How it Started - Wireless Telegraphy

For many years the attention of electricians has been occupied with more or less success to directing electric currents wholly or partly without wires. While the last decade spans the entire development of applied wireless, yet its history dates much further back. In 1842 Professor Morse sent signals across the Susquehanna River without wires. In 1864 Clark Maxwell demonstrated mathematically the existence of the magnetic waves; and in 1887 Professor Hertz produced in his laboratory the electromagnetic ether impulses, now known as the Hertzian waves.

Sir Win Pierce was actively engaged in such experiments from 1885 on, and as early as 1886 sent signals four and one-half miles. Professor Dolbear, in the early eighties, conducted a series of valuable experiments, and applied for a patent in 1882. In 1890 Professor Bromly took out a patent on the metallic coherer, and the following year a patent was granted Edison.

To Tesla, an Italian electrical expert, much credit is due for wonderful discovery and advance in the science of wireless, but to Marconi is due the honor of being the first inventor to reduce the application of the science to practical operation and commercial value in the year 1897. In 1899 he conducted a series of experiments in England and sent messages across the English Channel. Later on, in 1902, he sent signals across the Atlantic Ocean with the aid of very high masts, through which the electric current passed off through the air to the distant receiver, a very delicate instrument, susceptible to the effect of minute pulsations from the ether or whatever the agency of electric transmission may be.

Since that time great wireless telegraph companies have sprung up all over the civilized world. It is used by all governments, and all ocean vessels of importance are equipped with the apparatus, which has been the means of saving many lives on wrecked vessels.