Progressive Era Hacker Griefed Marconi Demonstration

nbauman writes "In June 1903, Gugliemo Marconi and his partner Ambrose Flemming were about to give the first demonstration of long-range wireless communication at the Royal Institution in London, which, Marconi said, could be sent in complete confidentiality with no fear of the messages being hijacked. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a huge mysterious wireless pulse strong enough to take over the carbon-arc projector and make it sputter messages in Morse Code. First, it repeated the word 'Rats' over and over again (abusive at that time). Then it tapped out, 'There was a young fellow of Italy, who diddled the public quite prettily.' Further rude epithets followed. It was Nevil Maskelyne, a stage musician and inventor who was annoyed because Marconi's patents prevented him from using wireless. It was the first hacking, to demonstrate an insecure system."

Comments

Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toilet

[elrous0]

That's not a joke, BTW. So every time you really have to defecate and some greedy business or city has installed a pay toilet, you can thank John Nevil Maskelyne--the noble inventor who pioneered the idea of charging people a penny to take a shit.

And, as an American, god bless you Committee to End Pay Toilets in America--for keeping this scourge mostly out of the land of the free crapper.

Re:Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toile

[arth1]

That wasn't the guy who hacked Marconi, it was his father.

Re:Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toile

[roman_mir]

ORLY?

Pecunia non olet (supposedly 70CE).

Re:Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toile

[EdIII]

When you got to go, you got to go.

Expecting a homeless person to hold for an hour or so till they find somebody willing to let them use the toilet is expecting too much. Are they going to walk around with signs, "Will work for a place to shit?".

Reminds of the story with Gerard Depardieu peeing on the plane. He is an older guy, and when you got to go, you really have to go. Waiting 20-30 minutes is not optional. He whipped it out and just started peeing in the aisle. Better than peeing in his own pants sitting down for certain.

Bottom line is that if you don't give a human being an option on where to to put "it", "it" is just going to be put anywhere.

Apple bashed Marconi was a thief

[Whiteox]

There is no way that Marconi invented anything. He was just an early Steve Jobs, so no wonder someone rained on his parade.
There are too many references, but check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventor_of_radio.
My favourite quote about this was Tesla when he said: "Marconi [... was] using seventeen of my patents"
The first transmissions were around 1872, with most of the work done by Mahlon Loomis with his 'wireless telegraph'.

Re:Apple bashed Marconi was a thief

[cusco]

The full quote, which Tesla said when informed by a reporter that Marconi had managed to transmit a wireless message across the Atlantic, was "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." IIRC, he then informed the reporter that if he had received the funding he had requested to build a receiving station in France he would have done the same thing five years earlier.

Not a musician

[Anonymous Coward]

Maskelyne (of the famed duo Maskelyne and Devant) was a stage magician, not musician.

He was a MAGICIAN, not musician

[Maow]

From TFS:

Nevil Maskelyne, a stage musician

From TFA:

a mustachioed 39-year-old British music hall magician.

Having said that, he may also have been a musician, but the magician part was how he used his interest in wireless technology:

He would use Morse code in "mind-reading" magic tricks to secretly communicate with a stooge. He worked out how to use a spark-gap transmitter to remotely ignite gunpowder. And in 1900, Maskelyne sent wireless messages between a ground station and a balloon 10 miles away. But, as author Sungook Hong relates in the book Wireless, his ambitions were frustrated by Marconi's broad patents, leaving him embittered towards the Italian. Maskelyne would soon find a way to vent his spleen.

Also, I've highlighted the most-relevant part to today's world: he was frustrated by overly-broad patents.

Plus ca change...

Re:A little mischief has always had its virtues.

[GrpA]

My thoughts too, but Tesla was busy at the time and it was after Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1911 that Tesla finally sued Marconi and Won.

Marconi fooled the American public pretty well and to this day, most people still believe Marconi invented the Radio Telegraph - probably including most people on Slashdot.

The Radio Telegraph was invented by Tesla. The Radio ( as we know it today ) was invented by Fessenden.

Neither really got the credit they deserve - Marconi had the political connections he needed to abuse the US patent system... I guess nothing has changed in 112 years.

GrpA