Wireless 20 July

Various people have made a number of more or less ribald comments about my use of the word wireless. People have intimated that the word is old fashioned - some have suggested that it is anachronistic! Well, all I can say is "tosh" or possibly "fiddlesticks" because on this day, the 20th of July, in 1872, an American, Mahlon Loomis was granted the first ever patent for the transmission of intelligence without the aid of wires - wireless (or radio as some people erroneously call it). Almost everyone thought that he was potty, indeed Loomis himself was none too sure of his sanity and was heard to say; "I know that I am regarded as a crank, perhaps a fool by some, and as to the latter, possibly I am, for I could have discarded this thing entirely and turned my attention to making money." Nevertheless, he should receive the credit for being the first to use a complete antenna and ground system, carrying out the first experimental transmission of wireless telegraph signals, being the first to use of kites to carry an antenna aloft and being the first user of balloons to raise an antenna wire. He also built the first vertical antenna (steel rod mounted on top of a wooden tower) and was the first person to formulate the idea of ‘waves’ travelling out from his antenna. He is, of course, completely unknown and all the kudos for the invention of wireless goes to Nikola Tesla in 1893 and to Guglielmo Marconi in 1896. It was the continuing spat between these two men and arguments over patents and royalties that started the now more common usage of the American word 'radio' – Tesla insisting on ‘radio’ and Marconi on ‘wireless’. Neither Tesla’s nor Marconi’s systems could do more than transmit morse code and it wasn't until 1906 that Canadian-American scientist Reginald Aubrey Fessenden was the first to wirelessly transmit a human voice. On Christmas Eve, 1906, using his heterodyne principle, Fessenden transmitted the first audio radio broadcast in history from Brant Rock, Massachusetts. Ships at sea, that were equipped with wireless sets, heard a broadcast that included Fessenden playing the song O Holy Night on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible. To quote Mahlon Loomis' dying words, uttered in 1886: "I know that I am by some, even many, regarded as a crank - by some perhaps a fool.... But I know that I am right, and if the present generation lives long enough their opinions will be changed - and their wonder will be that they did not perceive it before. I shall never see it perfected - but the wireless will be, and others will have the honour of the discovery ". Wireless – possibly the greatest invention ever.