MARCONI’S FIRST TRANSATLANTIC WIRELESS TRANSMISSION

Figure 1. George Kemp with a Baden-Powell kite

Introduction Sigs. At 12.30, 1.10 and 2.20.

This brief diary entry for Thursday 12 December, 1901 is how Signor Guglielmo Marconi chose

to commemorate what is arguably the single most pivotal moment in telecommunications

history: the first transatlantic wireless transmission. Pivotal in that it flew in the face of all

accepted scientific knowledge. Conventional wisdom held that radio waves – being

electromagnetic radiation – should behave like light and would, therefore, be unable to travel

beyond the horizon, let alone across the Atlantic. The signals: three dots, an ‘S’ in Morse code,

were sent from Poldhu, an experimental radio station designed expressly for the attempt near

The Lizard, Cornwall. They were received at a temporary station at Signal Hill in Newfoundland,

Canada, a distance of around 2100 miles. In the century which has followed, radio technologies

have flourished beyond even Marconi’s prescient imaginings. Television, radio, GPS and

mobile phones have become hugely important, some would argue essential, artifacts in the

construction of our modern globalized world. Recently voted the greatest patented invention of

all time1, radio has given us telescopes to explore the heavens above us and geophysics to

explore the earth beneath our feet. Marconi’s experimental transmission has come to be

regarded by many (Hong 2005, 9) as the birth of modern information technology - the first

pioneering foray into the unexplored universe of electromagnetic radiation.

Marconi’s achievement was announced by The New York Times on December 15th, 1901, three

days after the first transmission, as ‘the most wonderful scientific development in modern times’.

Reaction to the results was mixed, however, as the signals were entirely unverified, having only

been witnessed by Marconi and his assistant George Kemp. Despite being hailed by the

general public as an astounding technological breakthrough (Hong, 2005, 7), some prominent

scholars (notably Thomas Edison and Oliver Lodge) were justifiably skeptical. From the press

too, Marconi received mixed reactions. The Telegraph questioned publicly whether signals had

been received in Newfoundland at all, suggesting that Marconi might have been misled by static

interference, lightning storms or stray signals from one of his own nearby ship-to-shore stations.

The argument as to whether Marconi did or did not transmit signals across the Atlantic on that

December afternoon continues to this day, rumbling on in public houses, Internet chat-rooms

and anywhere else radio-engineers, -historians, or -enthusiasts congregate. This begs the

question, how did an event which was - and continues to be - so hotly contested come to be

accepted as one of the key events of the twentieth century?

The key to answering this question – and indeed to understanding the event itself - lies in the

great variety of materials available for study. The remains of the station sites at Poldhu and

Signal Hill have been under the protection of the National Trust, UK and Parks Canada

respectively for around 70 years. The Poldhu station buildings were largely demolished in 1935

and exist as a collection of concrete or tiled floors which imply little of their original function.

Cable trenches are clearly visible as earthworks, however, and these, along with the mast

bases and large concrete anchor stones, are sufficient to establish the function and chronology

of the site. The building at Signal Hill was destroyed by fire in 1920, although, due to the

superficial nature of its role, it was unlikely in any case to have retained archaeological traces of

the event.

The Marconi archive at the Bodleian Library, Oxford holds a wealth of archival materials,

including documents, photographs, sketches, engineering drawings, diaries and eye witness

accounts. Moreland (2001) has argued that a successful archaeological engagement with these

kinds of documentary materials must treat them not as sources per se but critically, reflexively

and as objects in their own right. This essay hopes to continue in the tradition of treating

documents as artefacts to bring an archaeological understanding of materials to more traditional

historical accounts of the event. Alongside documentary artefacts there are a number of

technical and mechanical components housed and displayed at the Museum of the History of

Science, Oxford. A detailed reappraisal of the function, significance and limitations of the

objects involved will prove crucial to the exploration of the event, as will an understanding of the

object’s place and function in the public imagination.

Most importantly for this essay, perhaps, is the work of sociologists and historians of technology

(for example MacKenzie & Wacjman, 1985; Bijker, Hughes & Pinch, 1989) which, since the

1980s, has highlighted the fact that behind the more obviously ‘archaeological’ objects lies an

entanglement of things which archaeologists do not traditionally engage with. As diverse and

heterogeneous as stock prices or an Italian’s penchant for a sea-view, these social, technical, or

economic things play significant roles in the construction of the material world and are therefore

available for archaeological engagement. This essay hopes to build on archaeology’s expertise

in investigating and interpreting material culture to pick apart these webs of things, places and

people to create new, fuller and un-packed understandings of events in the world.

A Defining Moment

The object, above all others, which can lay claim to being centre stage on 12th December, 1901,

is Marconi’s Morse inker. The Morse inker is a device which can be used to record the arrival of

wireless signals. When a signal is detected, the Morse inker automatically marks the arrival

with a dot or dash on a paper tape. The Morse inker doesn’t just mark paper, however, it is also

an object which performs a social role: it tells the truth. Whereas people are mistrusted,

regarded as unreliable, fantasists or liars, the inker is seen as independent and incorruptible.

And so, the Morse inker that Marconi brought with him should have played the role of

independent observer. The marks it produced should have been proof that signals were

received. Marconi did not, however, use the Morse inker. He couldn’t. The inker needed a

minimum electrical input to function. Marconi was unable to maintain a sufficiently strong and

consistent signal from his aerial to provide this minimum input. The reason he was unable to do

this was that the 210 metre (500 ft) bare copper aerial wire was held aloft with the aid of a kite.

The reason it was held aloft with a kite was because the balloon had blown away the previous

day. Balloons and kites have never been the methods of choice for supporting aerial wires, not

even in the early days of wireless. So why would Marconi, a pioneer in the field be using them

for this, his first – and vital - transatlantic transmission?

The transatlantic experiment was designed initially to be conducted between two purpose-built

stations either side of the Atlantic. In October 1900 a site was chosen on a headland

overlooking Poldhu Cove near the Lizard in Cornwall. Work began on the American side in

March, 1901 on a site on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The stations were of unprecedented size

and power, essentially scaled-up versions or Marconi’s successful laboratory equipment with

higher aerials and more powerful transmitters. Marconi personally designed the aerial system

(figure two) which consisted of 400 aerial wires held aloft by a circle of 20 masts, each 61

metres (200 ft) high. The wires terminated in a station building set in the centre of the circle,

creating a wire ‘cone’. The term ‘masts’ was not an incidental one. Aerial designers drew on

the only similarly engineered structure existing at the time: traditional wooden ships masts. The

transatlantic masts were constructed in four wooden sections referred to as lower-mast, top-

mast, top-gallant and royal, held aloft by rope stays. The masts, though electrically innovative,

were not structurally particularly robust.

Figure two. The Poldhu antenna array before the storm, early September, 1901.

Both the Poldhu and Cape Cod stations were built on rugged stretches of coastline at the mercy

of the unpredictable Atlantic weather. It has been assumed that this was in an effort to minimize

transmission distances (though when dealing with distances of several thousand miles it is

difficult to understand how an extra half-mile might have helped). It could perhaps stem from an

unspoken assumption that wireless stations somehow should be built on the coast, a hang-over

from Marconi’s earlier ship-to-shore work for the Navy. In any event, on 17th September, 1901,

the exposed Poldhu headland was subject to a vicious gale which toppled the entire delicate

aerial array (figure three). Within 10 days, Marconi’s assistant Kemp managed to erect a more

robust 48 metre (157 ft) high temporary array from the wreckage of the first (figure four).

Transmission ranges from this jerry-rigged aerial system appeared promising and it was

therefore decided to go ahead and attempt the experimental transatlantic transmission between

Cape Cod and Poldhu as planned. The Poldhu signal might not have been everything Marconi

had envisaged but the fully functioning aerial array at Cape Cod would at least provide the best

chance of transmission in the opposite direction. On the eve of the planned sailing to America -

26th November – a gale wrecked the Cape Cod array. Marconi’s experiment was again

thwarted by the weather.

Figure three. The Poldhu antenna array after the storm, 18 September, 1901.

Figure four. Poldhu temporary antenna array used for the transatlantic attempt 12 December, 1901.

The experiment was always going to be a bit of a gamble. No one had ever attempted to build a

giant aerial structure before. Marconi’s lack of structural engineering skills had left him out of

time, out of money and without either of his planned transatlantic stations. It was, however,

imperative that the trial went ahead. £50,000 had been invested by the Board of the Marconi

Company and Marconi was under great pressure to provide some kind of justification for the

continued funding of the project. It was therefore decided to transmit from the temporary aerial

at Poldhu. In order to maximize the chances of receiving signals in America, the receiving site

was moved from Cape Cod to the closest point of landfall: St John’s, Newfoundland. There

was, of course, no wireless station in Newfoundland. Marconi, Kemp and his other assistant

Paget, hurriedly assembled a makeshift receiving kit of kites, balloons, great rolls of antenna

wire, earth-plates, coherers, ear-pieces and the Morse inker. Then, under great secrecy, the

three men loaded their odd cargo and boarded the ship.

On arrival in St. John’s on 6th December, the group was shown by the Governor of St John’s to

a bleak ex-military fever hospital on an aptly named local promontory, Signal Hill.

Newfoundland may not have been Marconi’s first choice but it certainly lent his endeavour an air

of historical inevitability. Signal Hill is the location of the tower commemorating John Cabot’s

discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 and a stone’s throw from Heart’s Content, the landing place

for the first transatlantic cable in 1858. The equipment was readied in one of the abandoned

hospital rooms, wires were run outside and the earth-plates were buried in preparation for the

first transmissions from Poldhu. Marconi cabled that transmission should start on 11th

December and that three Morse dots – the letter S – should be sent continuously between 3 and

7pm every day (UK time) until further notice2.

Figure five. Marconi (far left) and his assistants launching a kite on Signal Hill, Newfoundland.

On the day of the experiment the weather at Signal Hill was taking a turn for the worse. The

first attempt to receive signals was made using a balloon to hold approximately 500 metres of

copper antenna wire aloft. Marconi was using what he called a syntonic receiver. This was a

new and very sensitive kind of receiver which could be tuned to the specific capacity of the

aerial wire. At the time there was no way of amplifying weak signals so the tuned receiver was

by far his best shot at receiving the feeble transmission from Poldhu. It could also be used in

conjunction with the Morse inker to record the event. As the force of the storm grew, the balloon

reared and bobbed, changing direction and elevation at random. This made the capacity of the

aerial fluctuate wildly, which in turn made it impossible to keep the syntonic receiver in tune and

rendered it useless. The weather ensured that Marconi had to abandon the syntonic receiver

and employ instead an older, untuned receiver attached directly to a headphone. Any results

received in this way would therefore be completely unverifiable.

The next day, the 12th, the storm was worse. A Baden-Powell kite was first sent up carrying

twin 155 metre (510 ft) aerial wires which blew away in a matter of minutes. A second kite,

carrying a single 152 metre (500 ft) wire was launched. The wind ripped at the kite which

plunged and strained but remained in the air. Inside the makeshift receiving room in the

hospital Marconi suddenly handed the telephone earpiece to his assistant Kemp and asked the

now famous question, ‘Can you hear anything, Mr. Kemp?’ Mr. Kemp replied that he could: a

repeated series of three faint clicks, fading in and out of the static. The time was 12.20pm.

Marconi and Kemp recorded more signals at 1.10 and again at 2.20. The Morse inker,

however, recorded nothing.

Defining a Moment

Events are places where the material and the social are caught up together. As Appadurai

(1986, 3) suggested, objects have social lives. The Morse inker is an object bound up with

explicit social concepts, including ideas of scientific proof, integrity and trust. The physical

properties of the inker do certain things, for example the resistivity of the inker’s circuits

determines whether or not the event could reliably be said to have happened. Latour (2005)

would argue that materials provide the physical stability around which ‘the social’ can be

constructed. Without the stability provided by materials – such as a dot on a piece of paper -

understandings of the event were reduced to a far shakier, social scaffolding, in this case

Marconi’s professional reputation. The Museum of the History of Science does not list

Marconi’s inker among their collection of artefacts from that first transatlantic transmission. The

absence of this central object from our current story of the event is evidence that defining

moments do not arrive fully formed but must undergo subsequent and continual processes of

creation and negotiation. It is to a discussion of this narrative forming afterlife that we now turn.

Defining the moment of the first transatlantic wireless transmission is not perhaps as

straightforward as it might appear with hindsight. Neither of the diaries of Marconi and Kemp

record the event with a view to posterity. The press release, published several days after the

transmission, was markedly low key giving the time, location and stating only that very faint

signals had been received. Among the Marconi supporters, including the well known engineer,

W.S. Franklin, the implications were, however, clear: that the events of the 12 December 1901

would go down in history.

Thursday, December 12, 1901, may prove, therefore, to be a date to be remembered in

the history of wireless telegraphy. Within this apparently feeble result - three very faint

clicks repeated at intervals of five minutes - there is to be seen the germ of ocean

wireless telegraphy, and, perhaps, telephony.

(Franklin January 1902, 112)

Many, as we know, remained to be convinced (Hong, 2005, 7). Marconi set out to provide his

skeptics with the incontrovertible proof they desired. He equipped a ship, the Philadelphia with

a mast-extension which would suspend 4 wire aerials 150m (494 ft) above the deck. He set up

his receiving apparatus in the ship’s wireless room. For this second set of trials, Marconi used

only the tuned, syntonic, receiver, synchronized to the capacity of the new – and fixed - aerial.

More importantly, to this receiving apparatus he attached the Morse inker. On 22nd February,

1902 the Philadelphia steamed out of port. Signals were transmitted from the temporary aerial

at Poldhu on the same 366m wavelength but with a higher spark rate that allowed it to transmit

real messages in place of dots. Onboard, received messages were not only logged through the

Morse inker but were also witnessed by the Captain. Whole sentences were transmitted at

night to a distance of 2415 km (1550 miles) and ‘S’s to a distance of 3380 km (2100 miles): the

same distance as Marconi claimed for the first transatlantic transmission. The results were

convincing and for a time 25th February, 1902 looked set to usurp 12th December, 1901 as the

defining moment in the history of radio, for example,

The month of February and particularly the 23rd

and 25th of February, 1902, will

undoubtedly become historically recorded as the beginning of what may be known as the

Marconian era. It was on the first of these dates that a message was transmitted more

than a thousand miles… and it was at the second of these dates that distinct signals were

repeatedly transmitted over a distance exceeding two thousand miles… and permanently

recorded on the tape of at the receiving instrument.

(Thurston, March 1902, 474)

There was a protracted period during which publications refer to either date as the first

transmission: for example, over a decade later, Love (1915) and Pupin (1915) are still giving the

date as February, 1902. The legitimacy that the second set of transmission lent to the first was,

however, sufficient to ensure that in time December 12th, 1901 won out. By 1931, even Oliver

Lodge – one of Marconi’s most vocal detractors - was giving the December, 1901 date (Lodge,

1931, 519).

The greatest threat to Marconi’s legend, was in, fact his subsequent work. Marconi began

construction on the permanent Canadian station at Glace Bay in 1902. In May that year the

Poldhu aerial array was rebuilt, the power substantially increased and the wavelength

augmented to 1000 metres. The twin, giant stations were operational by November.

Transmissions were not just disappointing, they were non-existent. After 6 weeks of tuning and

tweaking, the first messages were transmitted on 14 December. Transatlantic working

remained highly unreliable. The fact that these huge mega-powered stations were unable to

recreate the successes of the earlier kite-driven technology led people to question whether the

first transmissions had taken place at all. The transatlantic legend was in jeopardy.

Rescue came from well respected quarters. Oliver Heaviside had mused in 1901 on the

existence of layers of ‘attenuated gasses’ in the atmosphere which could theoretically act as

electromagnetically conductive surfaces. It was suggested by physicist Arthur Kennelly that the

signals Signor Marconi claimed to have heard in Newfoundland the previous year might

somehow have ‘bounced off’ of one of Heaviside’s proposed gas layers. An invisible and at the

time, entirely theoretical artifact, the Kennelly-Heaviside layer provided a most popular and

enduring explanation. So popular indeed, that it cocooned the evolving transatlantic legend until

1924, when two important things happened. First, Edward Appleton put forward his model of

the ionosphere, which refined and replaced the concept of the Kennelly-Heaviside layer.

Second, Marconi began to build the first commercial short wave (SW) stations. These events

were not unconnected.

During the intervening three decades there had been unprecedented probing into the landscape

of radio and the way in which this landscape affected the materials of radio. Appleton’s

ionosphere is a layer in the atmosphere above 85 km which can either reflect or absorb radio

waves. During the daytime the particles in the ionosphere become ionized, or charged, causing

them to absorb radio waves. At night, the particles lose this charge and will instead reflect radio

waves. It is this reflective property that can be exploited – just as Kennelly suggested – to

bounce radio signals back down to earth and send signals over vast distances. Many factors,

aside from day and night, contribute to how attenuated the radio signal becomes. Space

weather, for example sun spots, solar flares and solar variation, can charge huge areas of the

ionosphere (a well known example of this is the aurora borealis). Another factor - and one with

overwhelming importance to the transatlantic legend - is the wavelength of the radio signal.

In 1923, all wavelengths in commercial use were long or very long, up to 14 000 metres. In the

pursuit of ever greater distances, Marconi and his contemporaries followed the maxim ‘more

power and longer wavelengths equals greater distances’. Longer wavelengths meant

correspondingly taller aerials. In 1923, the state of the art Marconi super-station in Australia

broadcast on ultra long wavelength, from 20 steel masts, each 244 metres (800ft) high, and

1000kW power output. A year later, Marconi sent transatlantic transmissions from Poldhu to

New York using a short wave of 37 metres and just 17kW of power. Short waves, it turns out,

are reflected remarkably well by the ionosphere.

Understanding the physical reaction between radio waves and the ionosphere also had other

implications. When Marconi carried out his first transatlantic experiment in 1901 there was no

method in existence which could accurately measure the frequency and therefore the

wavelength3. Flemming in 1903 quotes the wavelength as 1000 feet (304 metres), giving a

frequency of around 820 kHz. In a lecture in 1908, Marconi himself gives the wavelength as

1200 feet (366 metres), a frequency of 850 kHz (Bondyopadhyay, 1993). Even taking account

for this disparity, one thing became clear; Marconi’s transmission was made in the medium

wave (MW) band somewhere between 820 and 850 kHz, the frequencies subject to the

maximum amount of ionospheric absorption.

Moreover, Marconi’s first transatlantic transmission took place in the early afternoon when the

whole of the signal path across the Atlantic was in daylight. He could not have picked a worse

frequency or time of day to undertake his experiments. Worse still, the comforting confirmation

provided by experiments on the Philadelphia - undertaken with superior tuned receivers and a

fixed aerial - were equal only to the Newfoundland distances at night. Day time reception had

not been achieved at anything like the magic 2000 mile mark. In fact, radio physicist John

Ratcliffe later calculated that Marconi could only have detected 850 kHz signals in

Newfoundland at 12.20 on 12 December, 1901 if his receiver had been between 10 and 100

times more sensitive than the receiver later used on the Philadelphia (Ratcliffe, 1974). An

examination of the artifact in question finds no evidence to suggest it was. As understandings

of the wider telecommunications landscape grew, the event that was held to be the first foray

into that landscape looked less and less likely to have happened. A reexamination of the

materials from the transatlantic broadcast had opened the event up to criticisms of unimagined

proportions. One artefact from this transmission, it seemed, could be called upon to save it: the

spark transmitter.

When Marconi undertook his first transatlantic transmission he used a spark transmitter. The

signal from Poldhu was generated by firing a powerful spark across a 5cm gap. The spark

generated a disturbance in the background electromagnetic radiation which was then broadcast

from the thin aerial wire4. The spark transmitter can be imagined as a rather crude instrument,

where the spark produced created a disturbance across a broad range of frequencies. Although

it now seems clear that the Poldhu aerial was radiating in the medium wave band, it was

proposed that the broadband nature of the spark meant that it was also radiating at other

unintended, or ‘parasitic’, wavelengths. If the Poldhu transmitter was indeed also radiating at an

unknown frequency in the high frequency, short wave band then it was entirely possible that

signals were bouncing off the ionosphere and being received by the unturned receiver in

Newfoundland. This would also explain why signals could not be received when Marconi was

using his syntonic receiver tuned only to receive medium wave frequencies. When the idea of a

parasitic signal in the high frequency range was suggested in 1924, short-wave, high frequency

working was the hot new idea and the legend was lent promising (and helpfully at the time un-

testable) intellectual rigour.

Redefining a Moment?

As archaeologists we put a lot of stock in materials. It might logically be assumed that the

revisiting and interacting with the material record which took place in the 1920s would feed into

a renegotiation of the transatlantic legend itself. This, however, does not appear to be the case.

The intellectual debate going on in science and engineering seemed to bypass popular versions

of the event almost entirely. Accounts from the 1930s do not mention the doubts cast on MW

signals bouncing off the ionosphere. Neither do they discuss parasitic HF transmissions as an

alternative. The stories, if anything appear to benefit from a newfound legitimacy, evolving a far

more exciting tone than the first perfunctory diary entries. The example below, was recounted

by Marconi’s other assistant Percy Paget (who, interestingly was not actually present for the

reception of the signals, being off sick on the day in question). Paget conjures up the dramatic

Atlantic weather and the heightened expectations of all involved:

The wind howled around the building where in a small dark room furnished with a table,

one chair and some packing cases, Mr. Kemp sat at the simple receiving desk while Mr.

Marconi drank a cup of cocoa before taking his turn at listening for the signals which were

being transmitted from Poldhu – at least we hoped so.

(Percy Paget recorded for the BBC 12 June 1935)

Instead of modification to accommodate the advances in radio engineering, the original story

appears to have rolled on regardless, acquiring certain themes in its constant retelling. The

narrative is one of exploration. The lone pioneer strikes out with certain faith for unknown

shores finally triumphing over the forces of nature. With a spin reminiscent of the Columbus

and the Flat Earth story, Marconi is drawn as the single-minded visionary, who alone knew the

truth about the world. Like the Flat Earther story, this too proved to be a myth with a certain

momentum.

The popular version of events propagated by historians, educators and biographers, remains

unchanged from the 1935 account for several decades. This is amply demonstrated by a

passage William Baker’s 1970 book, History of the Marconi Company.

On the 12th the gale was still vicious… Another kite was flown… Frantically it reared and

plunged, threatening every instant to break loose like its predecessor. At the receiver

Marconi sat listening intently as the precious minutes of the scheduled transmission

slipped by. Suddenly, at 12.20 p.m. Newfoundland time, he handed the earpiece to

George Kemp with a quiet ‘Can you hear anything, Mr. Kemp? Kemp took the

headphone. Through the crash of static he could hear, faintly, the unmistakable rhythm

of three clicks followed by a pause… until, all too soon, the signals were lost once more

in static’

(William Baker, 1970: 68-69)

Baker’s version shares in all the essential themes of the earlier account. The transmission is

still medium wave, the wind still howls and Marconi is still envisioned with the literary equivalent

of the thousand-yard-stare. Importantly, no mention is ever made of that tricky business with

the ionosphere. Outside of lay circles the parasitic HF transmission theory remains the

explanation of choice for radio physicists and engineers. Ratcliffe, one of the world’s most

respected and sophisticated radio physicists, still cites HF emissions as the most likely

explication of Marconi’s transmission when writing in 1974.

Indeed, the HF emission theory still carries a great deal of weight at the time of writing. It

remains standard curriculum at engineering colleges and to disagree with the received

explanation is regarded as tantamount to ‘technological heresy’ (Kimberlin, 2003, 4). Heretics

are, however, out there. At the beginning of the 1990s, interest in Marconi’s first transmission

resurfaced, mostly, it must be said, in response to a proposed Institute for Electrical and

Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Conference entitled 100 Years of Radio. From 1993 engineering

writers and historians of technology began to reexamine the 1901 transmission in the light of

current knowledge, publishing several papers either for (for example, MacKeand & Cross, 1995)

or against the HF theory (for example, Belrose, 1995).

To mark the 100th anniversary of Marconi’s first transatlantic transmission, Belrose published

another paper in which he examined hitherto unexplored aspects of the Poldhu antenna and

transmitter design (Belrose, 2001). The aim was to establish whether it would indeed have

radiated at the proposed parasitic high frequencies. Belrose, though a professor of engineering,

implemented an approach which would not be unfamiliar to archaeologists. He examined the

curated museum artefacts, documentary and photographic evidence5 and created a 1:75 scale

experimental reconstruction of the aerial and transmitter. Through the experimental results

obtained from his maquette and theoretical projections based on the science of radio wave

generation and propagation, Belrose was able to confirm that although the spark transmitter did

indeed broadcast HF signals, the fan antenna at Poldhu ‘radiated efficiently only on the

fundamental oscillation frequency of the tuned antenna system’ (Belrose, 2001: 25). In other

words the parasitic HF signals were being generated by the spark transmitter at Poldhu but

would not have been radiated with anywhere near sufficient power to reach Signal Hill.

According to Belrose, Marconi’s first transatlantic broadcast never happened. The big question

for this paper is does it matter?

Discussion

The stock answer from historical archaeology is yes, of course it matters. To question, to

deconstruct, to reframe and to reassemble is the purpose behind a great deal of archaeology.

When studying the recent past, the archaeologist examines the people, places and things in

order to defamiliarize the familiar and to confront people with an alternative (and – many would

argue - more valuable) version of what really happened (for example, West, 1999, 1).

Alternative versions allow us to examine our unarticulated assumptions and open the mind to

new ideas. These versions also allow us to give form to current ideas and to voice the things

which need to be said in our disciplines at that moment in time. Defamiliarlizing is a popular

pastime and the trend is visible in many other disciplines. Alternative truths are, however, only

incidentally useful, and then only to a point. This paper fits easily into the alternative truths

tradition and, like many others, it does not really get anywhere near the heart of the matter: in

this case, why is Marconi’s first transmission a defining moment? Why is the legend the shape

it is and why is it so enduring?

The legend can be seen as a social discourse. Like academic discourses, social discourses are

created for reasons, they fulfill a function: they say what needs to be said at the time. The

transatlantic legend can be seen as having more to do with meeting a social need than

constantly updating past events for accuracy. That the popular version of Marconi’s

transatlantic legend is so pervasive and widely held - despite the material evidence to the

contrary and regardless of the efforts made in academia to derail it - says something about that

need. In the endless reiterations in text books and on web pages, the shrine-like museum

displays and the anniversary celebrations, Signal Hill remains stormy and Marconi still hears the

clicks because it is important that he does. The reasons as to why the legend is important and

which social needs are being addressed are not necessarily accessible directly from a rational

analysis of the material record.

This paper would argue that the seeming irrelevance of the material evidence in this case stems

from the nature of the defining moment itself. The moment defined by the legend seems not to

be the broadcast itself but rather the moment when the sphere of human existence was abruptly

and publically opened-up to a vast and unknowable beyond. Until that moment, exploration had

meant traversing harsh terrain, physical effort, dog-sleds, etc. Marconi’s transmission meant

the collapsing of the familiar relationship between time and space: the death of physical

geography. As Franklin presciently appreciated at the time:

It is not in the interlinking of continents divided by an ocean, but rather in the

overspreading of the ocean itself with telegraphic facilities that the power and fruitfulness

of this latest achievement of Mr. Marconi is to be perceived.

(Franklin, 1902, 112)

Whether or not the actual transmission happened has no bearing upon the unveiling of this new

world. The possibilities and uncertainties laid-bare could not be somehow un-revealed. The

moment, therefore, abides and the legend reflects this.

For the last 100 years what has needed to be said has not been about the realities of that day

but rather about exploration and the need for vision, open-mindedness and – appropriately -

blue-sky thinking. The stories created have needed to be inspirational and aspirational.

Looking back, Marconi’s transmission stood at the threshold of a world of profound discoveries

which were not immediately – or are even currently – understandable to lay audiences, for

example the discovery of the electron and the theory of the Big Bang6. Marconi’s transmission

also presaged some distinctly disconcerting ideas, such as the pervasive and perverse

character of chaotic patterning7 and the uncertainty principle8, ideas which were hard for even

the most scientifically literate minds to grasp. That the popular narrative of the event continues

to cast Marconi as the recognizable ‘pioneer’ figure in a familiar tale of exploration should not

surprise us. As a proverb, the story lends a comforting human dimension and a notion of

control to an otherwise illimitable and daunting new universe. It is, after all, unsettling to turn on

the radio and discover that God does indeed play dice.

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1 Voted the greatest patented invention of all time by the New Scientist, 2 June, 2007.

2 It should be noted that the Poldhu transmitter could not, in fact, transmit dashes. This was due to the

low spark rate of Marconi’s transatlantic transmitter, estimated at no more than 10 per second. The

sound has been recreated by John Belrose (1994b) and is available to listen to online at

http://www.hammondmuseumofradio.org/spark.html.

3 Frequency has an inverse relationship with wavelength. Higher frequencies therefore have shorter

wavelengths.

4 You can recreate the actions of a spark transmitter by playing your radio in the kitchen and pressing the

piezoelectrical (clicky) button which lights your gas stove. The sound broadcast from the radio is very

similar to the recreation by Belrose (1994) above.

5 Interestingly, Belrose discovered that every single existing photo of the Poldhu antenna array had been

doctored. In one, 32 of the 54 aerial wires in the fan had been whited-out. In another, ceramic insulators

at the junction between the aerial wires and the triatic had been added with a pen!

6 Radio telescopes tuned to receive radiation in the microwave band allowed physicists to look back

towards the very start of the universe.

7 The ‘Cantor Dust’ problem, which set the seed of chaos theory, was originally a model of interference in

radio transmissions.

8 The ‘is it a wave or is it a particle’ question.