HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Rise of Radio Amid the Sinking of the Titanic

Guglielmo Marconi an Italianborn physicist and inventor started experimenting with radio waves in the 1890s as a student at the Livorno Technical Institute He successfully developed the first system to wirelessly transmit telegraph messages just dots and dashes not voice and received his first patent in England in 1897 In 1899 he founded the Londonbased Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company eventually changed to Marconi39s Wireless Telegraph Company In 1901 he successfully completed faintly the first transatlantic transmission In 1909 he shared the Nobel Prize in physics with the German physicist Karl F Braun the inventor of the cathode ray tube which was integral to the development of televisionBut there was still relatively little adoption or regulation of the new radio technology By 1912 when Titanic set sail from Southampton England for New York wireless telegraphs were in use by some ships mostly as a novelty Titanic as the biggest and most luxurious liner was outfitted with the biggest and best Marconi telegraph machine and two socalled Marconi Men to operate it They were kept busy by passengers sending what read a lot like Edwardian group chats quotNo sickness All well Notify all interested in pokerquot quotHello Boy Dining with you tonight in spirit heart with you always Best love GirlquotShips also used Marconi39s wireless telegraphy to share news about weather conditions and potential hazards But the Titanic operators were so busy with the passenger messages that they missed news about ocean ice Bandwidth was scarce interference was a problem and when a nearby ship telegraphed that it was already surrounded by ice chief telegraphist Jack Phillips who would later become famous for bravely tapping out distress signals until he went down with the ship was irritated by the interruption rather than appreciative of the warning quotShut up I am busyquot Phillips repliedWhen the iceberg hit those distress signals started In a preregulation era there were two emergency messages the British CQD quotseek youquot plus quotdistressquot or quotdangerquot and the Germanderived SOS which was not yet widely used Phillips and his deputy Harold Bride alternated between the two signals That 700 Titanic passengers survived was thanks to those wireless messages RMS Carpathia received the SOS and arrived two hours after Titanic went down to rescue those who made it to lifeboats But mostly there was telegraphic chaos messages got garbled airwaves were overwhelmed by questions and irrelevant queries back on land amateur users put out some hoax messages like one that claimed the day after the disaster that quotall Titanic passengers safe towing to HalifaxquotIronically the nearest ship the SS Californian didn39t receive any of the distress calls its Marconi Man turned off his machine and went to bed after Phillips told him to shut upBut despite the tragedy of that night it cemented radio as a useful new medium As it steamed toward New York Carpathia telegraphed ahead with lists of survivors From the powerful Marconi station atop Wanamaker39s department store in lower Manhattan operators took down those names and distributed them to newspapers David Sarnoff who would go on to run RCA and be instrumental in the creation of television was running the Wanamaker39s station For decades he would falsely claim that he worked nonstop for three days alone to take in those survivor listsRadio had proved its value as a newstransmitting tool And just months later after Senate hearings looking into the disaster Congress passed the Radio Act of 1912 the first US regulation of the airwaves It required broadcasters to be licensed to cut down on interference and hoax messages that wireless communications at sea remain in operation 24 hours a day and that SOS be set as the official distress codeSOS stayed in use until 1999 when a satellitebased system replaced Morse codeClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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HISTORY's Moment in Media: The Rise of Radio Amid the Sinking of the Titanic

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