Marconi #4

By 1905 Marconi's sytem was pervasive. "On ships it was sometimes suggested that wireless had ruined 'the delights of complete repose which have hitherto ... been associated with the idea of being on a long ocean voyage,' but this notion was discounted by the benefits it brought for minimizing danger at sea. It was also good for business travelers who could for the first time remain in touch with their offices as they crossed the Atlantic. With cheap long-distance telegraphy within reach, emigration took on a less onerous meaning; it would be easier for members of disporic communities to keep in touch with their families back home. At the same time, ambitious corporations and military establishments everywhere vied for ways to use the new technology as an instrument for their grand designs. Indeed, the sentiments for and against Marconi's invention were not unlike those we hear today about the good and evil of the constant connectedness that comes with modern communication technology. There was full agreement, however, on the basic point: wireless communication had changed people's relationship with time, distance, and mobility" (Marconi 247-8).

Reginald Fessenden was "soon known in the United States as a sharp critic of Marconi's system. Fessenden realized that if Marconi's spark transmitter could be replaced by one that gave off a continuous wave, it would be possible to transmit voice by wireless. This was the technical breakthrough that enabled what would eventually be known as broadcasting, and for this reason, Fessenden is often claimed to be the inventor of radio. The spark-reliant intermittent wave transmission that Marconi pioneered could transmit dots and dashes but not speech and music (hence the distinction between "wireless telegraphy" and "broadcasting"). However, both methods relied on the medium of elecromagnetic waves, and Marconi was unquestionably the first to use the wave spectrum for communication" (250).

Dots and dashes, of course, refer to Morse code. By the way, Thomas Edison's first two children were nicknamed Dot and Dash (link). 😊