100 Years Since The First Transatlantic Broadcast

Diarmaid O'Loughlin writes "It's the 100th year since the first comunications over the pond The Marconi Radio Club and The Falmouth Amateur Radio Association Amateur Radio operators are making plans to celebrate a Marconi world historical event. December 12, 2001 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first Trans-Atlantic radio transmission." The BBC is also carrying the story as well. Embedded Geek adds a link to coverage on stardate.com, pointing out that "there will be events in the ham community to commemorate it, including a reenactment broadcast (look here under 'Marconi's Celebrations' for others)." This would be a nice day to swing by the Cape Cod station, too.

Comments

100 years is enough wasted bandwidth

[typical geek]

While ham and shortwave radios have fulfilled a necessary nitch for years, decades even, it's time to reallocate those wasted bandwidths for more prosaic uses. With the widepsread use of portable satellite phones and uplinks, even the dubious claim of disaster aid practiced in tedious field days seems redundant. Would you prefer to call for help over a high quality digital uplink through a million dollar sattelite connection, or the hope that your 50 watt call through the ether gets picked up by some obsessive compulsive who's more interested in your equipment and your location (for another pushpin in their world map/log book) than your emergency need.

I think I speak for most geeks here when I'd rather have wireless broadband anywhere I travel for my laptop, rather than a huge amount of radiowave real estate being squatted one by ham-nerds who are being rendered superflous by modern digital technology. Our interstates are no longer designed for Model T's, why should our airwaves?

First Tesla

[PsiPsiStar]

Hey, lets all celebrate 100 years of intellecutal property theft or at least the questionable appropriation by Marconi of technology that many consider Tesla's.

http://www.mercury.gr/tesla/marcen.html