Wireless Telegraphy 1912 Style

Wireless Communications 1912 Style

Written by Godfrey Dykes

©RN Communications Branch Museum/Library

Well before WW1 in 1914 the British had wirelessly remote controlled a fully operational submarine ate sea, and the Americans had foresaken the word "Wireless" in favour of the word "Radiogram"!

If you wish to read more about the development of Wireless Telegraphy then I would recommend you look at a site that contains many articles I have written over the years regarding Wireless Telegraphy. There are many stories on this site about the slow progress of wireless telegraphy from the late 19th century until approximately 1910 when fleet communications were proved and tested with a few reservations, largely put right in a spurt made in response to an inevitable war two years later. RN Museum of Radar and Communications.

My story stays with "wireless" but not necessarily with "wireless telegraphy" (at least for the British) because at the time of the spurt (1912), we had mastered the use of wireless for other uses, which the world at large marveled at, and the Americans, who were dying to know how and what we had achieved, simply stated that the British were keeping things secret! In a moment, you will see that what we did involved a real life operational submarine at sea with and without its full crew, but back in 2006 I wrote this story about a battleship to which we had fitted a wireless remote control system which was revolutionary and undoubtedly considered to be amazing. Radio Controlled - you may recall that Nelson was once the captain of a ship called Agamemnon and that we had a WW1 battleship also of that name. Now we are to get a submarine bearing that name. The USN eventually got around to doing their own wireless/radiogram trials as shown in this file: but in the submarine world they were streets and miles ahead of the RN in dived transmission and reception of radiograms. The following article was published in the United States on th 10 July 1920 by the USN regarding their experiments with radio controlled ships and others. (the article has been re-typed for ease of reading)

WIRELESS IN THE U.S. NAVY

Some new submarines in the American Navy have been equipped with a wireless apparatus for use submerged. It receives quite satisfactorily from nearly the same distance as if the message came through the air in the ordinary way, and is reported to be capable of transmitting through a radius of about 12 miles.
The battleship Iowa, completed in 1897, has been commisioned for a series of experiments in wireless, including her steering and control from a station on shore.

This folowing then is the script of an article published on the 14th August 1912, which will give you a good idea of how advanced we were at the start (more or less) of the second decade of the 20th century, in wireless technology. It also shows how the American's dropped the word "wireless" in favour of the word "radiogram" five years before they entered the war in 1917. A wireless message became a "radiogram"; a telegraphist became a "radiographer" sending messages by "radiograph". (the article has been re-typed for ease of reading).

WORLD WIDE WIRELESS.

By Frederic J. Haskin

The United States. England and France - three great nations - each is planning a world girdling wireless system. This fact together with the constant stream of new inventions which is flowing out of the minds of the wireless inventors of the world, emphasizes the great progress that has been made in wireless communication within a few years. Another illustration of this progress is the development of laws for regulation and control of the wireless telegraph. Just now Congress is considering proposed laws to require all ocean-going vessels to carry at least two wireless operators and to prevent amateurs from interfering with the transmission of important messages. It is possible that a law covering the whole subject in the light of the latest experience will he passed before the national lawmakers adjourn.

Perhaps more wonderful even than the wireless telegraph is the wireless telephone. For years this instrument has been in its experimental stage, but now it is becoming a practical utility. A conversation between two men over four hundred miles apart has been carried on successfully. The Navy Department has adopted it after rigid tests. The condition of the test was that it should be possible to carry on an uninterrupted conversation for half an hour at a distance of twenty miles. The wireless telephone far exceeded these requirements. It is believed now to be a certainty that the wireless telephone will serve in its field as the wireless telegraph covers its ground.

Still more remarkable is the advance in the use of wireless for the control of distant machinery. The British government recently conducted some experiments with a big submarine boat. The crew remained in the vessel, but the man who was to control it stayed on a cruiser. By pressing this key and that, the operator on the cruiser was able to make the distant submarine dive or come to the surface, move forward or aft, turn to port or to starboard, and in short do all the things that the men on the boat itself might make it do. After the submarine had been put through its paces in this way the crew were taken aboard the cruiser, and the manless-submarine was put through all the paces again. The British government is keeping its secret carefully, yet others are accomplishing the same ends, and it is safe to predict that before long wireless-operated torpedoes, flying machines, and other engines of war will be possible. Think what war would be if the day should come when a wireless, manless flying machine could be dispatched against an enemy carrying a huge charge of high explosives which could be dropped by wireless actuation and exploded in the same way over the heads of an army.

Almost as much progress has been made in the field of practical utilization of wireless as in the experimental laboratory. The big chain of wireless stations already contracted for by the British Government will place practically every inch of the earth's surface in the field of possible communication with London. The principal stations will be at London. Cairo, Aden, Pretoria. Bangalore and Singapore. These stations will be within reach of other stations throughout the world.

The big system of the United Stutes, with the initial station at Arlington already in operation, will consist of seven stations. One of these will be at Panama, another at San Francisc, and others at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and on the islands of Guam, Luzon and Samoa. With those stations in commission it would be ditllcult for the big American battleship to get out of touch with Washington anywhere it might be sent. The big towers of the Arlington station, one of them forty five feet higher than the Washington Monument, are conspicuous additions to the landscape of the capital city. The United States now has forty four land stations, and every vessel in the navy has wireless equipment.

The French also are laying out a plan for a great world wireless system. Already France has the greatest wireless station in the world - the one on Eiffel Tower. This station has a range of some 4,030 miles, and it is able to start its messages hurling through space with the power of millions of volts behind them. It uses so much power that at night the wires become illuminant, and the top of the big tower has to be insulated with twenty feet of insulating material.

This Eiffel Tower station has demonstrated what a great aid wireless telegraphy may be to the geographers of the world. For the purpose of ascertaining the longitude of Tunis, a clock in the big station near there was connected with the big clock in the Eiffel Tower. It was found that it required the signal the seven thousandth part of a second to travel between the two points, and as it has been definitely proved that electricity travels 180,000 miles a second, the calculation of the longitude became easy. When the royal astronomer of England fixed the longitude of Valentia, a little island off the coast Kerry where the Atlantic cables go down into the sea, he had thirty chronometers carried back and forth between Valentia and Greenwich twenty-two times before he considered the longitude properly fixed.

The United States Weather Bureau and the Hydrographic Office of the Navy find wireless of peculiar aid to them in determining meteological conditions in the remote corners of the earth. The Weather Bureau forecaster gets a birdseve view of the weather the world around within a few hours of the time of making his forecast.

One of the objects of investors nowadays is to bring out a compact wireless outfit suitable for field purposes. Of course the smaller the outfit the wider its field of usefulness. An army officer has designed a field sending and receiving outfit which has a total weight of less than fifty pounds. The receiving equipment occupies a box fifteen inches deep and sixteen square, weighing about twenty-six pounds. The generator weighs about twenty pounds. A young amateur has invented a receiving outfit which can be carried in the pocket. The apparatus is attached by means of clips to any metal article capable of holding electric waves, and consists of two clips, six feet of cord wire, two safety pins, a bit of silicon and a receiver, the whole thing costing the munificent sum of two dollars.

It is probable that within a short time people will be talking from moving trains by means of the semi-wireless outfit known as the "railiphone". This instrument is being tried out and has met with success. Just now the Pennsylvania Railroad is considering the equipment of some of its trains with wireless and of trying to use it instead of the telephone and the ordinary telegraph in train handling. It is said that the wireless apparatus does its best work in bad, stormy weather, when the telephone and the telegraph are most apt to be out of commission.

Some of the big department stores are now being equipped with wireless outfits which permit them to sendd and receive business messages direct. One of the big daily newspapers in New York has almost entirely given up the translantic cable in getting its European news, and is now getting it across the Atlantic by wireless.

The Navy Department has dropped the word "wireless??? from its vocabulary, using the word "radiogram??? instead. Whether or not it is proper to say that a radiographer sent a radiogram by radiograph, the Navy Department has not decided, but hereafter any wireless message sent or received by the Navy must be a "radiogram".

Mention is made in the file above of a fully operational sea-going submarine being used as a wireless remote controlled boat, either fully manned or devoid of any crew. Ordinarily, an older boat would have been selected but older boats were petrol driven: C class. The chances of a wireless transmission being received causing a spark or electromagnetic disturbance could not be risked, so, they chose the D class, diesel boats, and specifically the boat D1 for the trial.