WW1 and Before Generation Equipment
1899 (Capetown - 2nd Boar War) early Victorian Military radio experiments
The first use of wireless telegraphy in the field occurred during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
The British Army experimented with Marconi's system and the British Navy successfully used it for
communication among naval vessels in Delagoa Bay, prompting further development of Marconi's
wireless telegraph system for practical uses
The British land forces conducted experiments with Marconi sets and also some impounded German Sets (from Siemens) destined for the enemy, but due to a lack of understanding issues about grounding, loading and matching the antenna to the transmitter, etc., Decided the sets broke too quickly for them to make sense for actual field use.
The Marconi engineers were sent out (above) to repair the sets and also help train the users. By this time however a deal had been done to give the sets to the Royal Navy for ship to ship and ship to shore communications. On the 13th of April 1900 a distance of 85 Kms over sea, and nearly 460 Kms from Delagoa Bay and Durban was achieved. In the UK, the Royal Engineers Balloon Section undertook air to ground and later air to air communication experiments.
The 1910 French designed “M” set (M for Military) was a Mounted Wireless set. It could be used on a Horse, Mule or Motorcycle and Sidecar combination. It was a 100W “Spark Gap” TX/Rx.
Later (1917) Marconi made a similar field Mobile set, called the B1-Set. Here (below) the Mk 1 Version of the B1 set.
In 1914 the nearest “mobile set” to the French M1 set above that the British Army could field was the 1500W Mounted Wireless Wagon (by Marconi) as seen below.
The wagon had two compartments, one for the Wireless equipment and one for the accumulators. These accumulators were either swapped out on location and taken away to be charged at a common central charging station (see the steam Charger picture below) or a mobile Charger came around once a day to each location. During WW1 the British supplied Serbia (then an ally of the UK and France) with the same Marconi Mounted Wireless wagons as can be seen in this old photo...
Marconi’s near Brushes with death
Not many know that the UK (and indeed the world) nearly lost the key player in the ongoing development of radio due to the Titanic disaster. Marconi and his entire family were given free tickets (as a “thank you” for his companies wireless services to the line) by White Star Line for the Maiden voyage. Marconi turned down the trip for himself and sailed on an earlier ship, because he had a pressing business engagement that could not wait the additional three days needed to arrive that same week . His wife (Beatrice O'Brien), his daughter Degna and son Giulio, (later a younger daugher Gioia was born in 1916) and some others from his household planned to follow on behind him as his representatives for the maiden voyage. Fortunately for them, one of his children (his son Giulio) was suddenly very ill, so that they, a day before the sailing, had to cancel their trip. Degna, his eldest daughter, recalled how she and her mother climbed to the highest part of the Luttrell’s Tower, at Calshot (leased to Marconi in 1911, and in which Marconi later conducted important first world war work) on the morning of April 10th 1912 to watch the Titanic sail by. Degna who was nearly four years old, remembered vividly later: “...together we waved at the ship, huge and resplendent in the spring sunlight, and dozens of handkerchiefs and scarves were waved back at us. As the Titanic passed from our view over the calm water, we slowly descended the steps. It was a long way down....” (from “My Father Marconi” by Degna Marconi, 1962, McGraw-Hill)
Had Marconi have died in 1912, or maybe been thrown into mourning for the loss of his family then the development of Wireless for the field and shipping may have stagnated and not made such progress as it did during and after the first world war. The two radio operators aboard the Titanic - Jack Phillips and Harold Bride - were not employed by the White Star Line but by the Marconi International Marine Communication Company. during the Court of Inquiry into the loss of the Titanic on 18 June 1912, Britain's postmaster-general summed up, referring to the Titanic disaster, "Those who have been saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi...and his marvellous invention." Ironically he saved lives while not being there, wonders if he would have been able to have saved his own family had they made the trip?
Also in the same year he and his wife were involved in a near fatal Car accident (25th September 1912) The accident happened in north-west Italy in the town of Spezia when his car containing (Marconi, Beatrice, his secretary and chauffeur) but with Marconi himself at the wheel collided head-on into an oncoming car. All the occupants of the car were severely shaken, but Marconi was thrown onto the steering wheel centre stud, and suffered serious injury which resulted in the loss of his right eye. Having just come from Austria, which at that time drove on the left, and with so little traffic to orient to, maybe he forgot which side the Italian’s drove?
Another thing that not many know, is that when Marconi died, there was a minimum 2 minute (although some websites say 2 Hours or even 24 hours) world wide radio silence. This was the first time since the invention of wireless telegraphy that the airwaves were as they had been for thousands of years, just static. Marconi died at the age of 63, in Rome on 20 July 1937.
