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Local Radio History |
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over a regular telephone line was considered impossible".
"Transatlantic Crossing" Remembered
Exactly 20 years before (December 12, 1901) Marconi - also using short wavelengths - had received a single letter across the Atlantic. Since then there had been no verified report of successful communication at such short wavelengths and the exploit had dropped to the status of a legend in the minds of communication engineers. But by 1921 reports of British reception of American amateur signals had been seeping through with enough insistence to persuade the American Radio Relay League to check and to make an official test. Paul Godley, one of America's leading amateurs, was sent to Scotland, and the hams on this side set about building a station that "would get across". The site of Minton Cronkhite's station 1BCG was chosen and a "T" antenna 100 feet long and 70 feet high at the center was erected. The transmitter used two 250-watt tubes of the then standard UV-204 type. Till the last minute the operating staff were busy making final adjustments and they sent out the first messages while "we were still having some condenser troubles and keying difficulties". Nevertheless, the signals got through, and on the fourth night of the tests "transatlantic message Nr. 1" was transmitted to Godley. Last year, the Radio Club of America erected the stone shown in the photograph to commemorate one of the most decisive transmissions in the history of radio.
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