6.3.4 Wireless telegraphy

A second major developmental line in the history of telecommunication was radio technology. It not only provided the prerequisites for the massive bi-directional individual communication via telephone which began in the course of the 20th century but also established the basis for radio entertainment and television as media of uni-directional mass communication.

Towards the end of the 19th century, European and Indian physicists (e.g. Heinrich Hertz, 1857-1894, and Jagadish Chandra Bose, 1858-1937) explored and discovered the phenomenon of electromagnetic radiation in the air which allowed for the wireless transmission of signals, sounds and voices with the aid of an antenna.
Telegraphy in the form of radio telegraphy was once again the starting point for development in this field. Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937) had his system for wireless telegraphy patented in Great Britain and in the year 1909 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics together with the German physicist Ferdinand Braun (1850-1918).

With wireless telegraphy, remote communication acquired fundamentally new perspectives in that it became “mobile” for the first time. Communication was no longer bound to an existing cable connection so that, for instance, even on the high seas it became possible to send messages ashore. That is why wireless telegraphy was at first primarily used by navies.

Even though radio telegraphy failed for a long time to meet the requirements which wired inter-continental telegraphy met around the turn of the century, it is nevertheless worth noting that in 1899 Marconi established the first wireless connection across the English Channel and that as early as the year of Queen Victoria’s death (1901), the first trans-Atlantic radio transmission succeeded between Poldhu (Cornwall) and Cape Cod (US). A first telegram arrived in Iceland in 1905 without Iceland even being connected to the world cable network.

The decisive step towards massive private telecommunication between individuals, however, was still to be taken at that point. It was to follow with the popularisation of the telephone. Until then, electric telegraphy continued to be the prevailing means of communication over long distances.

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