Titanic and the Radio

Introduction:

In the early morning hours of 15 April 1912, a high-pitched musical tone sang out for hundreds of miles across the North Atlantic in a desperate plea for help. The White Star liner R.M.S. Titanic had struck an iceberg, and her 5-kW Marconi installation was signaling her death knell. The Royal Mail Ship TITANIC was the final grand dream of the Gilded Age. It was premeditated to be the utmost achievement of an era of prosperity, confidence and propriety. Although no one knew it, the world was about to change drastically.

So would the transmitters which at that time were called spark-gap machines. It was developed mainly for ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship communication.This was a way of communicating between two points; however, it was not public radio broadcasting as we know it today, thanks to the influence of the Titanic.

There would have been more information on the Titanic and her Radio messages but unfortunately, the Titanics' radio log book went down with the vessel, so by making use of the resources that I have access to I will do my best to provide the findings of my research in a clear and understandable manner.

The Titanic:

On 10 April 1912 one of the largest and most luxurious ocean liners ever built sailed for New York from England. At the time of her launch, the Titanic symbolized the epitome of technological achievement. She was, without doubt, one of man's noblest and most marvelous creations, and the largest moving object mankind had ever created. Built at a time when ocean liners were regarded as the most supreme of man's makings, the Titanic, captained by Edward John Smith, represented the "state of the art" in terms of engineering and artistic achievement. She was the pride of an era, a time of great expectations and wonderful technological mastery, as well as a time of immigration to the New World in hopes of a better life.

Full of prominent people whose pictures filled the newspapers in stories of this maiden voyage, the Titanic represented all the arrogance of technology and wealth.

The Radio (1912):

During the 1860s, Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell predicted the existence of radio waves and in 1886, German physicist, Heinrich Rudolph Hertz demonstrated that fast variations of electric current. Then in 1866, Mahlon Loomis, an American dentist, successfully demonstrated wireless telegraphy. Finally Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, proved the feasibility of radio communication. By 1899 he flashed the first wireless signal across the English Channel and two years later received the letter "S", telegraphed from England to Newfoundland. This was the first successful transatlantic radiotelegraph message in 1902.

It all started with the discovery of radio waves, electromagnetic waves that have the capacity to transmit music, speech and other data invisibly through the air. Radio owes its development to two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone; as all three technologies are closely related. Radio technology began as wireless telegraphy.

The electrical generators and radio equipment on board the Titanic were the best available at that point in time. The wireless equipment was built by the Marconi Company, the dominant provider of radio equipment and radio operators during that era.

Guglielmo Marconi:

Guglielmo Marconi was born on 25 April 1874 in Bologna, Italy, second son of a wealthy Italian landowner. Years later as he grew up, he began his research on radio waves while at his own home, inspired by the possibilities he saw in the work of early pioneers such as Heinrich Hertz and Oliver Lodge. Hertzian waves were produced by sparks in one circuit and detected in another circuit a few meters away. Guglielmo Marconi could soon detect signals over several kilometers.

Marconi's achievement was to produce and detect the waves over long distances, laying the foundations for what today is known as radio. He brought his vision and his enthusiasm to England in 1896, in search of support and commercial application, and applied for a patent for a system of wireless telegraphy. The image is a replica of the Titanic Marconi shack as exhibited at the American Radio Museum.

In the final years of the 19th century Marconi worked to extend the range of his radio signals and to demonstrate their practical value. He established stations on the south coast and the Isle of Wight, successfully exchanged signals with ships at sea and in March 1899 transmitted the first wireless message across the English Channel.

He had not neglected the commercial side, establishing a factory in Chelmsford in December 1898 which still bears his name. Once he went beyond simple demonstrations of radio transmission and reception, Marconi had to tackle the problem of interference between signals. The answer was 'tuning' - the ability to transmit waves of a particular frequency and to adjust the receiver to accept one frequency at a time.

The installation of wireless on ocean going vessels began in the early 1900's, soon as the dominant marine radio company of the time, Marconi allocated their own 'callsigns', most of which began with the letter M - these basically identified a Marconi installation, regardless of its location or the country of registration of the vessel in which it was installed, but the initial intent was profit from transmission and receipt of messages, mainly commercial to compete with the already well established overland wire services.

Thus, the Titanic, as with other ocean liners, was equipped with Marconi wireless systems primarily for handling of message traffic for revenue. The responsibility of the-wireless operator was transmitting and receiving messages known as "MarconiGrams".

These included stock exchange quotations, business, and private and news services. Wireless for signaling distress was incidental. The multitude of ships in categories other than passenger carrying had no purpose to be equipped with wireless this was the sentiment of the period. The implication of wireless as a means of safety at sea, was remote.

In the aftermath of the Titanic disaster, new laws made wireless communications mandatory on all ocean going vessels and the Marconi Company prospered.

Not to forget the fact the survivors of the Titanic presented with Marconi a solid gold medal, in gratitude for Marconi's wireless installation on board the Titanic they credited for saving their lives. Marconi later