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Progressive Era Hacker Griefed Marconi Demonstration

Posted by samzenpus on from the trolling-through-the-ages dept.

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."

3 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toilet by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  2. Re:Maskelyne, also great inventor of the pay toile by arth1 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. He was a MAGICIAN, not musician by Maow · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...