Читать книгу Signor Marconi’s Magic Box: The invention that sparked the radio revolution - Gavin Weightman - Страница 15
ОглавлениеWherever Marconi went in these heady early days of his fame he was sure to have along with him a writer commissioned by the American McClure’s magazine. Founded in 1894 by an Irish émigré, Samuel McClure, McClure’s was one of the first publications to make use of the new process of photo-engraving, which put the old woodcut engravers out of business, as photographs could now be reproduced at a fraction of the cost of hand-carved illustrations. McClure’s sold for fifteen cents on the news-stands, yet it could attract such eminent writers as Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle. It was the policy of the magazine to invite writers of fiction to cover news events, and McClure’s fascination with Marconi resulted in a series of wonderfully colourful descriptions of the young inventor at work.
Marconi had already made the headlines with his coverage of the Kingston Regatta and his link-up between Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales at the Isle of Wight, as well as one or two other well-publicised demonstrations of his invention. When McClure’s learned that the French government had asked him if he could send a wireless signal across the English Channel – at thirty-two miles by far the greatest distance attempted up to that time – in the spring of 1899, it decided that this had to be covered. Cleveland Moffett, a writer of fictional detective stories, and a fellow reporter, Robert McClure, brother of the magazine’s founder, were despatched to cover the historic event, and to reassure themselves and their readers that there was no trickery involved. Moffett joined Marconi on the French side, in the small town of Wimereux, close to Boulogne-sur-Mer, where thirty-five years before Annie Jameson had secretly married Giuseppe Marconi. He wrote:
At five o’clock on the afternoon of Monday, March 27th, everything being ready, Marconi pressed the sending-key for the first cross-channel message. There was nothing different in the transmission from the method grown familiar now through months at the Alum Bay and Poole stations. Transmitter and receiver were quite the same; and a seven-strand copper wire, well insulated and hung from the sprit of a mast 150 feet high, was used. The mast stood in the sand just at sea level, with no height of cliff or bank to give aid.
‘Brripp – brripp – brripp – brripp – brrrrrr,’ went the transmitter under Marconi’s hand. The sparks flashed, and a dozen eyes looked out anxiously upon the sea as it broke fiercely over Napoleon’s old fort that rose abandoned in the foreground. Would the message carry all the way to England? Thirty-two miles seemed a long way.
‘Brripp – brripp – brrrrr – brripp – brrrrr – brripp – brripp.’ So he went, deliberately, with a short message telling them over there that he was using a two-centimeter spark, and signing three V’s at the end.
Then he stopped, and the room was silent, with a straining of ears for some sound from the receiver. A moment’s pause, and then it came briskly, the usual clicking of dots and dashes as the tape rolled off its message. And there it was, short and commonplace enough, yet vastly important, since it was the first wireless message sent from England to the Continent: First ‘V,’ the call; then ‘M,’ meaning, Your message is perfect;’ then, ‘Same here 2 c m s. V V V,’ the last being an abbreviation for two centimeters and the conventional finishing signal.
And so, without more ado, the thing was done. The Frenchmen might stare and chatter as they pleased, here was something come into the world to stay. A pronounced success surely, and everybody said so as messages went back and forth, scores of messages, during the following hours and days, and all correct.
For a while the makeshift Wimereux station was besieged by dignitaries of various kinds eager to see this extraordinary invention in action. Among them was a British Army officer, Baden Baden-Powell, brother of Robert Baden-Powell, later the hero of Mafeking and the founder of the Boy Scouts. A particular interest of Baden-Powell was the use of man-lifting kites for reconnaissance in battle, and he was devising models of these which were being tested on Salisbury Plain. Marconi had found them useful for raising a temporary aerial when there was no time to set up a wooden mast, and it was not long before Baden-Powell’s patented man-lifting ‘Levitor’ kites were to prove vital in the development of wireless.
Although he himself was clearly convinced that Marconi was not a charlatan, Cleveland Moffett had been told to doublecheck that there was no sleight of hand going on with the cross-Channel demonstration. Deceit would not have been all that difficult: there were cables under the sea by which messages could have been passed secretly, or there might have been some prearranged set of messages which gave the impression that the sending had been successful. Electricity was exciting, but its properties and potential remained mysterious and magical, and the layman was always in danger of being duped. Moffett continued his account:
On Wednesday, Mr. Robert McClure and I, by the kindness of Mr. Marconi, were allowed to hold a cross-channel conversation, and, in the interests of our readers, satisfy ourselves that this wireless telegraphy marvel had really been accomplished. It was about three o’clock when I reached the Boulogne station [actually Wimereux, about three miles from Boulogne], Mr. Kemp called up the other side thus: ‘Moffett arrived. Wishes to send message. Is McClure ready?’
Immediately the receiver clicked off: ‘Yes, stand by,’ which meant that we must wait for the French officials to talk, since they had the right of way. And talk they did, for a good two hours, keeping the sparks flying and the ether agitated with their messages and inquiries. At last, about five o’clock, I was cheered by this service along the tape: ‘If Moffett is there, tell him McClure is ready.’ And straightway I handed Mr. Kemp a simple cipher message which I had prepared to test the accuracy of transmission. It ran thus:
MCCLURE, DOVER: Gniteerg morf Ecnarf ot Dnalgne hguorht eht rehte. MOFFETT.
Read on the printed page it is easy to see that this is merely, ‘Greeting from France to England through the ether,’ each word being spelled backward. For the receiving operator at Dover, however, it was as hopeless a tangle of letters as could have been desired. Therefore was I well pleased when the Boulogne receiver clicked me back the following:
MOFFETT, BOULOGNE: Your message received. It reads all right. Vive Marconi, MCCLURE.
Then I sent this:
MARCONI, DOVER: Hearty congratulations on success of first experiment in sending aerial messages across the English channel. Also best thanks on behalf of editors MCCLURE’S MAGAZINE for assistance in preparation of article, MOFFETT.
And got this reply:
MOFFETT, BOULOGNE: The accurate transmission of your messages is absolutely convincing. Good-by. MCCLURE.
Then we clicked back ‘Good-by,’ and the trial was over. We were satisfied; yes, more, we were delighted.
