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| Marconi Antenna Array, South Wellfleet Mass. |
As we drive
down the interstate at near 70 miles per hour, we talk with our friends or
family on the phone, or listen to music being streamed from the cloud (all
using a legally acceptable ear bud or Bluetooth connection to the car’s audio
system, of course). And not once do we stop to ponder what an absolute miracle
it is.
Human
history can be charted by plotting our various schemes for communicating
information. First, perforce, by face to face utterances. Then small technical
advances began to accumulate. Cuneiform, shapes pressed into clay tablets,
which could be carried to a remote location and read by the intended recipient.
Then paper, longhand tomes written by monks, and the printing press, making
books and newspapers available to the masses. But all with significant delay,
because the messages must be physically transported.
Always, a pressing demand pushed for reducing
these delays, the goal to send information increasingly quickly over longer and
longer distances.
Sometimes cleverness
overcame the lack of technology. Ancient Chinese warriors, then Native
Americans, learned to send coded messages using signal fires. And these could
be relayed from ridge to ridge covering long distances. But the bitrate
(information transferred per second) was disappointingly low.
The French
invented an ingenious system using semaphore towers. According to Wikipedia, “Lines
of relay towers with a semaphore rig at the top were built within line-of-sight
of each other, at separations of 5 to 20 miles. Operators at each tower would
watch the neighboring tower through a spyglass, and when the semaphore arms
began to move spelling out a message. They would pass the message on to the
next tower. This system was much faster than post riders for conveying a
message over long distances, and also had cheaper long-term operating costs,
once constructed.”
But all of
the foregoing were physical, mechanical. It took the discovery of electricity
to make the next big leap.
While there
were earlier experiments in Europe and elsewhere, the telegraph system of
Samuel Morse revolutionized information transfer in the United States. By
October of 1861, the east and west coasts were connected by telegraph wires,
enabling nearly instant communication and bringing about the abrupt end of the
Pony Express. Moving electrons proved to be incredibly faster and cheaper than
moving physical things.
But there
was another huge leap to come. Telegraphy required poles and wires and
rights-of way and operators trained in Morse code. The infrastructure was relatively
expensive and slow, while still a great improvement over ponies carrying packets
of letters. But what if messages could be sent through the air itself?
It all began
in 1888, when Heinrich Hertz discovered that electromagnetic waves could be
created and then detected over a distance. The magic was beginning.
Guglielmo
Marconi, an Italian inventor, was intrigued by Hertz’s “radio waves,” and experimented
with how to optimize the distance over which they could be detected. By 1895 he
had developed a system of transmitters and antennas and receivers which could
operate over a distance of 3 miles. In that day, this was amazing stuff.
Telegraphy through the air.
Marconi
continued to improve his equipment and was eventually able to send signals over
thousands of miles, a distance undreamed of at the time. His radio gear was
installed aboard the ill-fated Titanic, and was used to signal the disaster
which had occurred, summoning aid which arrived in time to save some few souls. The
British postmaster-general observed at the time "Those who have been
saved, have been saved through one man, Mr. Marconi...and his marvellous (sic) invention."
(Wikipedia)
One of the
stations used to detect these ephemeral signals was built by Marconi in South
Wellfleet on Cape Cod. Today part of the Cape Code National Seashore Park,
visitors may pause to consider the enormous events that occurred 100 years ago,
and which have advanced vastly since then. New England residents and tourists are
well advised to stop and commune here.
And then to
retire to the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts (or Starbucks if your budget allows), and
connect your phone to their wireless network to upload photos of your visit to
Facebook for your friends and family to appreciate. And then, finally, to
really understand and appreciate the miracles which allow this to happen.
It is hard
to conceptualize the next big breakthrough in communication. Something to allow
interstellar messages faster than light? Who knows.
Perhaps as difficult
for us as our great-great-grandparents trying to understand cellphones and
Facebook. But it will happen.
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