The experiments begun at Newfoundland were transferred to Nova
Scotia, and at Glace Bay in 1902 was established a station from
which messages were transmitted and experimental work carried on
until its work was temporarily interrupted by fire in 1909. Here
four wooden lattice towers, each 210 feet in height, were built at
the corner of a square 200 feet on a side, and a conical
arrangement of 400 copper wires supported on stays between the
tops of the towers and connected in the middle at the generating
station was built. Additional machinery was installed and at the
same time a station at Cape Cod for commercial work was built. In
December, 1902, regular communication was established between
Glace Bay and Poldhu, but it was only satisfactory from Canada to
England as the apparatus at the Poldhu station was less powerful
and efficient than that installed in Canada. The transmission of a
message from President Roosevelt to King Edward marked the
practical beginning of trans-Atlantic wireless telegraphy. By this
time a new device for the detection of messages was employed, as
the coherer we have described even in its improved forms was found
to possess its limitations of sensitiveness and did not respond
satisfactorily to long distance signals. A magnetic detector was
devised by Marconi while other inventors had contrived
electrolytic, mercurial, thermal, and other forms of detector,
used for the most part with a telephone receiver in order to
detect minute variations in the current caused by the reception of
the electro-magnetic waves. With one of Marconi's magnetic
detectors signals from Cape Cod were read at Poldhu.
In 1903 wireless telegraphy had reached such a development that
the transmission of news messages was attempted in March and April
of that year. But the service was suspended, owing to defects
which manifested themselves in the apparatus, and in the meantime
a new station in Ireland was erected. But there was no cessation
of the practical experiments carried on, and in 1903 the Cunard
steamship Lucania received, during her entire voyage across from
New York to Liverpool, news transmitted direct from shore to
shore. In the meantime intercommunication between ships had been
developed and the use of wireless in naval operations was
recognized as a necessity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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