Boys' Second Book of Inventions

CHAPTER VII

MARCONI AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS

No invention of modern times, perhaps, comes so near to being what we call a miracle as the new system of telegraphy without wires. The very thought of communicating across the hundreds of miles of blue ocean between Europe and America with no connection, no wires, nothing but air, sunshine, space, is almost inconceivably wonderful. A few years ago the mere suggestion of such a thing would have been set down as the wildest flight of imagination, unbelievable, perfectly impossible. And yet it has come to pass!

Think for a moment of sitting here on the shore of America and quietly listening to words sent through space across some 3,000 miles of ocean from the edge of Europe! A cable, marvellous as it is, maintains a real connection between speaker and hearer. We feel that it is a road along which our speech can travel; we can grasp its meaning. But in telegraphing without wires we have nothing but space, poles with pendent wires on one side of the broad, curving ocean, and similar poles and wires (or perhaps only a kite struggling in the air) on the other – and thought passing between!

I have told in the first "Boys' Book of Inventions" of Guglielmo Marconi's early experiments. That was a chapter of uncertain beginnings, of great hopes, of prophecy. This is the sequel, a chapter of achievement and success. What was only a scientific and inventive novelty a few years ago has become a great practical enterprise, giving promise of changing the whole world of men, drawing nations more closely together, making us near neighbours to the English and the Germans and the French – in short, shrinking our earth. There may come a time when we will think no more of sending a Marconigram, or an etheragram, or whatever is to be the name of the message by wireless telegraphy, to an acquaintance in England than we now think of calling up our neighbour on the telephone.

Every one will recall the astonishment that swept over the country in December, 1901, when there came the first meagre reports of Marconi's success in telegraphing across the Atlantic Ocean between England and Newfoundland. At first few would believe the reports, but when Thomas A. Edison, Graham Bell, and other great inventors and scientists had expressed their confidence in Marconi's achievement, the whole country, was ready to hail the young inventor with honours. And his successes since those December days have been so pronounced – for he had now sent messages both ways across the Atlantic and at much greater distances – have more than borne out the promise then made. Wireless telegrams can now be sent directly from the shore of Massachusetts to England, and ocean-going ships are being rapidly equipped with the Marconi apparatus so that they can keep in direct communication with both continents during every day of the voyage. On some of the great ships a little newspaper is published, giving the world's news as received from day to day.

It was the good fortune of the writer to arrive in St. John's, Newfoundland, during Mr. Marconi's experiments in December, 1901, only a short time after the famous first message across the Atlantic had been received. Three months later it was also the writer's privilege to visit the Marconi station at Poldhu, in Cornwall, England, from which the message had been sent, Mr. Marconi being then planning his greater work of placing his invention on a practical basis so that his company could enter the field of commercial telegraphy. It was the writer's fortune to have many talks with Mr. Marconi, both in America and in England, to see him at his experiments, and to write some of the earliest accounts of his successes. The story here told is the result of these talks.

Mr. Marconi kept his own counsel regarding his plans in coming to Newfoundland in December, 1901. He told nobody, except his assistants, that he was going to attempt the great feat of communicating across the Atlantic Ocean. Though feeling very certain of success, he knew that the world would not believe him, would perhaps only laugh at him for his great plans. The project was entirely too daring for public announcement. Something might happen, some accident to the apparatus, that would cause a delay; people would call this failure, and it would be more difficult another time to get any one to put confidence in the work. So Marconi very wisely held his peace, only announcing what he had done when success was assured.

Mr. Marconi landed at St. John's, Newfoundland, on December 6, 1901, with his two assistants, Mr. Kemp and Mr. Paget.

He set up his instruments in a low room of the old barracks on Signal Hill, which stands sentinel at the harbour mouth half a mile from the city of St. John's. So simple and easily arranged is the apparatus that in three days' time the inventor was prepared to begin his experiments. On Wednesday, the 11th, as a preliminary test of the wind velocity, he sent up one of his kites, a huge hexagonal affair of bamboo and silk nine feet high, built on the Baden-Powell model: the wind promptly snapped the wire and blew the kite out to sea. He then filled a 14-foot hydrogen balloon, and sent it upward through a thick fog bank. Hardly had it reached the limit of its tetherings, however, when the aërial wire on which he had depended for receiving his messages fell to the earth, the balloon broke away, and was never seen again. On Thursday, the 12th, a day destined to be important in the annals of invention, Marconi tried another kite, and though the weather was so blustery that it required the combined strength of the inventor and his assistants to manage the tetherings, they succeeded in holding the kite at an elevation of about 400 feet. Marconi was now prepared for the crucial test. Before leaving England he had given detailed instructions to his assistants for the transmission of a certain signal, the Morse telegraphic S, represented by three dots (…), at a fixed time each day, beginning as soon as they received word that everything at St. John's was in readiness. This signal was to be clicked out on the transmitting instruments near Poldhu, Cornwall, the southwestern tip of England, and radiated from a number of aërial wires pendent from masts 210 feet high. If the inventor could receive on his kite-wire in Newfoundland some of the electrical waves thus produced, he knew that he held the solution of the problem of transoceanic wireless telegraphy. He had cabled his assistants to begin sending the signals at three o'clock in the afternoon, English time, continuing until six o'clock; that is, from about 11.30 to 2.30 o'clock in St. John's.

At noon on Thursday (December 12, 1901) Marconi sat waiting, a telephone receiver at his ear, in a room of the old barracks on Signal Hill. To him it must have been a moment of painful stress and expectation. Arranged on the table before him, all its parts within easy reach of his hand, was the delicate receiving instrument, the supreme product of years of the inventor's life, now to be submitted to a decisive test. A wire ran out through the window, thence to a pole, thence upward to the kite which could be seen swaying high overhead. It was a bluff, raw day; at the base of the cliff 300 feet below thundered a cold sea; oceanward through the mist rose dimly the rude outlines of Cape Spear, the easternmost reach of the North American Continent. Beyond that rolled the unbroken ocean, nearly 2,000 miles to the coast of the British Isles. Across the harbour the city of St. John's lay on its hillside wrapped in fog: no one had taken enough interest in the experiments to come up here through the snow to Signal Hill. Even the ubiquitous reporter was absent. In Cabot Tower, near at hand, the old signalman stood looking out to sea, watching for ships, and little dreaming of the mysterious messages coming that way from England. Standing on that bleak hill and gazing out over the waste of water to the eastward, one finds it difficult indeed to realise that this wonder could have become a reality. The faith of the inventor in his creation, in the kite-wire, and in the instruments which had grown under his hand, was unshaken.

"I believed from the first," he told me, "that I would be successful in getting signals across the Atlantic."

Only two persons were present that Thursday noon in the room where the instruments were set up – Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp. Everything had been done that could be done. The receiving apparatus was of unusual sensitiveness, so that it would catch even the faintest evidence of the signals. A telephone receiver, which is no part of the ordinary instrument, had been supplied, so that the slightest clicking of the dots might be conveyed to the inventor's ear. For nearly half an hour not a sound broke the silence of the room. Then quite suddenly Mr. Kemp heard the sharp click of the tapper as it struck against the coherer; this, of course, was not the signal, yet it was an indication that something was coming. The inventor's face showed no evidence of excitement. Presently he said:

"See if you can hear anything, Kemp."

Mr. Kemp took the receiver, and a moment later, faintly and yet distinctly and unmistakably, came the three little clicks – the dots of the letter S, tapped out an instant before in England. At ten minutes past one, more signals came, and both Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp assured themselves again and again that there could be no mistake. During this time the kite gyrated so wildly in the air that the receiving wire was not maintained at the same height, as it should have been; but again, at twenty minutes after two, other repetitions of the signal were received.

Thus the problem was solved. One of the great wonders of science had been wrought. But the inventor went down the hill toward the city, now bright with lights, feeling depressed and disheartened – the rebound from the stress of the preceding days. On the following afternoon, Friday, he succeeded in getting other repetitions of the signal from England, but on Saturday, though he made an effort, he was unable to hear anything. The signals were, of course, sent continuously, but the inventor was unable to obtain continuous results, owing, as he explains, to the fluctuations of the height of the kite as it was blown about by the wind, and to the extreme delicacy of his instruments, which required constant adjustment during the experiments.

Even now that he had been successful, the inventor hesitated to make his achievement public, lest it seem too extraordinary for belief. Finally, after withholding the great news for two days, certainly an evidence of self-restraint, he gave out a statement to the press, and on Sunday morning the world knew and doubted; on Monday it knew more and believed. Many, like Mr. Edison, awaited the inventor's signed announcement before they would credit the news. Sir Cavendish Boyle, the Governor of Newfoundland, reported at once to King Edward; and the cable company which has exclusive rights in Newfoundland, alarmed at an achievement which threatened the very existence of its business, demanded that he desist from further experiments within its territory, truly an evidence of the belief of practical men in the future commercial importance of the invention. It is not a little significant of the increased willingness of the world, born of expanding knowledge, to accept a new scientific wonder, that Mr. Marconi's announcement should have been so eagerly and so generally believed, and that the popular imagination should have been so fired with its possibilities. One cannot but recall the struggle against doubt, prejudice, and disbelief in which the promoters of the first transatlantic cable were forced to engage. Even after the first cable was laid (in 1858), and messages had actually been transmitted, there were many who denied that it had ever been successfully operated, and would hardly be convinced even by the affidavits of those concerned in the work. But in the years since then, Edison, Bell, Röntgen, and many other famous inventors and scientists have taught the world to be chary of its disbelief. Outside of this general disposition to friendliness, however, Marconi on his own part had well earned the credit of the careful and conservative scientist; his previous successes made it the more easy to credit his new achievement. For, as an Englishman (Mr. Flood Page), in defending Mr. Marconi's announcement, has pointed out, the inventor has never made any statement in public until he has been absolutely certain of the fact; he has never had to withdraw any statement that he has made as to his progress in the past. And these facts unquestionably carried great weight in convincing Mr. Edison, Mr. Graham Bell, and others of equal note of the literal truth of his report. It was astonishing how overwhelmingly credit came from every quarter of the world, from high and low alike, from inventors, scientists, statesmen, royalty. Before Marconi left St. John's he was already in receipt of a large mail – the inevitable letters of those who would offer congratulations, give advice, or ask favours. He received offers to lecture, to write articles, to visit this, that, and the other place – and all within a week after the news of his success. The people of the "ancient colony" of Newfoundland, famed for their hospitality, crowned him with every honour in their power. I accompanied Mr. Marconi across the island on his way to Nova Scotia, and it seemed as if every fisher and farmer in that wild country had heard of him, for when the train stopped they came crowding to look in at the window. From the comments I heard, they wondered most at the inventor's youthful appearance. Though he was only twenty-seven years old, his experience as an inventor covered many years, for he began experimenting in wireless telegraphy before he was twenty. At twenty-two he came to London from his Italian home, and convinced the British Post-Office Department that he had an important idea; at twenty-three he was famous the world over.

Following this epoch-making success Mr. Marconi returned to England, where he continued most vigorously the work of perfecting his invention, installing more powerful transmitters, devising new receivers, all the time with the intention of following up his Newfoundland experiments with the inauguration of a complete system of wireless transmission between America and Europe. In the latter part of the year 1902 he succeeded in opening regular communication between Nova Scotia and England, and January 18, 1903, marked another epoch in his work. On that day there was sent by Marconi himself from the wireless station at South Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass., to the station at Poldhu, Cornwall, England, a distance of 3,000 miles, the message – destined to be historic – from the President of the United States to the King of England.

It will be interesting to know something of the inventor himself. He is somewhat above medium height, and, though of a highly strung temperament, he is deliberate in his movements. Unlike the inventor of tradition, he dresses with scrupulous neatness, and, in spite of being a prodigious worker, he finds time to enjoy a limited amount of club and social life. The portrait published with this chapter, taken at St. John's a few days after the experiments, gives a very good idea of the inventor's face, though it cannot convey the peculiar lustre of his eyes when he is interested or excited – and perhaps it makes him look older than he really is. One of the first and strongest impressions that the man conveys is that of intense nervous activity and mental absorption; he has a way of pouncing upon a knotty question as if he could not wait to solve it. He talks little, is straightforward and unassuming, submitting good-naturedly, although with evident unwillingness, to being lionised. In his public addresses he has been clear and sensible; he has never written for any publication; nor has he engaged in scientific disputes, and even when violently attacked he has let his work prove his point. And he has accepted his success with calmness, almost unconcern; he certainly expected it. The only elation I saw him express was over the attack of the cable monopoly in Newfoundland, which he regarded as the greatest tribute that could have been paid his achievement. During all his life, opposition has been his keenest spur to greater effort.

Though he was born and educated in Italy, his mother was of British birth, and he speaks English as perfectly as he does Italian. Indeed, his blue eyes, light hair, and fair complexion give him decidedly the appearance of an Englishman, so that a stranger meeting him for the first time would never suspect his Italian parentage. His parents are still living, spending part of their time on their estate in Italy and part of the time in London. One of the first messages conveying the news of his success at St. John's went to them. He embarked in experimental research because he loved it, and no amount of honour or money tempts him from the pursuit of the great things in electricity which he sees before him. Besides being an inventor, he is also a shrewd business man, with a clear appreciation of the value of his inventions and of their possibilities when generally introduced. What is more, he knows how to go about the task of introducing them.

No sooner had Marconi announced the success of his Newfoundland experiments than critics began to raise objections. Might not the signals which he received have been sent from some passing ship fitted with wireless-telegraphy apparatus? Or, might they not have been the result of electrical disturbances in the atmosphere? Or, granting his ability to communicate across seas, how could he preserve the secrecy of his messages? If they were transmitted into space, why was it not possible for any one with a receiving instrument to take them? And was not his system of transmission too slow to make it useful, or was it not rendered uncertain by storms? And so on indefinitely. An acquaintance with some of the principles which Marconi considers fundamental, and on which his work has been based, will help to clear away these objections and give some conception of the real meaning and importance of the work at St. John's and of the plans for the future development of the inventor's system.