Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1922)

Keeping the Stars and Stripes in the Ether By COMMANDER STANFORD C. HOOPER, U. S. N. Head of the Radio Division in the Bureau of Engineering, Navy Department IT CAN be stated without fear of contradiction that the very real importance of wireless, or radio, to the civilized world, and its almost limitless possibilities were not generally recognized prior to the outbreak of the war in Europe in August, 1914, except possibly by the military and naval officials of the leading powers who were intimately familiar with this branch of science, and by a few of the commercial concerns of the leading industrial nations engaged in world trade. Any doubts which may have been entertained in the public mind of the practical utility of radio, must have been dispelled shortly after the outbreak of the war. These possible doubts were probably more quickly dispelled in Germany than elsewhere, because that country and its Allies were promptly isolated, so far as the exchanging of rapid communications with the North and South American Continents, Asia, Africa and the greater part of Europe was concerned, by the prompt cutting of all of her trans-ocean cables and the severing of other channels for exchanging rapid communications, except through her radio stations. Upon the outbreak of the war in Europe, Germany was one of the two leading powers of Europe and one of the three leading powers of the world as regards the development and application of radio as a medium for exchanging rapid communications over both short and long distances, the other European power being Great Britain and the third power, although by no means third in rate of progress, being the United States of America. The German Empire had already penetrated the United States in a radio sense by the establishment, in the year 191 2, of the high power radio station located at Sayville, Long Island, New York, and a German firm was actively engaged in the construction of a second high power station at Tuckerton, New Jersey, when the war broke out, the latter named station ostensibly being established for a Erench concern. An enormous volume of traffic, considering the limited normal traffic capacity of the station, was exchanged, subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, between the Sayville station and a corresponding station situated at Nauen in Germany. In fact, this Sayville-Nauen circuit afforded the Central Powers the only channel for exchanging rapid communications with the outside world subsequent to the cutting of the German cables and the severing of the other channels of communication by the Allied Powers. The British Marconi Company, a strictly commercial concern, with which the British Government was frequently rumored to be at odds, had also indirectly entrenched itself in the United States for communication purposes, by the formation of its affliated company, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. A considerable portion of the stock of this company was held by British subjects, and, as a natural consequence, the directing heads of the organization also were influenced largely by British subjects. The operation of the German radio stations in the United States after the outbreak of hostilities, proved to be very embarrassing to our government, as the question of the maintenance of neutrality on our part was directly involved. Eventually it was found necessary to supplant the established censorship of the radio traffic passing through these stations by the replacement of the administration and operating personnel by radio personnel of the United States Navy. The exchange of traffic between high power stations of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph * Company of America located in the United States and corresponding stations of the British Marconi Company was prohibited by the British Government as a war measure, adequate facilities being available to the Allied Powers for the exchange of rapid communications by means of the transatlantic cable systems.