STRANGE SIGNALS INTRUDE UPON MARCONI DEMONSTRATION

LONDON, 1903-06-04. — An unexpected interruption attended the demonstration of wireless telegraphy at the Royal Institution this evening. Before the communication expected from Mr. Guglielmo Marconi’s station at Poldhu, in Cornwall, the receiving arrangements in the lecture theatre responded to signals of a very different character. The word “Rats” was repeatedly transmitted, followed by verses directed against the inventor. Professor John Ambrose Fleming, who was conducting the London demonstration, thus found the apparatus made the vehicle of an unauthorised performance. What was intended to exhibit the command now exercised over electric waves has instead supplied a conspicuous example of the difficulty of keeping an unwanted correspondent out.

The circumstances give the incident a significance beyond that of an ordinary disturbance at a lecture. The Royal Institution is among the foremost places in which scientific discoveries are brought before an educated public, and Professor Fleming is himself a distinguished investigator of electrical phenomena. Mr. Marconi was at the Cornish end of the proposed communication, some hundreds of miles away. Between the transmitting station and the London apparatus there was to be no connecting wire: the signals were to travel by those electrical disturbances whose practical employment has become one of the most closely watched enterprises of the day. Into this arrangement another sender contrived to introduce his own message.

The intruding verses included the lines, “There was a young fellow of Italy, / Who diddled the public quite prettily.” Their intention was plainly ridicule rather than the conveyance of useful intelligence. Yet the jest depended upon a substantial technical accomplishment: signals not belonging to the appointed correspondence were received where Mr. Marconi’s signals were awaited. The identity and precise arrangements of the interfering operator cannot responsibly be supplied from the demonstration alone. Nor does the appearance of the verses establish that he read any confidential message. It establishes the narrower, but sufficiently troublesome, fact that an outsider could cause the receiving apparatus to answer him.

The distinction is important because much of the confidence placed in the newer wireless arrangements rests upon tuning. Transmitting and receiving instruments may be adjusted so that the receiver answers preferentially to waves of a particular character. Mr. Marconi has expressed his assurance in emphatic terms: “I can tune my instruments so that no other instrument that is not similarly tuned can tap my messages.” The promise of selective correspondence is attractive to every prospective customer who must share the air with other stations. This evening’s occurrence calls attention, however, to the difference between choosing the signals one wishes to receive and excluding every signal that an intentional disturber may contrive to send.

Wireless telegraphy has advanced too far for the question to be dismissed as a curiosity of the lecture-room. Mr. Marconi’s experiments have already carried communication across the English Channel, and his reception in Newfoundland in December 1901 of signals sent from Cornwall brought the Atlantic itself within the scope of his claims. Ships and shore stations offer an especially compelling field for the invention, since a vessel cannot carry a telegraph wire behind her. Communication without a cable promises news, instructions, and assistance across waters where correspondence has hitherto depended upon a ship coming within sight or reaching a port. Such advantages explain the attention paid to every improvement in range and dependability.

There is nevertheless a difference between proving that a message can arrive and proving that a service can be relied upon. A successful experiment may overcome distance while leaving unanswered questions concerning other transmitters, mistaken signals, and deliberate interference. The business correspondent must know not merely that his receiver will speak, but that the words it gives him belong to the station with which he is dealing. A ship’s officer must likewise be able to distinguish the appointed communication from an intrusion. The Royal Institution interruption brings this practical consideration into unusually sharp relief because the foreign message was unmistakably foreign. A less jocular interference might not advertise its character so obligingly.

For commercial users, the immediate issue is therefore one of confidence in the conditions under which wireless working is offered. Lloyd’s has already entered into arrangements with the Marconi enterprise for the employment of wireless communication, illustrating the interest of shipping and marine intelligence in the new means of correspondence. Such interests require regular service rather than an occasional brilliant feat. Tonight’s incident does not establish the failure of those commercial arrangements, and it would be improper to infer a financial verdict from a disturbance at one demonstration. It does suggest a question which customers are entitled to put: what protection is afforded when another transmitter works within reach of their receiving instruments?

The public authorities have an equally direct interest. Naval communication is an obvious application of a system which dispenses with a visible connecting line, but naval requirements also expose the importance of distinguishing friendly signals from hostile interference. The ordinary electric telegraph possesses a material route which can be inspected and, within limits, guarded. Wireless correspondence uses a medium through which the electrical waves of more than one operator may pass. This does not condemn the invention; it changes the problem of its management. Technical adjustment, agreed procedures, and the conduct of operators must all be considered before the freedom of the air can be treated as an unqualified advantage.

Fairness to the inventor requires that no larger conclusion be drawn than the evidence warrants. The intrusion has not shown that wireless communication over great distances is impossible, nor that every receiving station can be disturbed by any apparatus whatever. It has not demonstrated the reading of a secret dispatch. What it has done is to place an unwanted transmission before a distinguished audience at the very moment when the capabilities of the authorised system were to be displayed. The interruption therefore demands an explanation of the conditions under which it succeeded. Mere denunciation of the sender’s manners, however justified, would leave that scientific question untouched.

The next useful step must be an account of the apparatus and adjustments employed on both sides of the interference, followed by trials directed expressly to the exclusion of unwanted signals. Until those particulars are available, sweeping assurances and sweeping condemnation are alike premature. The promise of wireless telegraphy remains considerable: ships, merchants, and Governments have sound reasons to desire its success. But the new art must answer the mischievous operator as well as conquer distance. An invention offered for the serious business of the world must be examined not only under the conditions its friends arrange, but under those which an adversary may seek to impose.