Marconi #9

In 1922 Marconi began experimenting with short waves. "Using a transmitter described as a "baby wireless set," he awed his audience by demonstrating "how a flying shaft [beam] of radio waves may be hurled in a desired direction, straight at a receiving station intended to receive it." This was the new directional "beam" system he had been developing with his associate Charles Franklin since 2016" (Marconi 472).

In a talk Marconi said he thought it possible to design an apparatus by which a ship could send a beam of rays in a desired direction and the rays coming across a metallic object such as another ship could be reflected back to the sender, thus revealing the presence and bearing of the other ship. Marconi was describing a process that would come to be known as radar. Successful use of radar was one of the keys to allied superiority in WW II, and now is essential to air traffic control (473-4).

Others were developing broadcasting. Marconi did not see what the fuss was about. He thought radio was about communication, not the one-way delivery of light entertainment, what he thought broadcasting was doing (486). Broadcasting used continuous waves as opposed to Marconi's spark waves.

Largely due to the efforts of other people the radio boom was well under way by 1922. In 1922, the first year when numbers were available, 100,000 radio sets were sold in the USA. It was 5 times that a year later. Such enormous growth continued for several years afterwards. The proliferation of broadcasting attracted the powers that be, too. Vatican Radio was established with Marconi's help. In February 1931 millions of listeners around the world heard the Pope speak. Inspired by the example of the Vatican, totalitarian dictators and Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill were soon using radio to "inspire, cajole, mobilize, or terrify" (568).

In a May 1931 broadcast the pope called for "the reconstruction of the social order, describing the dangers of both unrestrained capitalism and totalitarian communism, as well as the ethical implications of reconstruction. It was one of the most important political interventions of the 1930's, approving the triparate corporatism of government, industry, and labor [ ] favored by Italian fascism ... [I]t was also couched in a tone that could invite the praise of a liberal politician like FDR" (568-9). FDR later met with Marconi, and FDR was interested in Italy's domestic policies (591).