1 THE FIRST RADIO MESSAGE CROSSES THE ATLANTIC On December 12 1901 three short clicks traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on radio waves The clicks represented dots in Morse Code They spelled the letter S They were being sent from a 200-foot 61 m tall transmitter The transmitter was in a place called Poldhu Cornwall on the English coast The message on the English coast The message was received more than was received more than 2,000 miles 3,218 km away by a 400-foot 122 m tall antenna in St John’s Newfoundland Canada This S was the first transatlantic radio message The man responsible for this message was Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi Guglielmo Marconi with his radio equipment 4
9,104 Length in miles of telegraph cable that connected San Francisco California to Manila the Philippines via Midway Island and Guam in 1903 A message was sent from a transmitter on the coast of England and received in Canada The clicks in the message represented the letter S in Morse Code The man responsible was Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi The signal from Poldhu was received at Signal Hill St John’s Newfoundland Five years earlier a 22-year-old Marconi had demonstrated and patented his wireless receiver in England He had read about experiments with radio waves He saw the possibilities for using them to carry messages Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation This radiation is a kind of energy that travels in waves through space These waves can be smaller than an atom or bigger than the earth Radio waves have the longest wavelengths In 1897 Marconi started the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company Two years later he sent his first message It traveled from shore to a ship 20 miles 32 km away Over the next 15 years his company built permanent wireless stations around the world They were used mainly to communicate with ships at sea Marconi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for wireless telegraphy 5
2 RADIO TELEGRAPHY SAVES LIVES TK Come at once We struck an iceberg Sinking Jack Phillips tapped out this message in Morse Code at 12 17 a m on April 15 1912 Phillips was one of two wireless telegraph operators aboard the RMS Titanic For the next two hours the Titanic’s radio room exchanged a flurry of messages with other vessels nearby The Titanic sent its last message at approximately 2 25 a m At approximately 4 a m the RMS Carpathia arrived It rescued more than 700 people from the icy waters of the North Atlantic Jack Phillips was not among the survivors The Titanic was a British passenger ship on its first trip to New York 6 The The The Titanic Titanic Titanic departs from Southampton Titanic Titanic Titanic Titanic Titanic Titanic departs from Southampton Titanic departs from Southampton Titanic departs from Southampton Titanic departs from Southampton Titanic departs from Southampton departs from Southampton departs from Southampton England on April 10 1912 England on April 10 1912 England on April 10 1912
Lifeboats from the Titanic approach the Carpathia City The vessel was the largest ship afloat at the time It carried 2,224 passengers and crew on this voyage The Titanic was equipped with a Marconi wireless This radio telegraph had a range of 250 nautical miles 460 km Fifteen minutes before the Titanic hit the iceberg the ship’s wireless operators were busy Messages were coming in from a Canadian wireless station At the same time another ship was trying to warn the Titanic of icebergs These messages jammed the signals aboard the Titanic Jamming may have also contributed to the confusion after Titanic hit the iceberg The radios on nearby ships had trouble sorting out the messages The United States passed the Radio Act of 1912 because of the Titanic disaster It required all ships to maintain 24-hour radio watch They had to keep in contact with nearby ships and coastal radio stations 705 Estimated number of people saved from the Titanic The Titanic struck an iceberg shortly after midnight on April 15 1912 The distress signal was sent by a wireless radio operator The disaster led to changes in the laws governing ships and radios 7
