Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Developments in High-Power Radio And Its Practical Application in the Services of the United States Navy I A PPROXIMATELY twenty-five years /% ago, or to be exact, in Febru / \ ary of the year 1896, a young I \ scientist of Italian and Irish parentage journeyed from Italy to Engand in the hope of interesting the British overnment in an invention by the use of which he claim was made that communications could be exchanged between distant points without utilizing the ordinary connecting wires or other visible connecting medium. Doubtless he experienced some difficulty in getting in touch with the government officials in London, and. presumably, when he did, his claims were listened to with a degree of skepticism comparable to that which would probably now confront a man who suddenly claimed to have exchanged communications with inhabitants on the Moon. It would be only natural that such an attitude would prevail because the only method then known for exchanging rapid communications between points separated by distances considerably beyond the range of visibility was to utilize the land line wire telegraph, telephone, or ocean cable systems, and it was generally believed to be impossible to exchange rapid communications over great distances without utilizing connecting wires. However, the expression "wireless telegraphy" or communications without wires, naturally envisaged communications with ships at sea and between ships separated by great distances at sea, and doubtless the authorities of the leading maritime power of the world would not let pass any proposition, however fantastic, that might possibly bring this about. Needless to say, the young inventor to whom reference has been made was Marconi. We learn that six months after Marconi arrived in England he conducted a series of trials before the British Post Office officials and navy and military officers on Salisbury Plain, and succeeded in establishing communication over a distance of one and three quarter miles. About one year later Marconi increased this By COMMANDER STANFORD C. HOOPER, U. S. N. Head of the Ra"dio Division in the Bureau of Engineering, Navy Department distance to four miles, and a few months later he increased the distance to eight miles. Thereupon news of the performances of the young inventor began traversing the ocean cable systems of the world radiating from London (the cable systems themselves having been in successful operation only about twentyfive years) and a skeptical world was apprised of the remarkable new invention of "wireless telegraphy." Thus we see introduced into the world within a generation two remarkable inventions enabling the exchange of rapid communications over long distances, namely, the ocean cable and wireless, or radio telegraphy. Now, after these systems have been developed and largely perfected, we find ourselves on the threshold of another remarkable development in connection with the exchange of rapid communications over long distances, namely, wireless telephony or the radiophone, about the future possibilities of which it is difficult to hazard even a conservative prediction. Obviously the world is advancing rapidly and with great strides in the development and inauguration of new means for exchanging rapid communications over long distances, thereby linking the remote regions of the world together with the less remote regions, bringing the more backward peoples into close contact with the less backward; in fact, gradually consolidating all the peoples of the world into one great human family by providing channels for readily exchanging rapid communications. As a matter of fact, the shortening, in effect, of the vast intervening distances separating the different principal parts of the world, and the opening up of regions hitherto regarded as more or less inaccessible, as a result of the inauguration of the new methods of exchanging rapid communications, has already come to be regarded as so commonplace as not to excite unusual interest or comment. During the interval of time from the year 1897 to 1912, developments took place in wireless or radio telegraphy so rapidly that the