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MARCONIGRAPH |
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Below is the October 1912 article in the Marconi
Publication, The MARCONIGRAPH, announcing the first world-wide network
using nature's ether. It discribes Marconi's vision for the future
of cheap communications. Due to the tremendous exposure the Titantic
disaster had given to the Marconi Wireless system, company revenues exploded
and Marconi could now finance his vision. The Belmar
station would be finished in 1914 and would host many of early radio
greats, for example Marconi, David Sarnoff,
Edwin Armstrong, Ernst Alexanderson,
A.
Hoyt Taylor, and many others.
Thanks to Wayne Zion, Manager of
the Marconi San Francisco Station, in Marshal Ca. for supplying this article.
|
1912 |
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255 |
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By F. M. Sammis * The Hawaiian station will be one of the most powerful of the entire group, for, besides communicating with the station at Panama, it will be capable of working with San Francisco |
boot of Italy, scale the ice-crowned Alps and drop quietly into London,
all in less than one two-thousandth of one minute. Having arrived
in England, we may take the present busy route from Clifden, Ireland, to
Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, in order to talk with our Canadian neighbour, or
we may utilise the new and more powerful station at London. By this
means we arrive once more at our starting-point at Belmar. Thus with
but nine stepping-stones we may trip around the earth. Still further
stations are contemplated; in fact, the chain that girdles the globe will
be but the main artery of a great system. Feeders and branch stations
will be established in all countries, and a very comprehensive chain will
be erected in South America in the near future.
With the establishment of this great network of stations will come an era of cheap communication, for wireless telegraphy may easily reduce the present cable rates. The Cost Of a submarine cable to cover a distance |
| and the Philippine Islands, and with a Stations to be erected later
in New Zealand. The Manila station Is the last of the American group
and will Connect to the east with Singapore station of the English group.
Unbroken communication will be maintained successively through the stations
at Bangalore and Aden. At the latter station we may turn southward
over the huge mountains of Abyssinia and the wilds of Africa to communicate
with Pretoria in South Africa. It is probable that the station at
Pretoria will he called upon to communicate with the proposed high-power
station at Buenos Ayres soon to be started.
Retracing our steps to Aden on the Red Sea, we may talk with the station in Egypt to the north, and thence, by one tremendous leap hurl a message with such force that it will Cross the wide Mediterranean, ascend the * Abstracted from an article by the Chief Engineer of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America in Popular Mechanics. |
of 3,000 Miles is anywhere from 7,000,000 dollars to 10,000,000
dollars, while the total Cost of a pair of wireless stations to do the
same work is but 6oo,ooo dollars. The cable must handle a half-million
dollars worth of business in order to earn enough to keep it in repair
while 2 per cent of this amount will take care of the same item for the
wireless. Two million words at 25 cents a word will earn only a sufficient
sum to cover depreciation of the cable, while the same number of words
at half-rate by wireless will produce enough to pay the depreciation charge
and 35 per cent on the investment besides.
The wireless system, in using Nature’s ether as a conductor, has provided itself with a medium that requires no repairs. Surely we have here an accommodating servant by means of which we may from a single station talk with nations north, east, south, and west; we need no wires, no cables, no right of way and none of the expensive upkeep or repair that the older forms of communication require. |
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