December 12, 1901: Guglielmo Marconi receives the 1st transatlantic radio signal.
He had been working on "wireless telegraphy" since 1894, only 20 years old. By 1895, he was able to transmit signals up to 2 miles. He moved from his native Bologna, Italy to England in 1896, and on March 13, 1897, he sent the first wireless communication over an open sea, the Bristol Channel, from Flat Holm Island in England to Lavernock Point near Cardiff, Wales. It was only 3.7 miles, but he successfully sent the message, "Are you ready." That convinced the British government to fund his efforts, and, by the end of the year, he had stretched the possible reception distance to 10 miles.
Marconi was able to stretch his signals longer and longer. Finally, in 1901, he set up a station in Poldhu in Cornwall, southwestern England, and another in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland, to help stretch the signal. So now, he was covered at the westernmost points in the British Isles. He went to the already aptly-named Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, the easternmost city in North America, and set up a station there, in an abandoned hospital, which has since been destroyed by fire.
On December 14, he released a statement, revealing the details of his experiment, 2 days earlier, successfully sending a signal 1,700 miles:
On arriving in Newfoundland and installing my station on Signal Hill, the entrance to St. John's, I sent up kites every day this week with the vertical aerial wire appended, by which our signals are received. I had previously cabled to Cornwall Station to begin sending the prearranged signal.
Tuesday my kite broke away and nothing resulted. Wednesday, however, I had better luck. My arrangement was for Cornwall to send at five-minute intervals between 3 and 6 o'clock p.m. the Morse letter 'S', which consists of three dots. The hours named were equivalent to from noon to 3 p.m. at St. Johns, and on Wednesday, during the hours, myself and my two assistants received these signals under such conditions as assured us they were genuine.
On Thursday, we tried again during the same hours and were again rewarded with audible signals, though fainter than on Wednesday.
This was a huge step forward in the development of radio transmission. Soon, it became possible to transmit between land and ships in the middle of the ocean. In 1912, radio played a part in the rescue of the Titanic survivors. By 1920, radio broadcasting was possible.
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December 12, 1901 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. Football season had ended 3 weeks before. Basketball barely existed. Hockey was still all-amateur, and I have no record of games played that day. I can say that the Winnipeg Victorias would win the Stanley Cup the following March 17. No Winnipeg-based, or even Manitoba-based, team has won the Cup since.
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