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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.
Then it goes on to say: "the Marconi operation at this location was initiated by the young inventor in 1901. However, in December of that year, due to a number of setbacks, he had to use temporary facilities on St. John's, Newfoundland to prove his theory--wireless could cross the Atlantic!"
Doesn't that present a complete turn around from their previous statement?
In any event, the reenactment link has it correct with: "December 12, 2001 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first Trans-Atlantic radio transmission. That signal was transmitted across the Atlantic from Poldhu, Cornwall England to St John's, Newfoundland."
That would be St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
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.
Unfortunatly this cable failed after only 3 weeks. A cable laid in 1866 by the Great Eastern remained in operation until 1872, but since there were other cables in operation by then, there has been continous transatlantic communication since 1866.
Actually I woke up this morning to CBC Radio One's hour long special on Marconi, the man and the mission. I was quite nice. In fact I gave up a little study time for it.
It really has been a long time relatively. Considering that transatlantic communication, especially transatlantic routing of IP packets, is more than commonplace now, its hard to imagine people still struggling to get a signal to each other over the atlantic. Stories like this really help to remind us that it wasn't always this easy.
It is nonetheless an appropriate day to celebrate though I do wonder how quickly they started getting spam on their lines?
and I still can't get over the air radio in my cubical. Oh, what dark times we live in. :)
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You can spell team without an I, but not without me!
I totally disagree with your comments. Amateur radio still provides a usefull service in more ways than one.
First of all, the amateur radio operators compose a network of communications that the most completely decentralized form of communication available. While cell phones, satalites, and internet connections are all very hi-tech, they all have central points for failure. It is virtually impossible to knock out amateur communications without killing almost every operator! One or two switching stations or a satallite and cell phones are dead.
Secondly, many of the 'ham-nerds' you speak of are some of the most brilliant electircal engineering type people I have ever met. Many technologies that we use today can be attributed to amateur radio, including the roots for wireless connectivity such as 802.11 (ever heard of packet radio?). You can also find the roots of cell phones in amateur radio.
Thirdly, amateur radio operators provide many valuable services to the community including community service, education, and Disaster Relief (WTC).
Sigh.... what's being celebrated here has nothing to do with who invented the radio (take a look at the articles, there's nothing mentioned about Marconi having invented it)
What's being celebrated here is quite simple: It's the first ever wireless trans-Atlantic communication, which is quite clearly Marconi's. Even the site you link to admits that Marconi was the one who performed this feat. Sure, Marconi may not have been the first to invent the radio (he may not, as you point out, even have invented a version of it at all) But without him performing this experiment, it's unlikely we would be in the same place we are today. After all, the radio station in New York that Tesla was building to transmit electric signals and electricity to the entire planet didn't start construction until 1901, the same year Marconi made his transmission. From the sounds of it, I'm not sure if Tesla's project would have worked, even if he hadn't run out of funding.
Summary: Tesla beat Marconi to the radio, but that's not what is being discussed here. Marconi made the first trans-Atlantic broadcast, that IS being discussed, and is most definately a fact.
"I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
The ham bands above the shortwave spectrum are perhaps a more interesting target, until you consider that many of them are shared (900 MHZ, parts of the 75cm band) and others are tiny (The most popular 2 meter band is only 4 MHz wide).
The ham radio bands are scattered through the spectrum (to allow for experimentation at different wavelengths) and thus do not represent any contiguous chunk of bandwidth.
Finally, ham radio has a number of justifications - often more important than the desire for bandwidth by internet nerds to be first to reply to a
You may think that the latter is superfluous, but it is still very useful. For example, the Hurricane Watch Net (www.hwn.org) provides valuable assistance to the National Hurricane Center and has been given awards by them and other organizations. Why? Because we communicate with people who do not have sat-phones and whose cell-phones (if they have any) have been disabled by the hurricane. We provide a central communications frequency for those who need to coordinate information on a hurricane - we have had rescue helicopters, warships, hurricane hunter aircraft, ships-in-distress, government research organizations and state department entities contact us in emergencies (contact with non-ham entities is only legal in an emergency). They wouldn't do that if they had the sort of communications you envision.
Likewise, the Skywarn organizations provides invaluable life-saving data to the NWS through ham radio. Why ham radio and not cell phone? Ham radio provides trained operators that filter information for NWS. It also provides a controlled shared frequency for coordinating communications among the many spotters. NWS invests significant resources to train and operate the spotter networks.
Hams help with many other disasters - partly because we can deploy equipment in unplanned for situations, partly because we have redundant and highly varied communications assets, and partly because we often become an inter-organizational communications mechanism for organizations that don't have interoperability.
Ham radio also provides a last-ditch communications method. When your phones are overloaded, or your other methods are out, the *simplest* transmitter to construct or own (if you are poor in the third world) is a CW (morse code) transmitter. All it requires is an oscillator that can be turned on and off, and an easily made antenna.
Ham radio also helps young people learn useful technical and organizational skills.
My father started his electronics interest with ham radio, went on to invent the VLF submarine antenna (his doctoral thesis) and is a respected scientist.
I started with an interest in ham radio. It led me to jobs (while in high school and college) as a broadcast engineer. When I joined the Navy, I was already a trained radio operator, and thus was able to become an airborne radio operator without going to a one year school for it. I got into engineering in college because of ham radio, and that let me into computers, and hence 35 years of computer geekdom. A person met through ham radio led me to group of computer geeks whom I have worked with for the last 30 years. Through ham radio contacts, I have met people in many interesting positions, making friends and also getting personal tours of such places as the Stanford Linear Accelerator and the Multiple Mirror Telescope. Ham radio led me to start my current company, which originally made embedded controller based ham radio repeater controllers. Ham radio has led to adventures including a NASA research expedition, disaster relief in Mexico City after the earthquake, and various other things.
Ham radio operators have developed new technology for use in ham radio, and even in this age of electronic engineering continue to do so. For example, extremely high altitude remote sensing balloons are currently a favorite hobby of some ham nerds.
The only good weather is bad weather.
The provincial government has an official site for the 100th celebrations. The local section of the IEEE is also involved in organizing the celebrations.
Here are some more websites relating to the celebrations:
Dr. Zedel taught me Ocean Acoustics last semester...
By the way, despite being way out in the Atlantic ocean, Newfoundland is a beautiful province and a wonderful place to get away if you like the outdoors, hiking, game hunting, sport fishing, whale-watching, and lots of other things.
Mozilla
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!
Tesla is credited for inventing radio by the USPTO, because his 1881 Tesla coil was able to transmit power over large distances, using high frequency electromagnetic waves (radio). His original device was not used for voice communication, but power transmission. A true pioneer, he was working on the last mile power delivery problem before we even had a power grid in the US.
In truth, Marconi received the patent originally, but the USPTO overturned Marconi's patent in 1943, three months after Tesla's death. This patent dispute lasted for nearly half a decade! Marconi was lauded, while Tesla died pennyless.
Tesla was the prototypical geek, the antithesis of Edison and Marconi. Both were showmen, not scientific inventors, which greatly irritated Tesla. Also, because English was not his native language (Serbo-Croat), he avoided any public speaking, as such "demonstrations" by slavic immigrants at the time warranted visits from the KKK. Tesla was poorly treated in a time when no equal opportunity existed for eastern european immigrants.
-- Len
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?
I'm not old...and I know about Linux. But you do have a good point about the lack of young people in the hobby. However, think of the older guys as mentors...the know A LOT. Join a club, if your not already in one, pick out an older person that knows about the hobby, and get every last tidbit of information out of them...that's why they are there. KB3GBA/AE
The overturning of Marconi's patent was due to the fact that Marconi's company had sued the US Government for patent infringement during World War I. The quickest way of solving the problem was overturning the patent, and so they did.