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Marconi's demonstration of a practical system for generating and receiving long-range radio signals sparked interest worldwide. It also resulted in numerous competing experimenters and companies throughout the industrialized world, including a number of important figures in the United States, led by Reginald Fessenden and Lee DeForest. FIRST DECADE OVERVIEW In the first decade of the 1900s, the United States Navy was the largest potential customer for the fledgling radio industry. The Navy initially sought to buy equipment from the Marconi companies, but was unable to agree on terms, so instead made purchases from an assortment of German and U.S. firms, thereby helping to finance numerous competitors to Marconi. Linwood S. Howeth's 1963 book, History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, includes detailed information about this period in the chapters The Unhurried Search for Radio Equipment, Early Expansion of Naval Radio Communications, and The Early Radio Industry and the United States Navy. W. J. CLARKE AND THE UNITED STATES ELECTRICAL SUPPLY COMPANY One of the first U.S. firms to sell radio equipment was the United States Electrical Supply Company, located in New York City -- in the December 29, 1897 Electrical Review, Commercial Wireless Telegraphy quoted the company's general manager, W. J. Clarke, as saying the company was now selling apparatus capable of transmitting signals for 10 miles (16 kilometers). The April 2, 1898 Scientific American, in Wireless Telegraphy, featured a favorable review of Clarke's offerings, claiming that, in spite of Marconi's advances, "It has been left, however, for the American inventor to design apparatus suitable to the requirements of wireless telegraphy in this country". Actually, Clarke's equipment had a decided similarity to Marconi's, although it apparently did not work as well. In a public demonstration that actually showed more showmanship than technical prowess, New Way to Fire Mines in the May 7, 1898 New York Times reviewed how Clarke's apparatus had been employed to ring bells and blow up model ships over short distances, and (very optimistically) suggested that the equipment had progressed to the point that "he is now prepared to send messages between New York and Chicago". In the May 24, 1898 edition of the same paper, Accident in the Garden reported that an unsuccessful test had managed to blow up a desk being used by Thomas Edison, Jr., son of the famous inventor, who was working with Clarke. A year later, the May 27, 1899 Scientific American, reported in Wireless Telegraphy that Army Signal Corps tests in Washington, D.C. had produced only limited success, and the Corps were planning further tests in New York, using Clarke equipment. After this the firm would have only a very small role in early radio development, although years later, Application of Wireless Telegraphy for Domestic Purposes in the February 25, 1905 Electrical Review reported that the author was using a small transmitter "built for me by Mr. W. J. Clarke of the United States Electrical Company, of Mt. Vernon, N. Y." MARCONI COMPANIES In late 1899, Fred J. Cross contacted Guglielmo Marconi, and convinced the inventor to have the British firm partner with him in one of its first commercial efforts: an ambitious plan to build radiotelegraph stations on five of the Hawaiian islands -- then a U.S. territory -- to provide inter-island communication. There was a period of struggle to get the chain of stations built and operating, but eventually Marconis System in Hawaiian Islands  was reported to be in operation, as announced in the February 2, 1901 Honolulu Republican and reprinted in the Los Angeles Times -- one unusual feature of the installation was that four of the fourteen operators were women. In an 1901 overview, Wireless Telegraphy Established in Hawaii from the Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1902, W. R. Farrington recounted the problems -- which he thought were partly the responsibility of the Marconi company -- that had been encountered in the long process of getting the system functional. But after a promising start, operations were suspended, although Marconi sought to distance his company from the failure, claiming it "was wholly due to the inferior class of operators whom the Hawaiian company was ill-advised enough to employ", as quoted in one of the selections from Marconi Hawaiian Installations: 1899-1902 . The opening sections of the John Balch Statement, included in the 1917 hearings on a proposed radio bill, H.R. 19350, reviewed the technical and financial setbacks that had been encountered in setting up effective radio links within the islands, starting with the difficulties encountered with the original Marconi effort, followed by the eventual successful reorganization of the service.
A very visible, and -- initially -- successful endeavor occurred when the New York Herald arranged to install Marconi-equipped stations at Sankaty Head and on the U.S. Navy lightships which operated off Nantucket, Massachusetts. Radio communication with the lightship allowed New York City-bound transatlantic passenger ships to announce their impending arrival a good twelve hours before they docked. The Paris edition of the June 9, 1901 New York Herald proudly informed its readers of the plans for The "Herald" to Report Steamships at Sea By Using Marconi's Wireless Telegraph . However, the Marconi company had a strict policy of communicating only with other Marconi-equipped stations, which resulted in a formal complaint to the U.S. government by Germany, and, in view of the unwillingness of Marconi to change its policy, the government eventually had the Herald stations removed -- a review of the controversy in the July 14, 1904 New York Herald, reprinted in the Report of the Inter-Departmental Wireless Telegraphy Board, documented the removal of the Marconi station from the Nantucket lightship. The Navy soon installed its own station, which was willing to communicate with all vessels, but, as reported by the October 28, 1904 New York Times, the new station found itself Ignored by Marconi shipboard operators, who had been instructed by their employer not to communicate with the facility except in emergencies, now that it no longer used Marconi equipment.
The American branch of the Marconi company stood out as a well-managed firm, but until its 1912 takeover of United Wireless assets it had only a fairly small presence in the United States. (The United Wireless acquisition gave American Marconi a tremendous boost, and by 1915 it would report that "The number of ship and shore equipments now operated by your company is approximately twenty times that of three years ago.") Marconi's U.S. subsidiary was incorporated in 1899, as a company official predicted in A Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company for America, from the December 2, 1899 Electrical World and Engineer, that "There is an immense field before us, and the system is as yet in its infancy." In 1899 the U.S. Navy negotiated with the Marconi about purchasing a large number of installations, however the company refused to sell its equipment outright, preferring to lease it. Marconi also wanted to prohibit the Navy from communicating with stations using competitor's systems, except during emergencies. Neither of these conditions was acceptable, and, according to the Negotiations with the British Marconi Company chapter of Linwood S. Howeth's 1963 book, History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy, this "nonacceptance of unwarranted, dictatorial authority led to a wider search, the exercise of ingenuity, and the rapid development of a competing market which benefited the Navy and the rest of the world" as the Navy turned to other companies for its radio equipment purchases. The March, 1903 issue of The World's Work included an article reviewing the Marconi company activities, Commercial Wireless Telegraphy by Lawrence Perry, which declared, somewhat optimistically, that "The experimental stage of wireless telegraphy is passed", for "wireless telegraphy is a commercial fact" and "in six months [Marconi's] invention would be on a business footing". Although the main emphasis at this time was developing a transatlantic service, this article also noted that the company was investigating developing general news distribution, where "A message received of an event anywhere could be 'marconied' simultaneously to every newspaper in the land, and household subscribers could receive their news on ticker tapes." In view of the lack of measurable progress, the Current Topics section of the December, 1903 Cassier's Magazine expressed frustration that the long-promised transatlantic service had yet to arrive. Finally, the December, 1907 issue of The World's Work featured Transatlantic Marconigrams Now and Hereafter, as the Marconi Company introduced its long-awaited commercial transatlantic radiotelegraph service. However, even this was only on a limited basis, and although the competition was welcomed, through the start of World War One the transmission of marconigrams across the Atlantic would not match the reliability of the cables. In 1911, the Wanamaker department stores installed American Marconi radiotelegraph stations atop their New York and Philadelphia buildings. A publication issued by the company, What to See in Philadelphia, included a section, The Installation of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Service , which proudly reviewed the services offered by the Philadelphia facility. And, following years of experience in equipping ships, American Marconi next investigated whether it could also place radiotelegraph equipment on trains, with a test installation on the Lackawanna Limited in the state of New York reported upon in Getting the Wireless on Board Train, from the February, 1914 Technical World Magazine.
AMERICAN WIRELESS TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY The first radio firm incorporated in the United States appears to have been the American Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company in 1899. With principals including stock promoter G. P. Gehring and electrical engineer A. F. Collins, its creation was reported in a short notice appearing in the December, 1899 Electrical Engineering and Telephone Magazine. This company served mostly as a stock promotion scheme, and would eventually be prominently featured in Frank Fayant's industry exposé. However, as recounted by Robert H. Marriott in "As It Was in the Beginning" for the May, 1924 issue of Radio Broadcast magazine, in 1902 Marriott did something very unusual within that company -- he actually set up a legitimate radiotelegraph link, between Catalina Island, California and the mainland, which appears to have been the first permanent commercial radio service in the United States set up by a U.S. firm. The August 24, 1902 issue of the Los Angeles Times carried a first-hand account of the successful opening of the link, First "Gram" to President, while a report of President Roosevelt's congratulatory Message to Catalina, in response to the inaugural telegram, appeared in the August 28, 1902 issue of the New York Times. A short review of the daily Avalon newspaper that was made possible by the stations Marriott set up, A "Wireless" Newspaper, appeared in the April 25, 1903 Western Electrician, while a more detailed review of the stations, Wireless Communication Between Santa Catalina Island and the Mainland by Frank C. Perkins, appeared in the June 27, 1903 issue of this magazine.
LEE DEFOREST, AMERICAN DEFOREST, AND UNITED WIRELESS Another person whose early adventures would be reviewed in detail by Frank Fayant's exposé was Lee DeForest, whose entry into the radio field was announced by A New System of Space Telegraphy from the July 27, 1901 Western Electrician. He later joined forces with promoter Abraham White, and the formation of the American DeForest Wireless Telegraph Company was announced in the Financial Intelligence section of the February 7, 1903 Electrical World and Engineer. This company was actually more adept at selling stock than at providing commercial radio services, and it excelled with promotional schemes, with one of its most famous exploits being its "Wireless Automobiles", which acted as mobile transmitters for publicity purposes. This innovation merited two reviews in the Electrical World and Engineer -- Wireless Stock Quotations from the February 14, 1903 issue, and two weeks later, A Perambulating Wireless Telegraph Plant, which included a photograph of Wireless Auto No. 1 in action at the Wall Street stock market district. In February, 1904, Syntonic Aerography, by Lee DeForest, whose official title was Scientific Director, appeared in The Electrical Age, and among other things featured photographs of the company's Block Island station in Rhode Island. In September, 1904 the same magazine reviewed Wireless Telegraphy at the St. Louis Exposition, which included an extensive and somewhat generous look at American DeForest's activities at the international fair. In the July, 1904 issue of The Electrical Age, Wireless Telegraphy for the Navy included company president Abraham White's proud announcement of a contract signed with the U.S. Navy to build five high-powered radiotelegraph stations in the Caribbean, although, as usual, his press release also included a number of inflated claims. In 1924 and 1925, a three article series by Frank E. Butler appeared in Radio Broadcast magazine, covering American DeForest's activities from the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition through the 1906 completion of a U.S. Navy station in Guantanamo, Cuba: Making Wireless History With De Forest, Pioneering With De Forest in Florida, and How Wireless Came to Cuba. American DeForest's successor company, United Wireless, which would be the dominant radio company in the United States from its late 1906 formation until its bankruptcy in 1912, was often characterized as "that company selling worthless stock to widows and orphans". Still, United did operate many important shore stations from coast-to-coast, and also staffed hundreds of ship stations, so it wasn't completely inaccurate to also describe it as "a great commercial company with its powerful land stations and great fleet", as Frank Doig does in his review of activity in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, Struggling for the Air, from the August, 1909 Technical World Magazine. Manufacturing Wireless Telegraph Apparatus from the May, 1909 issue of Wireless, issued by The New York Selling Agency, proclaimed that "The manufacture of wireless telegraph instruments, in America, is embraced in three factories owned and controlled by the United Wireless Telegraph Company, two of which are located in Jersey City, N. J., and one at Seattle, Washington. In these factories everything which enters into the transmission and receiving of wireless telegraph messages, except motor generators, is produced." Commercial Wireless Telegraph Operations Begun on the Great Lakes, from the May 1, 1909 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, reported on United Wireless' expansion into the midwest. The 1909 meeting of the New York Electrical Society was held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, which was the site of a major United Wireless facility. The get-together included a tour of the rooftop station, plus a presentation by a United employee, Cloyd Marshall, who reported that the company was now operating 70 shore and 163 shipboard installations, with a new station being added daily, according to The Commercial Development of Wireless Telegraphy from the July 3, 1909 Electrical Review and Western Electrician. (Photographs of United Wireless' Waldorf-Astoria station appeared in the September, 1909 Modern Electrics, in Station at the Waldorf-Astoria.) In the September 6, 1909 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper proudly announced that a United Wireless station had been installed on the roof of its headquarters building, in "Chronicle" First Paper on Coast to Install Wireless Apparatus. REGINALD FESSENDEN AND THE NATIONAL ELECTRIC SIGNALING COMPANY In contrast to the sometimes dubious activities of the above companies, Canadian-born Reginald A. Fessenden avoided becoming involved in any stock market scandals, although he did manage to get into a number of personal disputes with his backers. From 1900 to 1902 Fessenden did experimental radio work along the mid-Atlantic coast, financed by the U.S. Agriculture Department's Weather Bureau. In the April 27, 1902 New York Times, Government Test of Wireless Telegraphy provided a glowing synopsis of the advances accomplished to date, with Fessenden's electrolytic receiver accurately hailed as "vastly more sensitive than the coherer", while the inventor optimistically declared that "As regards wireless telephony, it can be stated definitely that telephoning up to at least 200 miles is absolutely certain of accomplishment." A memoir of this pioneering period, Early Experiences In Wireless Telegraphy, by one of Fessenden's assistants, Alfred C. Pickells, appeared in the December, 1913 Modern Electrics -- although the summers along the North Carolina Outer Banks weren't quite as bad as what Frank Butler had endured working for DeForest at Guantanamo, Cuba, the winters were much rougher and colder, and just as much difficult outside work was required. In 1902, Fessenden broke off his research with the U.S. government, and two Pittsburgh millionaires, Hay Walker, Jr. and Thomas H. Given, founded the National Electric Signaling Company (NESCO) in order to promote the inventor's efforts. In late 1903, NESCO signed a contract with the General Electric Company to build a radiotelegraph link between G.E.'s Schenectady, New York and Lynn, Massachusetts plants, but in the November, 1904 issue of The Electrical Age the magazine's editors, in Overland Wireless Telegraphy, wondered why this link had not yet gone into service. The next month's issue brought another short article with the same name, and in this Overland Wireless Telegraphy Reginald Fessenden personally responded that there was nothing to worry about, and that communication would be readily established. In truth, however, the radiotelegraph link never could be made operational, and the contract was quietly canceled the next year. In spite of this lack of success, NESCO next made the bold decision to try to directly compete with Marconi, by setting up a transatlantic radiotelegraph service, operating between Brant Rock, Massachusetts and Machrihanish, Scotland. Although Fessenden did achieve some initial success, including the first two-way transatlantic communication by radio, the effort abruptly ended in December, 1906, when the Machrihanish antenna collapsed -- Helen Fessenden reviewed these early Brant Rock activities in a 1940 biography of her husband, Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows (Brant Rock extracts). A detailed two-part analysis of the Machrihanish tower collapse, Trans-Atlantic Wireless Telegraphy, which appeared beginning in the January 18th, 1907 issue of Engineering, blamed the accident on the improper "way in which the joints were made by the man employed for the purpose by the sub-contractors", which resulted in such a poor installation that "The only wonder is that the tower did not fall before." (Interestingly, not included in this review was Fessenden's later assertion, in The First Transatlantic Telephonic Transmission from the September 7, 1918 Scientific American, that collapse was triggered by "the carelessness of one of the contractors employed in shifting some of the supporting cables"). In February, 1909, NESCO won an important Navy contract, to supply a Fessenden-designed 100-kilowatt rotary-spark transmitter for a new high-power station being constructed in Arlington, Virginia, described in The National Electric Signaling Company and the Synchronous Rotary Spark Transmitter section of Linwood S. Howeth's 1963 History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy. The Arlington station was the first in a planned international chain of stations, so NESCO hoped to eventually be awarded a series of contracts. However, NESCO's transmitter failed to fully meet the contract specifications, and even worse, as reviewed in The Radio (Arlington), Virginia, Station section of Howeth's book, in 1913 the Navy determined that Federal Telegraph arc-transmitters were clearly superior, so Federal Telegraph ended up getting the transmitter contracts. Meanwhile, Fessenden's relations with NESCO's financial backers were becoming increasingly estranged, until finally, on December 28, 1910, the company's management attempted to seize the Brant Rock office records, while simultaneously enjoining Fessenden from further participation in company activities, as dramatically described in Helen Fessenden's 1940 biography: Fessenden: Builder of Tomorrows (rupture extract). Fessenden, who was formally dismissed from the NESCO the following month, sued the company for breach of contract, and the ensuing legal entanglements forced NESCO into receivership. At this point Fessenden permanently left the radio field, while a crippled NESCO struggled on as a minor company through World War One. OTHER EXPERIMENTERS Numerous smaller companies also set up operations, including the Thomas E. Clark Wireless Telegraph & Telephone Company in Detroit, Michigan. With its May 23, 1903 issue, Western Electrician began running a Clark Co. Advertisement that proudly announced "We Manufacture Wireless Telegraph Apparatus", and featured a set costing $50. The May 16, 1903 issue of the same magazine carried a short review of the Clark Spark-telegraph System in Detroit, noting that the company offerings included equipment "designed particularly for practical work for service between private houses, islands and the shore, boats and yachts, from a few hundred feet distance to two miles [up to 3 kilometers]." One of the more remarkable, but also saddest, stories about early experimenters is Francis J. McCarthy of San Francisco, California. The November 30, 1903 New York Times carried a review of his demonstration of one of the first audio radio transmissions in Boy's Tale of Invention -- amazingly, McCarthy was only 15 years old at this time. But, tragically, within three years he would die from injuries caused by a road accident. Another of the lesser-known early radio experimenters was a Roman Catholic priest, Father Josef Murgas, a native of Slovakia who was assigned to a parish in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Murgas' system used adjustable spark tones for signaling, rather than the short and long dashes of Morse code. (This was similar to a method developed for some early land telegraphs, which used two bells with different pitches). A early notice about his work, A Priest's Wireless Telegraph System, ran in the July 23, 1904 Electrical World and Engineer. More detailed reviews soon followed, including The Murgas System of Wireless Telegraphy, from the July 11, 1905 issue of the same magazine, plus The Murgas System of Wireless Telegraphy, written by Murgas himself, from the December 8, 1905 Electrical Review. In its August 5, 1905 issue, Electrical World and Engineer reported on a successful test transmission between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, Pennsylvania -- the first message sent was "Thank God for His blessings" -- as reported in The Murgas Wireless System. In the May, 1906 Technical World, Underground Wireless Telegraphy reported on an ambitious plan to set up a transatlantic service. But although Father Murgas obtained some financial backing from the Universal Aether Company of Philadelphia, his system never went into commercial operation. Another small but innovative firm, Earle Ennis' Western Wireless Equipment Company, was located in San Francisco, California. According to Jane Morgan's 1967 Electronics in the West (Airplane extract), in mid-1910 Ennis set up what may have been the first radio transmission from an airplane. (However, Ennis' detailed report reviewing another test flight which took place in January, 1911, Wireless Telegraphy From an Aeroplane from the April 1, 1911 Journal of Electricity, Power and Gas, does not mention any earlier tests.) Ennis also made an experimental broadcast, using his station which had the callsign "TG", to radiotelegraph round-by-round summaries of the July 4, 1910 Jeffries-Johnson heavyweight prizefight to local amateurs and ships, which was reported by Returns from Fight Sent by Wireless from the August, 1910 Modern Electrics. But, following these groundbreaking activities, Ennis subsequently turned to more stable employment, and became a newspaper reporter. TIME SIGNAL BROADCASTS One of the earliest broadcast services was time signals. (Because early transmitters could only transmit dots and dashes, time signals were sent as standardized tone sequences, similar to the hourly tolling of church bells.) In January, 1905, the United States government began what appears to have been the world's first daily time service by radio, from its Navy shore stations, noted in The First Wireless Time Signal by Captain J. L. Jayne in the October, 1912 American Jeweler. In the Wireless Club section of the March, 1909 Electrician and Mechanic, a brief report from W. V. Albert, Chief Electrician of the Boston Navy Yard, recounted the procedures in place at that facility. In early 1913, the Navy's first high-powered station, NAA at Arlington, Virginia, began operations, and it quickly became famous for its daily broadcasts of time signals, which were particularly popular with the nation's jewelers, who had been largely dependent on leasing Western Union telegraph lines to get an accurate time service. In anticipation of NAA's debut, Wireless Time Signal Apparatus by T. Stanley Curtis, which appeared in the October, 1912 American Jeweler, explained in detail the components and installation needed to set up a simple radio receiver to pick up the U.S. Government's daily signals. In the December, 1912 issue of the same magazine, Notes on Wireless Time reported that NAA had commenced testing, and covered current U.S. and international services and expansion plans. Two New Wireless Time Signal Installations from the November, 1912 American Jeweler covered the successful installation of time-signal receiving stations at South Bend, Indiana and Newtonville, Massachusetts, while Wireless Time-Receiving Station Successfully Established by Kansas Jeweler reported in the May, 1913 Electrician and Mechanic that "To E. L. McDowell, of Arkansas City, Kans., belongs the distinction of being the first jeweler in this section, if not in the United States, to have successfully established at his place of business a wireless time-receiving station" as the proud proprietor boasted that "we are authority for time in this locality". Regulating 10,000 Clocks by Wireless, by Alfred H. Orme, from the October, 1913 Technical World Magazine, reviewed the ongoing popularity of NAA's wide-ranging service. There were a number of Navy stations transmitting time signals at this time, and Accuracy of Time Signals from the October, 1913 Electrician and Mechanic noted that monitoring had found a two-tenths of a second delay between the main signal from Arlington, and the Boston time signal transmission. Technical World magazine in May, 1913 noted, in Wireless Time Service, that Beloit College in Wisconsin had also introduced a daily time signal service. American Optical Co. Installs Radio Time Set from the February, 1916 The Electrical Experimenter, told of a Massachusetts firm which was taking advantage of the NAA time signals -- part of a growing trend according to the review, as a "one-way wireless station, capable only of receiving wireless messages... has now become popular among industrial concerns, who find the wireless a convenient and accurate means for receiving standard time daily at noon and 10:00 p. m." The Eiffel Tower station in Paris, France was the best known European broadcaster of time signals at this time. An article in the April 11, 1914 Electrical Review and Western Electrician, Vest-Pocket Wireless Receiving Instrument, reported that a portable crystal receiver, the Ondophone, was now being sold in France by Horace Hurm for picking up the Eiffel Tower time signals -- one of the first examples of a radio receiver being sold to the general public. WIRELESS POWER DISTRIBUTION EXPERIMENTATION Radio's many accomplishments led to speculation about future developments. Since information and sound could now be transmitted without wires, the next question was whether wires could also be dispensed with when distributing power. A short notice in the September 12, 1902 The Electrician, Wireless Transmission of Power, reported a $3,000 prize would be offered at the upcoming Saint Louis World's Fair, for the successful transmission of sufficient energy to power an air-ship motor. However, no one at the Fair appears to have made any attempt to claim this prize. In the June 8, 1907 Electrical Review, Wireless Power For Ships noted that "prophesies have been made by visionaries" that someday steamships would be replaced by electrically-powered vessels, and further reported that Sir Hugh Bell, president of the British Iron and Steel Institute, was predicting that some day wireless signals would power the ships. Although dubious about the practicality of this idea, the magazine did allow that "theoretically, such a thing is not impossible". In the mid-1890s, Guglielmo Marconi, ignoring conventional wisdom, had discovered how to signal over long distances using radio waves. In the October, 1912 Technical World Magazine, Marconi's Plans for the World by Ivan Narodny reported that the inventor was now predicting another world-changing advance -- using radio waves to transmit power, heat, and lighting -- although again conventional wisdom said this was impossible. But if realized, wireless power distribution potentially would have a wide-ranging impact, because, in Marconi's words, "The main trouble with all the today's economic friction is that the energy can be owned by certain privileged individuals, who use it for their own selfish ends but not for the benefit of humanity", however, "As soon as the use of wireless energy becomes universal it will necessarily sweep out all the present privileged corporations of power and create a semi-socialistic state of affairs." Two years later, the April, 1914 Electrical Experimenter reported that Marconi Lights a Lamp Six Miles Away, although this claim was not universally accepted. Marconi wasn't the only person investigating "wireless power" -- the 1912 edition of A. P. Morgan's Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony Simply Explained (Tesla extract) reported on Nikola Tesla's ongoing experimentation, which, if successful, promised to one day "send the power of Niagara, which alone might be made to supply a fifth of all the power in the United States, and the energy of Victoria to the ends of the earth with little loss." (In contrast to Marconi, Tesla's "wireless power" approach did not involve radio waves -- instead, he proposed to use the Earth as a giant electrical condenser, to distribute alternating current.) In the early 1910s there was great skepticism within the scientific community about the practicality of both Marconi's and Tesla's "wireless power" ideas, and in the words of A. P. Morgan, "Only the future knows". With "the future" having subsequently arrived, we now know the skeptics were right, and neither approach proved practical. Marconi did little further investigation of wireless power transmission, although at an October 17, 1927 meeting of the American Institute of Electical Engineers the inventor stated that "I hope I shall not be thought too visionary if I say that it may perhaps be possible that some day electromagnetic waves may also be used for the transmission of power, should we succeed in perfecting devices for projecting the radiation in parallel beams in such a manner as to minimize their dispersion and diffusion into space." Tesla, however, continued to do extensive, although unsuccessful, experimental work. His later efforts were centered at a facility constructed at Shoreham, New York, that was never fully completed -- the symbolic end came with the dynamiting of the Shoreham tower, reported in the September, 1917 issue of The Electrical Experimenter: U. S. Blows Up Tesla Radio Tower. |