Guglielmo Marconi is undoubtedly one of the best known names of the twentieth century. His success, in 1901, in bridging the Atlantic by wireless revolutionised Worldwide communications and brought enormous benefits to mankind. The very idea of sending signals to the other side of the world had been dismissed as fantasy by the scientific world, most mathematicians taking the view that the curvature of the earth was an impossible obstacle. But Marconi believed they were wrong and was determined to prove it. The quest was to try his courage and fortitude to the limit but in December 1901, undaunted in the face of what seemed overwhelming odds, he received on the shores of Newfoundland signals transmitted from his station at Poldhu in Cornwall. It was a giant step in international technology, acknowledged at the time as the greatest triumph of applied science and, in modern times, likened to the success of putting a man on the moon. In 2001 a hundred years since Marconi’s Atlantic leap, a commemorative £2 coin celebrating his achievement and all that has stemmed from it. Appropriately enough, the special reverse design takes wireless waves as its theme. They feature in both the centre and outer border, while a spark of electricity linking the zeros of the date generates a radiating series of three dots, the Morse code letter S and representing the signal successfully transmitted across 1800 miles of ocean in 1901.

In 1910, in what was undoubtedly the first use of wireless leading to capture and arrest, the Captain of the Montrose, en route from Belgium to Canada, sent a message to Scotland Yard relaying his suspicions that the notorious murderer Dr Crippen, was on board. Sensationally, details of the chase were relayed to newspapers before Crippen knew he had been discovered.

But nowhere was the importance of wireless telegraphy more poignantly borne out that in 1912, the 703 survivors of the Titanic owing their lives, according to official opinions, to one man, Mr Marconi…and his wonderful invention.

The magnetic detector consists of a soft-iron band, moving by clockwork at a uniform rate of eight centimetres per second, that runs through a tube and past permanent magnets. The tube carries a primary winding connected to the aerial circuit and a secondary winding connected to headphones. When a signal is received from a spark transmitter in the primary winding this effects the magnetism which is induced in the iron band as it enters the tube. This variation of magnetism induces a current in the secondary winding and audible clicks are heard in the headphones.

Marconi 1 1/2 kw quenched spark gap transmitter. This piece of equipment was installed on the yacht Elettra. It is similar to the transmitter that was installed in the radio room of the liner Olympic, the sister ship to the Titanic. It was capable of sending messages over a distance of 4,500 miles.

1896 Application lodged for Marconi’s first British Patent No 12039 of 1896 for Hertzian Wave Telegraphy.

Sir W H Preece lectured on Marconi’s invention at Toynbee Hall.

First demonstration of Directional Wireless using Reflectors.

1897 Communication established up to 18 miles between the Needles and a steamer.

Communication up to 10 miles between Spezia and “San Martin” Wireless Telegraph and Signal Co Ltd Incorporated.

1898 Communication established between Royal Yacht “Osborne and Ladywood Cottage, Osborne.

Lord Kelvin sent first paid Radiotelegram from the Needles Station Communications up to 36 miles between the Needles Station and SS. “St Paul”.

1900 First wireless land station in Belgium opened at Lapanne 1900.

Communications up to 60 miles between SS. “Kaiser William der Grosse” and Borkum Island.

Marconi International Marine Communication Co., Ltd., incorporated.

1901 First Fan Aerials erected for experiments between Poldhu and Newfoundland.

Signals received at St John’s, Newfoundland, from Poldhu, a distance of 1,800 miles.

Station at the Lizard opened.

Wireless communication established between Niton and the Lizard, 196 miles Wireless Service inaugurated in the Hawaiin Islands.

First British ship SS. “Lake Champain,” equipped with Wireless Telegraphy.

1902 Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of Canada formed.

First Wireless message transmitted across the Atlantic.

First magnetic detector installed in Italian cruiser “Carlo Alberto”.

1903 First International Conference on Wireless Telegraphy held in Berlin.

Agreement by British Admiralty for use of Marconi System in the Navy.

1903 Wireless Telegraph Act of Great Britain passed.

Dr.J. Ambrose Fleming’s original patent for valves, No 24850. Taken out.

First Press Message transmitted across Atlantic.

1906 First high power Directional Aerial used at Clifden.

1907 Transatlantic Station at Clifden and Glace Bay opened for public service.

1908 Russian Company of Wireless Telegraphs and Telephones formed.

1909 British Coast Stations taken over by the P.M.G.

1912 S.S. Titanic struck iceberg and sank, Radio used to summon assistance.

International Radiotelegraph Convention signed in London.

1913 London Wireless Club inaugurated (the nucleus of The Wireless Society of London and the Radio Society

1914 First Presidential Address to the Wireless Society of London.

1915 Radiotelephonic communication effected between Arlington, U.S.A. and the Eiffel Tower.

Communication established between San Francisco and Japan via Honolulu.

1916 Regulation Published making Wireless Telegraphy compulsory on British vessels of 3,000 tons and over.

1920 Communication established between an aeroplane in flight to Paris and a telephone subscriber in London.

1921 Demonstration of Duplex Radiotelephony between London and Amsterdam.

1922 British Broadcasting Co Ltd incorporated.

The Wireless Society of London changed its title to The Radio Society of Great Britain.

Radio telephony’ became practicable through the perfecting of the thermionic valve during the 1914-18 war. The presence of residual gases made early valves unreliable and short-lived, but in 1913 an American scientist, Irving Langmuir, described how to achieve a near-perfect vacuum, and early in the war French military scientists applied his techniques to producing a successful three-electrode (‘triode’) valve that came to be known as the ‘R’ valve.
In some ways resembling a light-bulb, it was mass produced in electric-lamp factories, and by 1918 one French factory was making 1,000 valves a day, From 1916 the valve was also made in Britain at the Ediswan, BTH and Osram lamp factories. When the war ended large stocks of R valves were disposed of through the ‘surplus’ market and became the mainstay of amateur experimenter’s receivers.

Senatore Marconi is regarded by the layman
as the inventor of Wireless. He was, in fact, the first person to put Wireless into the realm of a practical means of communication rather than a laboratory experiment. Many other names must be associated with the earlier development of the theory of communication without wires.

Experiments in telephony by wireless were first carried out by the Marconi Company in 1906, and the development of this side of wireless to world-wide telephone communication and to Broadcasting is common knowledge. Regular broadcasting started in England in 1922

Firstly, sixty-three years ago in 1864, Clerk Maxwell, basing his theories upon the experimental researches of Michael Faraday, gave to the world his “dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field,” which he supported with mathematical proofs, and thus paved the way for subsequent investigations.

It was not until twenty-four years after Clerk Maxwell had predicted the possibility of producing ether waves that they were actually produced by Heinrich Hertz, a German. Hertz succeeded in creating electric waves and in detecting their presence, thus confirming Clerk Maxwell’s predictions.

It should be realised that practical “wireless communication” over any distances had not been achieved nor had “tuning” been discovered (i.e. it was not possible to pick out a particular wireless transmission from a number which were being made on different frequencies). In the following ten years however, great advances were made-particularly in the discovery of various devices which would respond to the Hertzian waves and thus indicate their presence at a distance.

In 1896 Marconi applied for his first patent for a coherer and decohering circuits intended for the reception of wireless signals

In the 1898 naval manoeuvres wireless telegraphy was carried out up to a distance of sixty miles, Captain Jackson,R.N. (now Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Jackson) collaborating with Senatore Marconi and the British Post Office.

Although as early as 1889 Lodge foreshadowed the principles of “tuning” circuits to respond to a desired frequency by his famous “Syntonic Jars” experiment, it was not until 1897 that he took out a patent based on this earlier work, in which he stated the fundamental principles of “tuning,” which, it is interesting to note, are, or should be, incorporated in every broadcast receiver of to-day.

At this time, also both Lodge and Marconi were using metal cones and cylinders in place of the “aerial” and earth as we know them to-day; but in the succeeding years various other forms of “aerial” were used, which approached more nearly to present-day practice.

From 1897 onwards Marconi set up many “long”-distance records culminating in signalling across the Atlantic from Poldhu in Cornwall to St John’s, Newfoundland a distance of 1,800 miles. At the receiving station in Newfoundland Marconi used as an aerial a single wire which was held aloft by kites, and as a detector a mercury type of coherer then in use in the Italian Navy.

All these early experiments were carried out by means of “spark” transmission, In this system, which, in modified forms, is still in use to-day 1927, especially in ships, a condenser is charged to a high voltage, and allowed to discharge through a spark-gap in series with an inductance, thus producing a train of waves for each spark.

The frequency of the waves will depend on the value of the condenser and inductance, while the number of waves trains per second obviously is the same as the number of sparks per second. Each separate wave train dies away before the next one is produced, and thus “spark” transmitters are said to produce “damped,” waves – as opposed to “undamped,” or “ continuous” waves. The latter type of wave is now basic to all modern means of communication.

Earlier receivers all used a coherer for reception; but from the year 1900 onwards many other devices, to numerous to describe in detail, were invented, each adding to the knowledge of the art and its general efficiency. To mention two. Firstly, the magnetic detector, on which many scientists worked, was patented in a commercial form by Marconi in 1902 and used by Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company in some of the ship installations right up to the Great War.

Wireless telegraphy and telephony have become so completely recognized as an integral part of our complex existence as to render it wellnigh impossible to realize that it is barely twenty-six years ago since Marconi and his colleagues were struggling valiantly to persuade the dot dash to travel over a distance of 250 feet.

Now signals are being flung into the air to speed round the globe, and they cover the 25,000 miles in the fraction of a second with monotonous immunity from incident.

When transatlantic wireless telegraphy settled down to its commercial stride, there came an apparent lull. True the distances over which such communication was being maintained were ever widening, while it was equally well known that European technicians behind the scenes had already achieved with the human voice over relatively short distances what they had accomplished with the dot and dash of the Morse code.

Then came the European War. Wireless was indispensable to the conduct of naval and military operations, and the curtain of secrecy was promptly rung down, and public interest in the invention was stifled.

The first break in the general silence came in October, 1915, and curiously enough it came from the United States of America. The prime movers in this determined development were the American Telephone and Telegraph Company. Wireless telephony had naturally attracted the attention of this undertaking from its identification with destinies of the Bell telephone.

Many devices of an intricate character had been evolved and perfected; and several weeks of ceaseless daily experiments had rendered it possible to talk between two points, 1,000 miles apart, almost as much ease as conversing across a telephone between two floors of an office building.

Convinced of the efficiency of the apparatus conceived, the private interests approached the naval authorities with a view to co-operation in a big experiment through Arlington, where the navy had erected a powerful wireless telegraphic station. The administration acquiesced and offered every practical assistance.

The objective of the telephone company’s engineers was to talk through the air between Arlington and San Francisco a distance exceeding 2,000 miles, but at the same time there was a powerful station at Honolulu, Hawaii, it was decided to fling the voice as far as that point if at all possible.

The preparations occupied several weeks, but by the end of September all was ready for the supreme test. It was decided to make this noon (New York) time on the 29th, and instructions were sent out from New York toArlington, near Washington, Mare, Island (San Francisco) and San Diego, California, Darien and Honolulu to be on the quivive. Mr Theodore Vail, the President of the company, seated in his New York office, turned to speak into the ordinary office transmitter.

His words sped across the land wire to Arlington, where the weak telephone current was harnessed to the much more powerful currents surging through the aerial. Conversation was conducted only in one direction, but the transcontinental telephone wire from San Francisco was open to carry the reply immediately, while cable and telegraph wires connected the other stations. Other messages trickled in from the other stations to similar effect, and the next morning came a belated cablegram from Honolulu repeating the words which had been spoken and faithfully received after speeding 4,900 miles through the air.

This achievement, as had been anticipated, created world-wide interest, but was only the prelude to another startling feat. The engineers who had evolved the apparatus were now anxious to see if it would operate across the Atlantic to Europe. The only station adapted was the Eiffel Tower, but this unfortunately, was being pressed to its uttermost limits day and night to fulfil the multifarious requirements of the war. Nevertheless, two engineers of the American company, left for Europe resolved to span the Atlantic with the human voice if at all possible.

By October 12th tuning-up had been carried to such a degree as to permit a supreme test to be made, after several attempts, on October 20th the communication was so clear that the American engineer at the Eiffel Tower recognised the voice of his colleague speaking at Arlington, 3,800 miles away.

For the maintenance of indispensable overseas communications, the guidance of maritime traffic, as well as the movement of naval vessels, high-powered stations were built and equipped with apparatus which recorded wide departure from accepted or pre-war conceptions of design. In fact the war may be said to have completely transformed wireless communication.

Under the conditions which prevailed eight years ago and, indeed, ruling in many stations today wireless was a glutton for electricity, especially when long distances had to be bridged, while a station from the noise reigned could hardly be described as a “Haven of Rest”. Now all is changed; the modern wireless room is as quiet at the reading-room of a national library.

The word “valve “ is sonorous and weighty in its technicality, and although its application in connexion with Professor Fleming’s invention is pedantically correct, it conveys to the uninitiated nothing of the true design, operation, or functions of the apparatus. But the colloquialism, the “Alladin’s lamp of wireless, suffices to lift the haze of mystery, while possibly the American description, “light tubes,” is even more informative. Truth to tell, the thermionic valve is nought but a metallic filament electric incandescent lamp, though vastly different from any popular conception of such illuminating device.

The bulbs are exhausted to a very high degree—far higher than is ever attempted for other commercial purposes, with the possible exception of X-ray tubes. When the current is switched on, a strange, even uncanny, radiance is shed, a kind of phosphorescence of a pale greenish tinge, as if moonlight had been bottled by the electrician to enable him to conduct his operations. But the illuminations is a secondary factor; it is merely the outward and visible sign guiding the technician in his work because, should the colour tone vary, he realizes that the lamp is not effectively fulfilling its purpose. In truth only a very little illumination is radiated by the globe owing to the presence of the anode or surrounding metallic cylinder1.

Baffling the Wireless Interceptor.

Automatic transmitting and receiving apparatus giving abnormally high-speed operation - the transmissions of 1,800 or more Morse elemnts per minute-renders it impossible for the human ear to receive them intelligibly. Photograph shows the reception of high-speed commercial traffic at the London office of the Marconi Company.

A Pressure of 20,000 Volts

The lamps are called upon to bear heavy electric duty such as no other lamp has to face. The incandescent bulb lighting our homes, and the arcs or gas-filled lamps illuminating our streets, will render service so long as the current does not exceed 110 or 220 volts, according to the pressure for which they have been designed, but the “wireless tubes” are called upon to stand up to charges of 20,000 volts. As may be imagined, the filament must necessarily be of a substantial character, while all other details be of robust construction. Bearing in mind the exacting duty that is demanded of them, and the heavy currents which they have to carry, their life is impressive—already upwards of 3,000 hours or approximately four months of continuous day and night service is expected from them.

The functions of this fascinating valve are threefold. First, it is invested with the capacity to generate oscillations in the ether to meet with the essential requirements of wireless transmission. Secondly, it acts with equal facility in the reverse direction for receiving—converts oscillating current into direct current. This is invaluable characteristic, because direct current is indispensable to the operation of the telephone. Consequently, the lamp facilitates the task of rectifying or converting the current from its essential form for the one into that requisite for the other field.. Thirdly, the valve amplifies the signal. At times a signal just contrives, as it were, to stagger into the receiving station; it is so weak after its long journey through the ether, as almost to defy identification. But the valve picks it up, rejuvenates it magnifies it, and so enables it to be readily recognized and translated to its designed position in the fabrication of the message. There are no limits to which this amplification can be carried, in the theoretical sense, so that, generally speaking, it will be seen that the transformation which this valve has wrought in wireless communication is truly startling.

The Marconi wireless station at Carnarvon, showing the tubular masts, each 400 feet high.

Fashioned from glass, the valve may be fragile in the relative sense. Take the power issue alone. By the aid of the valve it is possible to conduct communication over a distance with from one-half to one-third the volume of electricity demanded under the previous methods of operation. It will be recalled that during December, 1921 wireless telegraphic messages were dispatched from the high powered Marconi station at Carnarvon to Australia direct; that is to say, there was no relaying at any intermediate point. To maintain this communication over a distance of 12,500 miles about 160 kilo-watts were absorbed. Had the familiar arc been employed for this purpose, from 300 to 450 kilowatts would have been necessary to secure the same strength of signal.

Panels of Thermionic valves at the CEFN Du Marconi wireless station. Each steel frame measures about 15 by 10 feet, and carries four rows of six "light tubes". Each valve measures 14 inches overall. This station is the most powerful in the world, and has transmitted messages direct to Australia.

An intrepid bird man of about 1912 carrying out wireless telegraphy transmission experiments whilst flying around Hendon aerodrome. In those early days, the apparatus was both primitive and cumbersome, but it is on this work that the first comprehensive system of wireless for air-craft has been founded.

Ken Yaxley, author and contents designer

Ralph Spilling Museum photography

Kusacubari.com (Ecoloop Ltd), Professional Flash & Web designers.

British Broadcasting Corporation and BBC Publications.

Louise Jamison Archivist Marconi plc.

Gordon Bussey ARHistS For his invaluable contribution to the Industry over many years and his book for the British Radio & Electronic Manufactures the “The Setmakers.”

Robert H Hawes book “Radio Art” with superb colour photographs.

Royal Mint, Louise Jamison Company Archivist Marconi plc, The Marconiphone Company Ltd, British Broadcasting Corporation Publications, Cassell & Company Ltd, Titanic.com, map. Rootsweb.com, painting Titanic sinking, S.O.S painting, Blackpool Corporation.