Latest / Urban Ambling / The first direct radio message from England was received in Australia

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The first direct radio message from England was received in Australia · Urban Ambling

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  first direct wireless message from England to Australia.
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  Hello and welcome to Urban Ambler here.
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  One of the great, benefits of Ling is that you can make chance discoveries about
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  the oddest things in the oddest places.
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  in my last podcast, which I'm afraid was far too long ago, and
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  I will endeavor this year too.
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  Be much more timely.
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  But in that previous podcast, which dealt with Leston du Far, we
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  talked about a house called Prack, which is a very attractive place.
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  Still there, very old place, in what is now called Wari
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  quite close to the station.
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  If you're traveling that way and you wander down worth seeing in itself.
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  But if you walk about three or four blocks roughly northeast of Prack, it
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  will bring you to, the corner of Stewart and Cleveland Streets in Warunga.
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  And just before we go on from there, there's one thing I did forget in the last
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  podcast about Eccleston du far to mention.
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  And that is that his daughter, or one of his daughters was, became a very
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  accomplished and notable mountaineer.
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  And she, uh, she climbed, quite a number of the peaks, uh, in Australia
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  and certainly in New Zealand.
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  So that's something I'll have to follow up.
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  When you're at the corner Stuart and Cleveland Streets, you'll come
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  upon the most wonderful monument, which sits, on one of the corners.
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  Now, I must say that if you'd been walking past there 10 years ago,
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  you probably wouldn't have seen the monument for quite some years.
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  It was, it was overgrown with shrubs, but in recent times, it's
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  all been cleared away and it's, it's visible in all its splendor.
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  I think probably what happened is, on the ery of the broadcast, which
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  took place, at 1:15 PM on the 22nd of September, 1918, I think at the
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  Centenery, that must have cleared it away.
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  it's a very, significant structure.
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  It's quite grand.
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  It's in Sandstone.
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  It's got a sandstone base and then a. A three armed pedestal with,
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  wonderful caste lions, I think you call them Kant in, heraldic circles.
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  And then a very large, sandstone, column.
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  the column itself is, is, topped with an orb.
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  unfortunately.
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  Metal statue of the God Mercury.
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  Now Mercury was a Roman God, and he was known as the swift messenger
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  of the ancient gods, and he must have been an awfully busy God
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  because amongst other things it was said that he ruled over wealth.
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  Good fortune, commerce, fertility.
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  and also, shopkeepers and merchants.
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  So he certainly had a great deal on his plate.
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  the statue was wonderful.
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  He had wings, he had a wing on his helmet.
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  He had wings on his boots, and he carried a short staff, which
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  I think is called a catechist, in his left hand, which was basically
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  a staff entwined by two serpents.
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  So it was quite a, quite a magical, topping to the monument.
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  But for whatever reason, it's not there now.
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  Now, whether that was misadventure or vandalism, I don't know.
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  There's also on the.
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  monument a, a very fine plaque, which very succinctly summarizes
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  the significance, of this monument.
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  And it's in these terms.
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  The first direct wireless message from England to Australia sent under the
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  direction of the Marqueese Marconi.
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  From the Marconi wireless station, Carnarvon Wales was
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  received by Et Fisk Quire.
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  And then his qualifications, he was an engineer, in the experimental wireless
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  station attached to his residence lu here on the 22nd of September, 1918.
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  And as I mentioned, the signal was in fact received at about one 15.
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  It was in Morse code.
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  It was deciphered by another person in the premises, but the monument itself
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  stands on part of the land, which I think must have been given to the
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  council by the then owners of Lucania.
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  But the houses is there, and it's a very lovely, quite substantial house.
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  Now when you're looking at it, what you've gotta imagine is
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  Mr. Fi, and we'll talk the.
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  had worked on this project, this precise project of receiving a radio message
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  from the other side of the world.
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  And in the course of doing that, he directed a very large.
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  metal tower in his backyard.
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  Now, to give you an idea, if you looked at the top of the ridge
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  line of the house and then sort of doubled it up, you'd be getting up
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  towards the height of the tower.
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  And I must say, I can imagine, some of his neighbors weren't overly, delighted by it.
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  And then he also had an arm coming off the aerial to which
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  further wires were attached.
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  Obviously for garnering as much signal as you could.
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  now.
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  This, event, had been a long time in the organization because as you can
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  imagine, an awful lot of things had to be brought together to make it work.
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  And, the basic and principle people involved, although I'm sure there
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  would've been many others, was G Army Marconi, William Morris Hughes, who was
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  then the Prime Minister of Australia.
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  And, uh, Mr. Ernest Thomas Fisk.
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  who've we've mentioned now in preparation for this, um, he'd built the radio
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  station with his, in his premises in the aerial, that I mentioned.
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  he did have, considerable contact with William Morris Hughes, who was
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  a notoriously volatiles character.
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  but they, the two of them got on well and, as we'll hear a bit later, he'd
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  in fact worked for Marconi in the very early years of wireless, both in
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  England, America, and in Australia.
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  And when we come to Fisk, one of the Mattis just touch on is he very
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  interesting character because he had.
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  To be the right man in the right place at the time, or the right
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  person in the right place at the time.
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  And, uh, meeting Marconi, I think probably made, all the difference
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  to the course of his life.
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  Now, the, place of, transmission, was just as unlikely in a way As the
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  receipt of it in a suburban house, in Sydney, the signal was sent from a,
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  small Welsh town, which if you spell it out, is spelled W-A-U-N-F-A-W-R.
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  But as is the wonderful way with the lyrical , Welsh language.
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  I think the best bet I can have at pronouncing it is something like Gu Moore.
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  and I suppose if you look at it, you can see how phonetically that would
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  be the reason that was the place, whereas it sent, and I know the park
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  says it was from Carnarvon in Wales.
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  Well, that's the general area.
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  This little village is partway up towards Mount Snowden, which is of
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  course the highest peak in Wales.
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  And the Marconi company, in 1914 built a very large, high powered long.
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  Wave wireless telegraph, transmissions, transmission station
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  on a hilltop above the, the, village.
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  And not only was it used for the purpose of sending this experimental,
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  the wireless message to Australia, but it was also later the.
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  Station that was used for the first commercial transatlantic wireless service
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  between London and New York, in 1920.
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  So you'll immediately appreciate that the Australian experiment was part of
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  the process, which led to the, commercial service between, Britain and America.
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  just before we leave that, can I just say a couple of things about Marconi?
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  He's traditionally, and I dunno how well known it is generally these
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  days, but certainly in my day, my younger days, Marconi was known
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  as the father of wireless, but in recently just, checking up a few
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  things about him, it emerged that.
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  he in fact may have been beaten, to the, invention of the wireless bay,
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  A man called Tesla of all things.
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  And presumably that's where, the name of the car came from.
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  And it's generally accepted that Tesla.
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  Invented the idea of radio, in about 1892.
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  Now, it may well be that, Tesla, uh, set out the theoretical basis of it,
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  but it was clearly Mark Coney, who was perhaps more the astute businessman,
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  more self-promoter, who in fact, factually brought it into being.
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  And in fact, Marconi received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1909.
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  together with, with another person.
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  and just a other couple of interesting things I found out about Mark.
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  One was that he was not all Italian.
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  He was half Italian and half Irish which would be a wonderfully volatile mix.
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  and he also had no formal education.
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  this is a thing we see time and again when we look back.
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  To these people, in the late 19th, 20th centuries, very often with very little
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  education achieved an enormous amount.
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  and as, you'll hear when we come to talk a little bit about Ernest Fisk in a moment.
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  Fisk also had very limited, Formal education beyond the basic school.
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  now the message that was received, was a message from the Prime
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  Minister from William Morris Hughes.
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  and it specifically prepared the message for the purpose of this transmission.
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  And at the time he was in Europe for discussions concerning the progress or.
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  Lack there of in the war, the first World War, and he was there with, Joseph Cook,
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  who was then his minister for the Navy.
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  Cook was an interesting chap, and I think at a time a bit earlier than
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  1918, in fact, served a short period as Prime Minister, only about 10 months.
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  And he in fact lived, when he was elected to Parliament, in Bacom
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  Hills, in a very modest house.
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  But the message that came, uh.
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  Northwest Wales to Warunga, was to this effect.
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  And this is William Morris's Hughes message.
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  I have just returned from a visit to the battlefields where the valor and dash
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  of the Australian troops saved Ian and forced back the legions of the en enemy.
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  Filled with greater admiration than ever for these glorious men and more
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  convinced that is the duty of their fellow citizens to keep these magnificent
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  battalions up to the, their full strength.
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  that was Hughes's message.
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  And then Joseph Cook followed on, about 10 minutes later.
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  To this effect, the Royal Australian Navy is magnificently bearing
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  its part in the great struggle.
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  The spirit of sailors and soldiers alike is beyond praise.
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  Recent hard fighting, brilliantly successful, but
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  makes reinforcements imperative.
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  Australia hardly realizes the wonderful reputation, which our men.
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  have one, so two very stirring and wonderfully direct
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  messages, from those two.
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  Great Australian leaders.
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  Now, just to put all this in context, so we see how it relates
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  to the development of radio.
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  Can I just run through a little bit of the history of.
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  Radio.
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  the man who's generally acknowledged as having discovered, or proved the existence
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  of electromagnetic waves was a chap called Heinrich, Rudolph Hertz, H-E-R-T-Z.
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  Now, he was born in Hamburg in what was then, I think Prussia, but.
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  What we'd call Germany on the 22nd of February, 1857, and quite extraordinarily
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  for what we're about to hear he achieved.
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  He died in Bond, Germany on New Year's, day eight in 94.
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  He was about 36 years of age.
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  We see this again and again when I did the pod on.
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  George Bass, he was 32 when he sailed out.
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  The heads of Sydney was never seen again.
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  And what these people achieved in a short time makes one feel hopelessly inadequate.
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  Anyway, Hertz, took a, PhD from the University of Berlin and he
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  then did various experiments, but the ones for which he is.
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  Particularly remembered his, he was the first to prove conclusively the
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  existence of electromagnetic waves, which could travel through space.
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  And he did that in 1886.
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  when he showed that he could produce and receive radio waves in the very high
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  frequency range, and he also established that, both lights and radio waves were
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  both forms of electromagnetic radiation.
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  Extraordinarily, hurts when he made the announcement of his results, was
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  asked what he thought the effect or usefulness, of his discovery would be.
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  And he expressed the amazingly wrong prediction that he didn't
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  think it'd be any use whatsoever.
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  Uh, What an extraordinary statement and really a very humble
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  statement from a person who was clearly, a very great scientist.
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  And it reminds me of, I think it was the, the man who in the Remington man,
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  the man who invented the electric razor.
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  some years later he was shown, what in fact was Velcro, you know, the, where
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  it sticks together, he was shown this and asked if he'd like to support the
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  development of this particular product.
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  And he's reputed to have sort of looked at it and pulled it apart and put it together
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  and pulled it apart and handed it back and said, I can't see any use for this at all.
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  So once again, both, Dr. Hertz and, the Remington man got it awfully wrong.
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  So Hertz, lives on because Hertz, which is the, the unit of frequency is still used.
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  And, uh, indeed the waves, which he theoretically showed could travel through
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  space were in fact called hertzian waves.
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  Up until about 1,910 when the term was changed to radio waves.
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  Hertz did various other, uh, experiments over the years.
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  he in fact was an earlier experimenter in, x-rays.
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  So quite an extraordinary character.
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  now in terms where it fits in, The message was received in
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  Australia in September, 1918.
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  as I mentioned just a moment ago, in 1920, Marconi commenced the first
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  commercial radio service between, the United Kingdom and New York.
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  And just putting it in context again, it wasn't until 1922.
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  In fact, December, 1922, the BBC made its first radio broadcast Australia's
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  receipt of this message was really at the vanguard of exploring the potential,
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  and development of radio waves.
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  And of course for Australia, it was just enormous.
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  Not only to.
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  improve our links to the outside world, but even within Australia, to provide
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  links for the vast distances that we have.
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  And one thinks back, of course, to John Flynn and the Pedal Wireless.
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  All of that flowed on from this discovery and application of, radio waves.
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  And it was in on the fourth of 19.
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  I think it had a different name, but it ultimately became, two ffc when the
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  Australian Broadcasting Corporation was set up in the early 1930s.
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  uh, this really was, uh, in the vanguard of the development of radio.
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  So What about Fisk?
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  Just a little about him.
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  someone described it, but I think it's right.
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  that he was fortunate in his time, the time he lived, because he had
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  the capacities to fit into this huge leap in, technological knowledge.
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  And of course, as we get told repeatedly, we're going through it again.
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  Uh, earnestly wish we had men of, Fisk's character quality who were, leading the
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  charge, unlike, those we seem to have.
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  But he was called a writer of a revolution, which I think is a
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  wonderful way of, summing him up.
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  So there was luck.
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  And of course, we all know life is largely luck.
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  but to fiscal credit, he seized his chance, with both hands.
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  he finished normal school and his, his actual training, was, in 1,906.
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  He then would've been about 20.
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  He did a five week course in Liverpool in England, which was one of the great.
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  Transatlantic ports, of course, at the Marconi Wallace School.
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  And believe it or not, in those days, that qualified you to
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  be a radio operator on ships.
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  And it was through that chance, linked to Marconi that he formed, the
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  friendship that, he and Marconi had.
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  And I, in the course of researching this, I came upon this wonderful,
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  Menu for a dinner, which Marconi hosted for him in London, in 1923.
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  And I imagine it must have been quite a dinner.
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  but clearly he was held in very high esteem by Marconi.
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  Now, Fisk was born in Britain, brought in London.
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  he started off selling newspapers at Sunbury Station
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  and then when finishing the
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  basic education he had, he joined the British Post Office and he was
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  one of the very early wireless ISTs.
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  And it was probably then when he was there that he went off and
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  did that course in Liverpool.
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  by 1,909, he was working for the American branch, of Marconi.
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  and what he was doing is he was sent to, basically, it was probably Canada, more
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  than the US of, demonstrating the benefit to, of wireless, to ceiling fleets.
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  Seals fleets searching for seals that is, in Newfoundland
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  and on the St. Lawrence Seaway.
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  He then returned to London in 1,910.
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  He was sent by Marconi to Australia, which is to our great benefit
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  to demonstrate wireless to the orient steam navigation company.
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  And at that time, the focus of the commercial use of wireless, was very much
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  on shipping as, which of course as you get mansion, would be an enormous boom.
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  And one only has to think of the Titanic to realize, what
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  a huge difference it's made.
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  he then went back to Britain, but in 1,911 he came back on a permanent basis,
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  with Marconi and was, called the resident engineer, for Marconi in Australia.
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  again, concentrating on ships.
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  Now, Marconi, the Marconi business and the Commonwealth government had quite a
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  few, disagreements about various things.
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  And Morris, he wasn't Prime minister then, but he was very,
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  very keen on developing wireless.
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  He could see the great potential.
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  And anyway, there are a lot of disputes, but they.
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  Finally settle 'em by setting up a company, which was to become
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  the very great Amalgamated Wireless Australia, a WA.
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  And that was formed in 1913.
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  Fisk moved to work there.
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  By 1916, he was the managing director, and in the same year, in December of
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  that year, he married his wife Florence.
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  and, uh, I just mentioned in passing by 1932, he was chairman
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  of a w the government was very keen to push ahead with radio.
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  So in 1922, the Commonwealth of Australia became the major shareholder in a WA.
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  so Ernest Fisk, was knighted in 1937 for his great service to the nation.
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  Now as I mentioned, Fisk was a man who had luck, but he had application.
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  He could see the luck he'd been given, and he got on with it.
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  And he also had great foresight because he foresaw and used to speak about that
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  wireless could sometimes in the future, light lamps, cook, roasts, and drive cars.
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  Now what a wonderful prediction.
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  We still haven't got, self-driving cars now except on a limited basis, and I
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  personally have no desire to see them.
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  I think there's a silly idea.
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  but he was clearly years ahead of his time in thinking of these things.
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  he also, had a spiritual side to him.
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  Sadly, one of his sons was killed in World War ii and that
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  had a profound effect on him.
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  And he became very interested in a movement, which was testing the
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  theory of whether through wireless you could communicate with the.
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  It isn't as, um, silly as it seems because, the technology that could send.
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  Initially, a Morse code later, a voice through the air seemed so magical at the
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  time that assuming that perhaps in some way you could speak with the dead doesn't
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  seem as strange perhaps as we might seem, and there was a chap called Jeffrey Sconce
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  who, formed the Haunted Media Society for Psychic Research, and the theory was now
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  in as EVP electronic voice, phenomena.
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  In any event, that's something he continued with an interest for his life.
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  Um, a WA, uh, built wireless house.
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  It's still in York Street in Sydney.
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  It's still got the wonderful wireless tower on top of it.
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  Beautiful facing on the building.
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  I should do a podcast on that sometime.
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  That was opened in 1939 and Fisk designed all the soundproof
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  windows for the building.
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  And when it was built, it was the tallest building in Sydney.
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  And I must confess that I'm sufficiently old that when I went on school excursion
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  many years ago, soon after the building of War Gamba Dam, they, showed you the height
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  of the dam relative to the IWA tower.
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  a WA grew to be a very large company.
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  By 1944, it had 6,000 employees, and, uh, Fisk was still involved, but by
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  that time he had a great interest in solar, hydro, and nuclear power.
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  And here we are.
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  80 years later, still trying to work out how to get the mix right.
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  and he was a bloke who was talking about it back then.
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  If only we'd got on with the job a lot earlier, we'd be
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  in a vastly, better position.
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  He had the lighter side to mean he was very fit bloke.
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  He liked exercise, but his motto that he'd adopted in Latin men's somar
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  capano, which means fit, but not stupid.
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  So he didn't overdo it.
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  He had two, uh, wonderful qualities that I, Uh, admire.
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  he drank champagne for lunch, which apparently was also
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  the habit of the late queen.
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  and he loved gardening.
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  And the a WA works in Asheville, which I recall, they used to be on
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  Parramatta Road just near where.
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  great North Road, great meets.
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  It was a wonderful, huge works and it was known as an Australian factory in
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  an Australian garden, which I think was largely due to, fisk's influence.
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  And, he died at Roseville, on the 8th of July, 1965.
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  And, an amazing career and a very admirable person.
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  And the sad prospect, is, the sad Postscript brother.
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  I'm sorry, is that in 1997, a WA went broke because by that stage
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  for some godforsaken reason, they were dealing in foreign currencies.
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  They had a rogue trader who managed to lose them 48, 40 $9
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  million, and, sent them broke.
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  he ended up going to jail.
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  But that was no good for a WA, and once very glad that Paul Fisk didn't
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  leave to see that dreadfully end.
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  So there, that's it.
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  I've probably got on long enough, some wonderful characters, and some wonderful
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  history, of Australia, which helped us well on the way to our development.
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  So that's it for me for now.
• 25:13
  Stay well, stay happy.
• 25:15
  Keep rambling, and until next time, Cheerio.