Abstract
DEC. 12 was the thirtieth anniversary of Marchese Marconi's first successful attempt to transmit a radio signal across the Atlantic. In 1901 there were no valves, no amplifiers, no sensitive receivers, and no means of making continuous waves. All that was available for transmission was a system of damped waves produced by irregular spark discharges; the coherers then used for reception were very insensitive. In 1900 a station was erected at Poldhu in Cornwall and another at Cape Cod, Mass. In designing these stations, Marconi had the help of Sir Ambrose Fleming, R. N. Vyvyan, and W. S. Entwistle. When the Poldhu station was nearly completed, a terrific gale wrecked the tall masts that had been erected. Although greatly discouraged, Marconi erected a much less ambitious aerial system. In November 1901 another gale destroyed the antenna system at the Cape Cod station. Marconi then determined to try aerials suspended by kites and balloons. As the letter ‘s’ is easy to transmit, he arranged that a series of these signals should be emitted at a prearranged speed from the Poldhu station during certain hours of the day. After several unsuccessful trials, Marconi heard three faint clicks in the telephone at 12.30 P.M. on Dec. 12. They were also heard by his assistant. These signals led to the building of the high-power radio station at Glace Bay in 1902, and at the beginning of 1903 commercial radio communication across the Atlantic was established. Remembering that in those days physicists and mathematicians did not know of the existence of a conducting layer in the upper atmosphere, and that consequently most of them anticipated that no result would follow from these costly experiments—and did not hesitate to say so—it will be seen how much indebted we are to Marconi's pioneering work.
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[News and Views]. Nature 128, 1031–1036 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/1281031b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1281031b0