• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Lee AWA Review Wireless Comes of Age on the West Coast1 !2011 Bartholomew Lee ABSTRACT This is a story primarily about young men and what they accomplished in a remarkable Radio as we know it time, the fi rst two decades of the 20th Century, had many fathers. Cali- and in remarkable places – especially in Cali- fornia enjoyed unique fornia in the Western United States. Guglielmo circumstances that gave (William) Marconi, in his early twenties, elec- rise to independent de- trifi ed the technical world of the late 19th Cen- velopment. Young men tury with his successes using Hertzian electro- explored and advanced magnetic waves to communicate at distance, devices and means of what we now call “radio.” He did this without communication as soon the wired connections to which the world had as they read about ear- turned with enthusiasm earlier in the century. lier advances, especially The telegraph, including undersea cables, and Marconi’s use of wireless the telephone, needed wire, and lots of it. Com- spark systems. The arc munication without such wires, at fi rst wireless as a generator of high telegraphy, opened new vistas. This was par- power continuous wave ticularly so looking out to the world’s oceans. energy for communica- Communication with ships at sea (Marconi’s tions came to California primary initial interest) was now possible. Then, and then the world. Doc a challenge to the expensive cable monopolies Herrold began the fi rst could be mounted. This was so because the new regular broadcasting to a “wireless” meant exactly that: no expensive, known audience around capital-intensive investments in cables, only 1912 in California, using in terminal stations. As the amateurs in these an arc. Lee de Forest new arts soon showed, wireless also freed com- perfected his “Audion” munications from pre-existing geographical triode in California in networks. Men and boys, capitalists and hob- 1913. Amateur radio byists, could now explore and stake interests in trained thousands in what inventor Lee de Forest called the “Invisible the new radio arts. The Empire of the Air.”2 Navy led the way from As a result of the then new networks of com- the beginning, from the munication, the late 19th century was blessed earliest spark systems with nearly immediate knowledge of many around San Francisco of the world’s events. Scientifi c and technical Bay, to playing music advances were reported and widely published from the Great White worldwide. Interested people ranging from Fleet, to its world-wide university professors, to entrepreneurs, to networks at the time of back-room tinkerers, followed these develop- the First World War. ments, and sought to replicate them. They were Radio grew up in many able to do so by reason of the uniformity of the places, and the West laws of physics. And they sought to go beyond Coast was one of the into new devices, new arrangements and new more important of those technologies. places. San Francisco, from its Gold Rush days, had Volume 24, 2011 241 West Coast Wireless been a cosmopolitan world city. maritime Wireless installation (a Nearby Stanford University (at Palo spark coil on a lightship) for jour- Alto, California) fi rst fl ourished in nalism and public notice was semi- the 1890s. Its electrical engineer- nal in all later developments. This ing department was instrumental is so because it was such big news, in development of hydro-electric nationwide. The experimental use facilities for electrical power. It of the arc technology to generate provided a sound foundation for re- continuous waves, in which Lee search, technical experiments and de Forest played a major role, what were then high-technology brought on two novel successes. business formations. The people First, the arc succeeded in com- of San Francisco, like much of the munications circuits. These high world, enjoyed Scientifi c Ameri- power circuits eventually ranged can, McClure’s Magazine and a worldwide. The Federal Telegraph host of other publications. Events and Telephone Company of Palo reported in such publications also Alto, California, the predecessor catalyzed technical work on the of ITT, implemented them. Victory West Coast of the United States. It in World War One required these wasn’t “instant messaging” but it reliable circuits. Second, the arc was current and thorough explana- provided the basis of early broad- tion of advances. casting. ‘Doc” Herrold in San Jose The independent wealth and the broadcast programs and music geographical isolation of the West well before the First World War. Coast fostered an independent The improvement of the vacuum development of communications tube technology of Lee de Forest’s and electronic technology. These three-element triode vacuum tube developments ranged from the “Audion,” was work largely done by fi rst American use of wireless at de Forest in Palo Alto at Federal. San Francisco in 1899, the first This work provided the basis for reliable worldwide communica- supplanting both the spark and the tions systems from California’s arc technology of earlier years, at Federal Telephone and Telegraph the end of the First World War and less than 20 years later, even the by the beginning of the 1920s. The invention of electronic television post-war boom of the 1920s saw in San Francisco by Philo Farn- radio broadcasting, using vacuum sworth in 1927, up to the Silicon tube transmitters and receivers, Valley of today’s digital world. It become a nationwide unifying and is the goal of this note to tell some standardizing cultural force. of the stories of that independent History, said Henry Ford, is development, from the primitive “just one damn thing after anoth- marine wireless of August 1899 er.” But it’s all that the word “after” in San Francisco to the advent of implicates that is so interesting. radio-telephone broadcasting by Lee de Forest in San Francisco in 1920, with much in between in GENESIS: AMERICAN WIRE- these 21 years. While there were LESS TELEGRAPHY IS BORN many regional successes as well, IN 1899 IN SAN FRANCISCO there were not a few dead-ends. In August, 1899 the San Several important stories stand Francisco Call newspaper suc- out through the mists of time – and cessfully used wireless to scoop San Francisco’s fogs. The 1899 a competing newspaper about success in using the fi rst American the appearance of a long-await- 242 AWA Review Lee ed troopship in the fog seven success in Great Britain.4 Early miles off the Golden Gate, San newspaper reports told of the Francisco. The USS Sherman use of wireless by the Lightship brought a California regiment Goodwin to summon aid after a back from the 1898 Spanish collision. The San Francisco use American War campaign in the of the Lightship 70 as a trans- Philippines.3 Lightship 70 of mitting station, and the spark the U.S. Lighthouse Service, a and coherer technology em- predecessor of the Coast Guard, ployed, appears to derive direct- signaled the arrival of the troop- ly from the report in McClure’s ship to a receiving station near Magazine. The San Francisco the Cliff House. By 1901, the experimenters used the then Lighthouse Service began regu- standard laboratory equipment lar installation of wireless sets Rhumkorff inductance coil to in Lightships. generate a high voltage, high In April, 1899, wireless test current spark. They ran it up signals between San Francisco’s a 82 foot long vertical antenna Telegraph Hill and its downtown on the Lightship 70. At the Cliff (at the Call building), were suc- House, a similar antenna came cessful enough to justify further down to a coherer and an inker development by the San Fran- as the receiver. “Sherman in cisco Call. In 1899, McClure’s sight” is the text of what is likely Magazine began to report, the fi rst working wireless message worldwide, Marconi’s wireless in America. Some of the headlines of the Call coverage show the technical impact of the success: “Wireless telegraph Excites Much Interest – Information Solicited Regarding Method of Procedure – Associated Press Asks for Full Details of the re- cent Successful Experiment by the Call.” A “Description of the Apparatus” followed, character- ized as “the latest marvel of the 19th Century.” Some of the Call story appears nearby along with images of some of the facilities Fig. 1. The site of the April, 1899 tests Fig. 2. The site of reception of the rst to Telegraph Hill, San Francisco. American wireless message. The Cliff Postcard. House, 1899. Postcard. Volume 24, 2011 243 West Coast Wireless ments of a Dr. Taylor at Stanford. Herrold, in his test, achieved one mile’s distance with a Rhumkorff coil and a Branley coherer.5 No doubt enthusiastic young men performed such replicating experi- ments around the country as news of Marconi’s successes spread. The fact that Marconi himself was so young provided a model for ambi- tious exploration of the new world of communications. Commercial interests leapt at the opportunities of 1899; in retrospect some were just stock selling frauds but many at least put Fig. 3. Lightship 70, San Francisco, enough money into their stations 1899. Kent Leach, CHRS, artist, em- to advance the art. In November, phasizing “capacity hat” atop vertical 1899, American Wireless Tele- wire antenna, as a signal bell. CHRS phone and Telegraph Company, Journal cover, 1999 the fi rst such enterprise, incorpo- used. rated in Arizona. It held the com- In January, 1897, Scientific munications patents of Professor American had reported Marconi’s Amos E. Dolbear of Tufts Univer- initial successes with telegraphy sity, giving it a patina of technical without wires in England.

Load more

  42

Copy Link