Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
Working with Marconi
I MUST tell you about a fine experience I had with Mr. Marconi when he received the first signals across the Atlantic, but before I do so I want to say a few words concerning the great inventor and his wireless telegraph.
Quite a number of people seem to be imbued with the idea that no one ever thought of sending messages by wireless before Mr. Marconi—in fact that he just put together a few old electrical instruments and forthwith sent and received messages over space without any connecting wires.
Of course the basis for these erroneous impressions is that Mr. Marconi is said to be, and rightly, the inventor of the wireless telegraph. Now I want to put those young fellows who are reading this account straight on the matter. Many men may work on a device and none of them hit upon the thing that is needed to make it practical; then some fine day a genius will happen along and see just what the device lacks and add it to the general collection, or he will. put something to it, perhaps accidentally, that does the business, and this last touch which enables it to be used gives the man who does it the right to be called its inventor.
Now, dozens of men, including Morse, Edison and Tesla in this country, and Hughes, Pierce and Lodge in England, worked on the scheme of sending messages without wires; but they either experimented along the wrong line, or the few who worked on the right line did not push far enough ahead to get anywhere. The result was that by the time Mr. Marconi tackled it all the instruments that were needed for telegraphing without wires were at hand but no one had quite caught on how to use them.
Nearly every one thinks, too, that it is far more wonderful to send wireless messages than it is to send messages over a wire; but this is not the case at all, though both, I trow, are wonderful enough. When we say a message is sent by wireless we do not mean, by a long shot, that it goes from the place where it is sent to the place where it is received without anything between them to carry it. Nor again do we mean that it goes to a single receiver and nowhere else.
For instance, when you talk to a person ordinarily you convey to him your message without wires, but it is the air between your mouth and his ear that carries the message, that is, waves are set up in the air and these are called sound waves. Naturally since the air is everywhere on the surface of the earth the sounds you make travel in every direction.
A better example of wireless is a lighted lamp and your eye, for in this case the lighted lamp acts as a transmitter and sets up very short waves in the ether, which are called light waves and these likewise travel in every direction. The ether is a substance that is 15 trillion times lighter than the air and it fills the whole universe, and when the electric waves set up by a light in it strike your eye the optic nerve carries the sensation of them to your brain and you see the light.
The next thing to know is that light waves and wireless waves are exactly the same kind of waves, that is, both are caused by electric stresses and magnetic whirls in the ether, but while light waves are in the neighborhood of the ten-millionth of an inch in length, wireless waves are so long they make no impression at all on the eye.
That light is electric waves in the ether has been known for the last couple of hundred years and later on scientific sharks believed there were other and longer electric waves but they didn’t know how to produce them or to receive them until 1888.
In that year Heinrich Hertz, a young German college professor, discovered that when an electric spark was made by any kind of an apparatus the positive and negative electric charges in uniting together would not only break down the air to make the spark, but would form an oscillating current, that is, a current which surges to and fro hundreds of thousands of times a second, and that this high frequency current, as it is called, sets up waves in the ether just as the vibrations of a bell set up waves in the air.
Hertz made an apparatus by which he could produce electric waves of different lengths and this he called an oscillator. It consisted of a couple of wires fixed to the balls of the spark-gap of an induction coil, on the other and free end of which were soldered a couple of sheets of copper. (See the accompanying picture.)
He also devised a simple apparatus to detect the presence of these waves—that is, to receive them, which he called a resonator, and this was a cut wire ring with a little brass ball on each of its ends as shown in the following diagram. Now when Hertz set his induction coil going, streams of sparks were set up in the spark-gap of the oscillator and electric oscillations, or high-frequency currents, surged from one of the copper plates to the other and back again, and these sent out trains of electric waves through the ether.
By holding his resonator, or as we would call it now, his detector, at a little distance from his sending apparatus, when the latter sent out the electric waves they would set up electric
oscillations, or currents of high frequency, in the ring detector and ‘these in turn would make a stream of little sparks jump across the gap between the balls.
Here, then, was a complete wireless sending and receiving apparatus, but it would work only a short distance, probably not over 100 feet. But Hertz was not trying to invent a wireless telegraph; all he wanted to and did do was to prove that there were long electric waves and there his work ended.
After Hertz had shown how long electric waves could be set up by the sparks of an induction coil, other scientific chaps went to work to get up a better scheme to detect them. In 1890 Edouard Branly, of France, discovered that when metal filings were put in a tube and
electric waves were allowed to fall on them the resistance of the filings was lowered, and Sir Oliver Lodge, in 1894, found that this was caused by the filings being drawn closer together, that is, they cohered. By connecting a coherer (see the diagram) as he called the filings detector, to a galvanometer and a dry-all he was able to detect the presence of electric waves up to distances of 500 feet.
A year later Popoff, of Russia, made a receiver for studying electric storms—lightning is only gigantic electric sparks—and this consisted of a coherer, a battery, a relay and an electric bell. Popoff connected one side of the coherer with a wire which he ran up into the air, or aerial wire as we call it now, and the other side of the coherer he grounded, as shown in the diagram. This was the first time that
an aerial wire and a ground had ever been used in connection with a coherer. With this apparatus Popoff was able to hear the coming of storms for hours before they appeared above the horizon.
About this time Gugliemo Marconi, who was only 20 years old, was going to the University at Bologna, Italy. Prof. Righi who lectured on physics there was repeating Hertz’s experiments and used Branly’s coherer for detecting the electric waves. This set Marconi to thinking and it was not long before he had an experimental wireless set of his own, thus becoming the first wireless kid.
The chief difference between his transmitter and that of Hertz was a telegraph key which he put in the battery circuit so that he could break up the sparks into dots and dashes. He also set a reflector back of the apparatus to concentrate the electric waves into a beam to make them go in a given direction when they would be more powerful and cover a longer distance. But Hertz did the reflector stunt first.
Marconi’s receiver was made up of an apparatus just like Popoff’s except that he connected an old-time Morse printing register in the battery circuit so that when the electric waves acted on the coherer the signals would be printed on a tape in dots and dashes.
In his first attempts, then, to send wireless messages, young Marconi had done four things and these were (1) to see the possibilities of using electric waves set up by a Hertz apparatus for sending messages; (2) to put a telegraph key in the sending circuit; (3) to use a Popoff receiver for receiving the electric waves, and (4) to put a Morse register in the receiving circuit. These were the first big steps in building up a wireless telegraph set, but none of them formed an invention.
I do not know just when Marconi added the aerial and ground to his transmitter—Popoff had used an aerial and ground with his receiver—but the aerial and ground formed his great claim to being the inventor of the wireless telegraph, for it was the aerial and ground which enabled him to cover long distances.
In 1896 Marconi went to England and there applied for a patent in which he showed an aerial and ground connected to his sending and receiving apparatus (see the diagram) but even at this time he did not understand the impor-tance of a high, well insulated aerial and a good ground.
On arriving in London this boy, with the big idea in the back of his head and a lot of business ability in front of it, went to Sir William Pierce
who was then at the head of the British Post Office and offered to give him a demonstration of his new wireless telegraph. As Sir William had long been interested in the possibility of wireless telegraphy he was agreeable. The outcome of it was that one station was rigged up in the General Post Office and another on the Thames embankment about 300 feet away.
These experiments were successful enough to interest the War Office and he was asked to show what he could do over longer distances. Salisbury Plain was chosen for the trials and by placing reflectors back of the sending and receiving apparatus he was able to telegraph over a distance of about 2 miles.
Marconi now commenced to experiment with aerials and grounds in order to increase the effective range of his apparatus and with them he was able to cover the distance of 3 miles between Lowernock and Flat Holm. Sometimes in these trials the dots and dashes would be printed good and clear and at others they were all jumbled up.
The inventor was trying all sorts of schemes to get satisfactory results, but nothing helped until he heightened the aerial wire on his sending apparatus. Presto! the signals came in clear and without a miss. Here then was the whole secret of wireless telegraphy—the higher the aerial the farther messages could be sent with the same amount of power.
This was the real beginning of wireless telegraphy and from that moment on Marconi’s star began to rise. It was not long before he was telegraphing over a space of eight miles, the aerials at both ends being held up in the air by kites.
These astounding results had reached the ears of German scientists and through the pull of the former German Emperor, now plain Mr. Hohenzollern, things were fixed so that Dr. Adolph Slaby, of the Charlottenburg University, was allowed to be present while Marconi was sending and receiving messages.
The learned doctor deliberately swiped Marconi’s ideas and on returning to the land of kultur he bent his energies toward outdoing and undoing the young inventor who showed him how to telegraph without wires. Of course, Dr. Slaby invented a system of wireless telegraphy and this was quickly used on the ships of what was formerly the German Navy.
But Marconi’s fame as the real inventor of the wireless telegraph had too sound a bottom for his detractors to hurt him much and he went right on about his work without the slightest caring whatever. He was next invited by the King of Italy to visit his native land and to make some experiments there. A shore station had been put up at Spezia and a couple of war ships were fitted with wireless equipments. In the tests which followed Marconi broke the record for wireless and his achievement was the talk of the world.
Wireless, like its inventor, was on the upgrade and in England Marconi’s Wireless Telegraphy Company, Limited, as it was at first called, was organized for the purpose of installing his system on ship and shore stations. Stations at Bournemouth and at Alum Bay on the Isle of Wight, about 14 miles apart were put up and Marconi did a great deal of experimenting and increased his range to 18 miles when he sent to and received messages from an out-bound steamer.
No one could shut his eyes to the value of wireless at sea and Lloyd’s, the great shipping corporation, had two stations put up at Ballycastle and Rathlin Island on the northern coast of Ireland where experiments were conducted to further test the reliability of the system in all weathers.
The Kingston Regatta was the next event in which wireless figured and the Daily Express of Dublin arranged with Marconi, or his company, to install his apparatus on a ship and report the races to the shore station for the benefit of their readers; and this was done without a hitch. Talk about a scoop! Here was a wireless scoop. Can you beat it!
About this time the Prince of Wales, afterward King Edward VII, met with an accident and he went aboard the royal yacht Osborne to recuperate. Could Marconi fit up a station on it and also in the royal residence Osborne where Queen Victoria was staying so that communication might be kept up between them? Of course he could and he did it with much satisfaction and pleasure to his royal patrons and credit to himself.
The next installations of note were made by the Marconi Company at South Foreland Lighthouse and East Goodwin Lightship which lay off the Goodwin Shoals about a dozen miles away. This was in December, 1898, and very shortly after a steamer was stranded on the shoals. A C Q D signal was instantly flashed from the lightship to the lghthouse and brought help that saved the ship with its cargo which together were worth a quarter of a million dollars.
Bigger things were now in order and greater distances were to be spanned. Early in 1899 Marconi set up a station at Dover on the English coast and another at Wimereaux on the French coast. The distance between these stations was 30 miles but Marconi had no trouble in sending messages forth and back across the English Channel.
This astounding feat made the British Admiralty sit up and scan the horizon and seeing wireless writ large upon it, it had Marconi put his outfits on three cruisers that very year. During the naval manœuvers which soon took place wireless as a factor in fighting was given a thorough tryout with the result that the top-notch distance was reached when the flagship of the fleet signaled orders to one of the cruisers at a distance of 85 miles.
I remember distinctly how every one over here was talking about that wonderful wireless and the boy who invented it. Consequently when the New York Herald announced that it had engaged Marconi to report the International Yacht Race at New York, the one word on everybody’s tongue was wireless. A ship fitted with wireless that followed in the wake of the yacht, and a shore station was used as in the Kingston Regatta. Over 4,000 words were transmitted from the wireless ship to the shore station where they were retransmitted by wire to the Herald office in New York.
The Marconi interests got busy on this side of the big wet and organized a company to carry on the business over here. Stations were put up in 1901 at different points on the Atlantic coast and also in England. The British Marconi Company entered into an agreement with Lloyd’s in which the latter agreed to use only the Marconi system for a term of 14 years and that ships fitted with Marconi apparatus should not exchange messages with ships carrying any other make of apparatus. Then began the great business of installing Marconi apparatus on the fleets of transatlantic shipping routes. Still Marconi wasn’t satisfied; he wanted to and did do bigger things.
I hadn’t been home from South America more than a fortnight when it just so happened that I listened-in (without a receiver and quite unintentionally I assure you) to a conversation between two officials of a certain wireless company. The message I got was that Marconi was on his way to St. Johns, Newfoundland, with a couple of assistants and that his purpose was to find out how far he could receive messages from passing steamers.
My subconscious self immediately wirelessed to my conscious self that it would be a fitting piece of business for me to work under the great inventor—though he was not much older than I. I knew perfectly well that there was no use trying to get a job with him through the ordinary channels for he had brought his own assistants from England with him and, of course, none others were wanted.
Therefore, I said nothing to any one but quietly hopped on a train for St. Johns, and trusted to luck for the rest. Did you ever notice, Mr. Collins, that when you make up your mind to do a certain thing and you try as hard as you can to do it, good luck generally meets you somewhere along the road and gives you a lift?
Well, when I got to St. Johns, it was the 3rd of December, 1901. I went into a second hand store and bought an outfit of clothes so that I would look like the rest of the working people up there; and when I put them on I flattered myself that I did; my face and hands tanned in the tropics helving out quite some.
I learned that Marconi and his assistants had not arrived nor had any one heard that they were to come. I figured it out that their coming was either a secret or a hoax—in fact, I was inclined to the latter belief; and I had great fears I was on a wild-goose chase and that I had spent about half a million of my hard-earned Brazilian reis for nothing. I stuck around though, and on the 6th who should come to town but the inventor of the wireless telegraph, though to look at. him you would not have suspected it. I did not make known to his assistants that I was an operator but when the boxes and hamper which contained his instruments were unloaded I jumped in and helped to put them on the wagon.
Mr. Marconi—now that I had seen him he was Mr.—and one of his assistants left and the other remained behind to look after the bags and baggage. He thought I was the helper of the driver of the dray and the driver thought I was one of the assistants—or at least that’s what I thought they thought. At any rate when we got the dray loaded I just naturally jumped on and went with them.
Mr. Kemp, the assistant, instructed -he driver to go to Signal Hill, which is about half-a-mile from St. Johns and right at the mouth of the harbor. When we got there I was nearly frozen but I buckled right down and helped the drayman to unload the stuff and to carry it into the barracks. When he had been paid and was ready to go I said to the driver, “guess I’ll stay and help around,” and when he said “all right,” I knew that matters were pretty well fixed. From that time on I made myself generally useful as a first class roustabout.
While Mr. Kemp and I were busy unpacking the apparatus, kites and balloons, Mr. Marconi and Mr. Paget came in. The inventor wore a fur cap and a fur trimmed overcoat. He took these off, just like a common everyday man, and stood by for a moment looking on. He didn’t say anything and you can bet your last Brazilian reis that I kept my mouth shut. Now and then, though, I took a good look at him for he was, indeed, no lesser personage than the great inventor of the wireless telegraph—Gugliemo Marconi!
He was then 27 years old but he looked at least ten years older. His father was an Italian and his mother was Irish, but Mr. Marconi, except for his bluish eyes and rather light hair, looked strictly like a son of sunny Italy. He had a high forehead, long and rather thin nose, largish ears, a big mouth with a long upper lip which was covered with a straggly mustache, a strong chin and deep-set, serious eyes that seemed to be looking beyond whatever he was looking at.
Certainly he was not an inventor of the old school for he was well groomed and dressed in an up-to-date business suit. One thing sure he was not much of a talker and I soon observed that his great part in the game of wireless was a thinking part.
His assistants set up a little apparatus which consisted of a receiver only with a telephone receiver hooked up to it instead of the usual Morse register. The aerial wire was led outside through a hard rubber insulator in the window where it was fixed to but insulated from a stout pole, set in the ground. To the free end of this leading in wire the aerial wire proper, when it was held aloft by a kite or a balloon, was to be secured.
As his assistants—Mr. Marconi always addressed them as Mr. Kemp and Mr. Paget—were connecting up the instruments there was small show of emotion though I could feel the high tension they were under and shared it with them. Finally the apparatus was connected up and Mr. Marconi tested out the adjustments.
Next we got out several big, nine-foot, hexagon-shaped kites whose ribs were of bamboo and which were covered with silk soaked in dope to make it waterproof. These we put together and then from the wicker hamper we took a couple of small silk balloons and filled them with hydrogen gas from cylindrical steel tanks in which it was compressed.
At last on Tuesday, December 9th, we were all ready to hoist the aerial wire with either a kite or a balloon, but the wind was still high and a small blizzard was on. Mr. Marconi did not think it advisable to try to make any tests then, and if we were disappointed what must he have been. The next day the wind was still blowing strong but we were all anxious to get to work.
“You may try putting up a kite when you are ready, Mr. Kemp,” Mr. Marconi said.
Mr. Kemp was soon ready and with the help of a couple of natives—I was one of them—he got the kite aloft. We used a stranded copper wire for the kite string and this was also to serve for the aerial, but the moment we had it well up a gust of wind hit the kite, the wire parted and—we were ready to try again.
Mr. Marconi then suggested that we try one of the balloons. We took it outside, fastened the aerial wire to it and, different from the kite, we had no trouble in getting it to go up. No sooner had we let out all the wire than it snapped again and the balloon sailed out to sea.
The next day the wind was just as high but we stuck to the barracks in case it should go down. There were bits of talk among Mr. Marconi and his assistants about the instruments, the ground, the aerial and other things which would have been as Greek to any one but an old operator like myself. I drank in every word that these pioneer wireless men said but never a word said I. Once Mr. Paget asked me to hand him a dry-cell and I handed him a binding post instead. Some one said “stupid” under his breath but still loud enough for me to hear it and I was happy. None of this wireless kid stuff here. I was getting away with murder.
Mr. Paget looked at his watch. “Poldhu is sending now. Too bad we haven’t a kite up, Mr. Marconi.”
“We must get it up. Mr. Kemp, will you be good enough to try again?” Mr. Marconi said.
Oh-ho, said I to myself. I am in on big doings. What Mr. Marconi is here for is not particularly to get signals from passing ships far out at sea, but to try and get Poldhu! It made my hair stand on end at the thought of such wonders. And if he gets it he will have spanned the Atlantic—over 2,000 miles—with his wireless waves. He will have done the biggest scientific thing since Cyrus Field joined the old and the new worlds with his cable! Whoopee! Yow! Yow!
From that moment on I was walking on air. The inventor, whatever he may have felt, was calm, cool and collected, dignified at all times but always in a good humor. The strain he was undergoing must have been tremendous, but he had trained himself well in the art of restraint and no one, not in on the know would have ever suspected it.
At Poldhu, on the Cornish coast of England, the Marconi Company had built, for the express purpose of making this greatest of all experiments, the most powerful wireless station that had yet been put up. It had been figured by Marconi and his technical adviser of England, Dr. Fleming, that to transmit wireless messages across the ocean, 15 vertical wires 210 feet high, would have to be used and that these would have to be energized by oscillating currents equal to about 25 horse power. It was indeed a veritable lightning and thunder plant!
On Thursday, the 12th of December, we flew another kite and Mr. Marconi came out and personally saw to it that no flukes were made. The wind was still high and fitful, but with extreme care in which all of us, including Mr. Marconi, took a hand we somehow got it up and held it at about 400 feet.
Then the inventor and Mr. Kemp went into the wireless room. This was about 11:30 o’clock in the morning, St. Johns time. We held the kite as steady as we could and I knew that the supreme time in Marconi’s life was at hand. After waiting half an hour—it seemed like an eternity of time even to me—Mr. Kemp came out of the barracks and hurried over to where we were holding the kite. I couldn’t tell from his face whether the experiment had been a success or not, for an Englishman’s face always looks the same.
“We got it!” he told Mr. Paget. “Mr. Marconi got the signal first and then handed the head-phone to me. I heard the three dots several times in succession quite clearly.”
The three dots forming the letter S were those agreed upon by Mr. Marconi and his operators at the Poldhu station before he left England, as being the best signal to send out.
“Fine, old top,” exclaimed Mr. Paget, or words to that effect.
Mr. Kemp then went back to the barracks and in another half hour he emerged again and told Mr. Paget that the signals were still coming in and that there wasn’t the slightest doubt but that they came from Poldhu. He said that Mr. Marconi had asked that the kite be kept up for another hour if possible.
The wind grew more blustery than before, but anything was possible now for nothing so makes for success as a little success. The aerial was often more nearly horizontal than vertical, but Mr. Marconi got the signals as they were flashed out by Poldhu just the same. This ended our work for the day—that never-to-be-forgotten 12th of December.
The next day we flew the big kite using the aerial wire for a string again, for Poldhu had been instructed to keep on sending the letter S. The three short dots were sent out right along with short intervals between them, but the kite would take a header every time it was hit by a gust of wind and this would bring the aerial wire down so low the signals could not be heard, and, again, the receiver had to be kept in close adjustment.
After these last tests we hauled in the kite and then came the soft job of packing up the stuff. While we were doing this I threw a bomb into Mr. Marconi’s camp by telling Mr. Paget that I was Jack Heaton, the former chief wireless officer on the Andalusian. He told Mr. Kemp and they both smiled.
“Well, bless my heart, old man,” he said with about as much show of emotion as I do now in repeating it to you. “I rather thought, don’t you know, that you were as smart as paint—too smart to be trundling boxes around on a bally goods wagon. Who told you to come up here?”
“No one, Mr. Kemp, I just wanted to work under Mr. Marconi so that I could say I had done so and I came up from New York of my own accord.”
“Well, bless my old soul!” Mr. Kemp continued, which was his way of expressing his opinion of the nerve I had shown.
I kept right on packing up the stuff under the direction of the two assistants and after a while when Mr. Marconi came over Mr. Kemp spoke to him.
“I say, Mr. Marconi, this chap is Jack Heaton who was the operator on the Andalusian when she went down. He says he came up here to work with you. I don’t know who took him on; I didn’t and Mr. Paget says he didn’t.”
“Mr. Marconi, I’m mighty glad to meet you,” I said and held out my hand.
He grasped it firmly and shook it just once and that was worth another million dollars. What’s that? Well, it was worth a hundred anyhow.
“Extraordinary,’’ said the great inventor as though this big word had but two syllables in it. “Quite extraordinary. I hope, Mr. Heaton, you have not been disappointed.”
“I not only deeply appreciate the fact that I have been one of your assistants, sir, but to have been present when you received the first cableless signals across the Atlantic was an honor I never dreamed of.”
With his usual deliberateness the inventor did not immediately give to the world at large the wonderful results of his transatlantic experiments but waited for two whole days after he had completed his tests. When he did finally make them known there was quite a conflict of opinion, for some believed and others doubted that he had actually received the signals from Poldhu.
Many of those who had followed wireless telegraphy from its beginnings and knew somewhat of the theory of how it worked, set up a hue and a cry that the signals he had received were sent by ships at sea, or else they were due to static, as we call it now, that is, little charges of atmospheric electricity which accumulates on the aerial wire and finally discharges through the detector into the ground and this makes a click in the head-phones that sounds like a dot.
When the equipment was packed up Mr. Kemp paid me off—not at the measly rate of a truck driver or a roustabout in St. Johns, but an amount considerably over that which a first-class operator gets and my expenses for a round-voyage beside. I was soon headed once more for New York.
During the next two months Mr. Marconi’s critics were still carping about the cableless signals. And then the inventor put a big one over on them that made them crawl into their holes. In February, 1902, the S. S. Philadelphia sailed from England with the inventor on board. The wireless receiver was of the regulation ship and shore type, that is, it had a coherer and a Morse register, and it was nowhere nearly as sensitive as the detector and telephone receivers used in the Poldhu tests.
Mr. Marconi had arranged for the station at Poldhu to send messages every day at certain times until the Philadelphia arrived at New York. He adjusted the ship’s receiver himself and from the time she left England messages sent from the Poldhu station were printed on the tape until the ship was 1,551 miles out and from that time on signals were recorded on the tape up to 2,099 miles.
This time there was no possible chance for the doubting Thomases to say that there might have been an error, for there were the records printed in ink on a tape and not only Mr. Marconi but the officers of the ship saw them, and the tape at different times was signed by the Captain. Thus the last one read:
“Received on S. S. Philadelphia, Latitude 42, 1 N., Longitude 47, 23 W., distance 2,099 (two thousand and ninety-nine) statute miles from Poldhu. Capt. A. R. Mills.”
This then was the beginning of sending messages across the ocean without wires, or cableless telegraphy, as you call it, and I was in on it.