a radio anniversary

[Chuck Murcko]

I think very few besides Marconi believed that the experiment could 
work, IP issues aside. Electromagnetic waves travel in a straight line, 
and physics at the time was only just beginning to understand the 
components of atoms. Quantum physics was in its infancy. Scientists 
could demonstrate that over-the-horizon radio transmission was 
impossible. That's my salient point.

Marconi's company's skeptical board of directors made him move the 
reception site from Cape Cod (where you can just barely make out the 
ruins of some of the receiving towers) to St. John's Newfoundland -- the 
shortest distance from the transmitter site in Cornwall (about 1800 
miles) where you could still claim trans-Atlantic transmission.

The first transmission was the Morse code for the letter 'S' - dot dot 
dot. Three dots -- chosen because the transmitter could not sustain the 
power output needed to send dashes.  It wasn't until a year later that 
both dots and dashes (hence actual messages) could be transmitted.

Chuck

On Wednesday, December 12, 2001, at 02:30 , Gavin Thomas Nicol wrote:

> On Wednesday 12 December 2001 01:33 am, Chuck Murcko wrote:
>> Yeah, and Hertz, and many others. The importance of this one is that it
>> was the first *transatlantic* radio transmission. The ionosphere was 
>> not
>> understood for decades after its effects were demonstrated here. Plus,
>> Marconi was the best businessman of early radio, as Bell was of
>> telephone. 8^)
>
> I don't think anyone could claim that Tesla was a good businessman...
>
> Marconi was just part of the crowds that have made millions by
> stealing others ideas and selling them... not the first, and certainly 
> won't
> be the last. ;-)
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> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
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Chuck Murcko
Topsail Group
http://www.topsail.org/