Empires of the airwaves

The tragedy of the RMS Titanic that fateful night of 14 April 1912 could have claimed all 2,205 passengers. The Californian, another passenger ship, was within sight 10 miles away when the Titanic struck the iceberg,but missed the distress flares of the Titanic; nor was its new wireless radio turned on. The passenger ship Carpathia, 58 miles from the doomed Titanic, did hear the wireless distress call and rescued 705 survivors adrift in lifeboats.

Communication by wireless had just emerged because Guglielmo Marconi discovered an application for Hertzian waves. The commercial intent was profit from transmission and receipt of messages. The Titanic was equipped with a wireless system to derive revenue from passenger ‘MarconiGrams’. The Titanic tragedy brought wireless to everyone’s attention and spurred the growth of the radio, communications and electronics industries that today is believed to provide the greatest number of jobs in the history of civilisation.

In 1897, Marconi registered his Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company Limited in Chelmsford, England and started selling transmitters to shipping companies. In 1899, he travelled to the US to demonstrate wireless reporting of the America’s Cup yacht race between the Columbia and the Shamrock. The US Navy had him demonstrate wireless telegraphy between two cruisers 35 miles apart, and eventually installed his wireless systems on all military ships.

By 1900, Marconi had sent a message across the English Channel. Before this time, intercontinental messages were sent by telegraphic cables strung along the ocean floor. In 1901, Marconi built a receiving station at Cape Cod. When a storm damaged the station, he moved to Newfoundland to start tests on Signal Hill in St John’s. Marconi attached an antenna to a kite 180 feet above ground and, on the 12th hour of the 12th day of the 12th month of 1901, he received the first transatlantic radio signal. Marconi heard in his earphones the dot–dot–dot ‘S’ of the Morse code, three dots that ushered in a new world.

With that transmission, Marconi pioneered wireless technology, becoming the father of radio, the grandfather of mobile phones and wireless internet on computers and the ancestor of television and microwave communication. In an instant, the human race was able to be linked.

A monument stands on Cape Cod, shuddering in the salt-sprayed wind, to commemorate that abortive first station over 100 years ago when pioneers built the foundation for empires of the air.

Frank Romano is professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology

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