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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.
I would have liked to have watched that. TV and learning, who'd have thought?
I thought Marconi was denied patents on the radio because they were already covered by patents from Tesla. Sorry, don't have time to look for links now.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
You are correct, but for Europe only.
Basically Marconi patented his radio circuit but actually built and sold devices using Tesla's. (Yup, lawyers today would have torn Marconi to bits.) Marconi's circuit simply didn't work. Tesla had to go each country proving this, and every single time the country revoked Marconi's patent and awarded it to Tesla. Unfortunately, the 1st world war kicked in before Tesla could do the same in the US. The US government said "hey, all your patents are belong to us", or something like that, thus preventing Tesla from setting the record straight.
It's pretty pathetic that US schools still preach the bullshit Marconi story.
Isn't it amazing that eventhough it is known that Tesla was the pioneer of radio, that Marconi gets all the credit?
I think it's just as horrible as making Buzz Aldrin the first man on the moon, eventhough we know Neil Armstrong was first.
It's clear, even today, that ambition and skill is not related to fame whatsoever. The guy with the best contacts and/or money is the winner, not the clever guy.
Check out: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/
You can experience the distinctly other-worldy feeling of the last-century long-distance radio transmission business on the Point Reyes peninsula, a couple of miles north of San Francisco. On the peninsula, near Abbot's Lagoon, there is a big radio transmission installation with several antenna masts. Looking at the masts in fog and mist brings pictures from another time to mind of ships at sea, men in wireless offices and cabins, hunched over morse keys, tapping out important business telegrams to receivers overseas and life-saving messages to ships at sea.
The station started as a Marconi installation, and ceased operation as an MCI maritime radio site in 1997. On the other side of the peninsula, AT&T operates another shore-to-ship station. There is not too much to see at the stations themselves, but visiting Point Reyes is interesting enought in its own right -- so go and marvel at the radio masts if the weather is bad, which is just too likely most of the time.
-- H. Wilker
Of course, they all built on the work of people like Tesla. Fessenden knew the physics better than Marconi, but Marconi knew how to sell it. Sound familiar?
Is this sig nificant?
I think we should also remember and see the amazing coincidence that on 12/12/1991 the first web page was served by TBL. The web has now become more important than radio or tv for delivering information and communicating - as witnessed by the very existance of slashdot.org.
I love the way history has such interesting coincidences!
Actually, the convoluted history of Marconi companies is pretty much impossible to track down. The Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company (established in 1897) changed it's name to Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company in 1900. It merged with the Eastern Telegraph Company in 1929 to become Imperial and International Communications. However, the manufacturing assets were not part of this merger. From this point it gets hazy; we now have 2 companies, one carrying on the Marconi name (manufacturing); the other (incorporating the original Marconi company) without a mention of Marconi in it's corporate title, despite the fact Marconi himself was part of it. Over the years, each company became part of literally dozens of corporations; some merged with others, some went broke, some had "Marconi" in the corporate title and others did not, etc. Don't read too much into the GEC-Marconi name.
Does anyone know how these early long distance radios worked? IIRC, vacuum tubes were not invented until a later date. Was there any kind of amplification used? Did they use oscillators, or was it still just a 'spark gap' kind of thing?
Seems I recall learning a long time ago that Marconi, didn't really "invent" radio, but expanded on other peoples works (specically Hertz) I shutter to think of the results (or lack of) if he had to work under current US Copyright and Patent Law. Under US copyright law, Heinrich Hertz, could have obtained a copyright for life plus 75 years. He passed away in 1894 making his Hertzian waves availble for public domain in 1969. Just in time for the 70's. Imagine the 60's with no radio. There would have been no BBC (founded in 1921), No NPR, and no Wolfman Jack.