those necessitated the erection of large power stations. Several were
erected at advantageous points and the wireless system was fairly
established as a new agent of communication.
In December, 1901, at St. John's, Newfoundland, Marconi by means of
kites and balloons set up a temporary aerial wire in the hope of being
able to receive a signal from the English station in Cornwall. He had
made an arrangement with Poldhu station that on a certain date and at
a fixed hour they should attempt the signal. The letter S, which in
the Morse code consists of three successive dots, was chosen. Marconi
feverishly awaited results. True enough on the day and at the time
agreed upon the three dots were clicked off, the first signal from
Europe to the American continent. Marconi with much difficulty set up
other aerial wires and indubitably established the fact that it was
possible to send electric waves across the Atlantic. He found, however,
that waves in order to traverse three thousand miles and retain
sufficient energy on their arrival to affect a telephonic wave-detecting
device must be generated by no inordinate power.
These experiments proved that if stations were erected of sufficient
power transatlantic wireless could be successfully carried on. They
gave an impetus to the erection of such stations.
On December 21, 1902, from a station at Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Marconi
sent the first message by wireless to England announcing success to
his colleagues.
The following January from Wellsfleet, Cape Cod, President Roosevelt
sent a congratulatory message to King Edward. The electric waves
conveying this message traveled 3,000 miles over the Atlantic following
round an arc of forty-five degrees of the earth on a great circle, and
were received telephonically, by the Marconi magnetic receiver at
Poldhu.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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