CHAPTER 2

Marconi found that trans-Atlantic communications suffered in transit along east-west directions, while north-south trans-Atlantic communications came through with great power. This mystery led him to build a special “radio circuits”, signal paths which were rigorously tied to the geophysical environment. Having found such positions, Marconi imagined that he now had dominion over the natural limitations. But poised in sea-bordering valleys and mountain ridges did nothing to compete with natural responses. The violent electrifications which bombarded the geophysical environment from his VLF stations were no match for the effects of auroral and geoelectric disturbances, one of many secrets which Marconi kept close. Additionally, both Marconi and Dr. Fessenden each individually found that daily changes in VLF signal strengths often varied by the minute, a dangerous fact for stockholders to know. VLF signals were found to vary as much as eighty-percent between specific hours of the day. This inefficiency equalled lost revenue, a closely guarded secret. Remedies for these effects were never found. Marconi’s method was not to back track his work. A complete revision of Radio would require the change to Teslian radiant energies. While Tesla was patenting his radiant aether systems, designs unfettered by natural electrostatic constraints, Marconi stubbornly continued to demand the improvement of wave technology.

GLOBAL COMMUNICATION

The history of transoceanic VLF wave radio, an inferior science and technology, thus begins with Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi represents a figure critical to comprehending the relationship of the financial world to technology. Marconi was a not a brilliant financier. Marconi was a brilliantly employed tool for the financial power which supported him. Marconi was effectively used against the normal flow of discovery, of technology, of knowledge, ultimately of civilization itself. Anything and anyone who presumes to force the providential stream pays the heaviest consequence.

Marconi now wished to drive his station building exploitations across the world. The strong lure of fame and fortune had already pulled Guglielmo Marconi into such deep waters that he would later grow to despise his entire achievement. Drawn irresistibly into the world of oaths, promises, contracts, and demands, Marconi found himself no longer in control of “his Radio”. Marconi found himself being pressed by investors and patrons. The romantic dream was long gone. The work, no longer a simple parlor trick, became a burden set on him by powerful and demanding investors. Clamoring for the perfection of his promised “global radio circuit”, Marconi had to deliver his patrons their due. This meant that he had to conceive and develop original inventions; a task which proved beyond the ability of the experimenter-turned-diplomat.

Ignoring Tesla’s established principles of power transmission, Marconi fo-cussed all of his attentions on establishing world wave communications. Developing the lossy systems which Tesla continually upbraided as “inefficient and excessive”, a determined and well-financed Marconi established a world-girdling radio communications “circuit”. Marconi engaged his financial bases to supply him with necessary capital to establish this global VLF system. Firmly establishing his first reliable Trans Atlantic service in 1910, Marconi thereafter strove to establish his planned VLF mammoths on every major coastland of the Atlantic. With later help from General Electric, the Morgan based establishment originally designed to break Teslian patents in Polyphase, Marconi formulated a regime of VLF stations. Marconi established these kinds of “directional beam” VLF stations all along the Atlantic coastlands as early as 1917. Both sides of the Adantic. Soon, he would be directing the same across the Pacific. It was all so very routine now. While his previous spark generated VLF waves demonstrated ability to penetrate the trans-Atlantic barriers these complex signals, though penetrating, could not support the transmission of vocal signals. Without this new addition, his Radio would be condemned to a telegraphic realm, one which would soon find little utility in a world where telephony was the established standard. Dr. Fessenden was first to broadcast voice transmissions from Brant Rock in Nova Scotia through aerial high frequency waves on Christmas Eve of 1906. Radiotelephony was the new regime, and Marconi hated the notion. This meant new inventions had to be developed and he, plagued with too numerous concerns already, had no creativity left to spare.

Marconi now required continuous wave generators to supply the adequate carrier signal for radiotelephonic signals, a feat which he himself could only direct and manage. This carrier had to be a smooth and consistent harmonic wave alternation of much higher frequency than ordinary VLF, an impossible d requirement. The only such system of which he had knowledge were the designs which were deployed in 1890 by none other than…Nikola Tesla. This would never do. Marconi would never use Tesla’s patents. The demand was too pressured however. Develop radiotelephony! General Electric engineers designed these generators, copies of the original Tesla patents. Alexanderson alternators were simply “lifted” Tesla designs on a large scale. The frequency was now somewhat higher than before, but infinitely smoother and more consistent; a condition which Marconi somehow continued to believe would produce more penetrating signals. In light of the actual performances of each such system, we realize the unscientific reasoning, an obvious cover for several other issues. Marconi was compelled to implement the engineering staff of General Electric, In addition, he was required to find market areas for the industrial product lines produced by that Morgan-owned company. Here, industry was now making its dictates to the self-styled and undisputed Ruler of Radio! It was for Marconi an intolerable situation, one from which he would seek escapes.

Stirred in the heart of a greater life, there was an intolerance of another kind altogether. In a truly remarkable and revealing photograph, taken at the dedication of Marconi’s New Brunswick Station in New Jersey, a dark faced Nikola Tesla appears. In this revealing portrait, the very soul of Tesla may be seen burning through magnetic eyes. For Tesla, these previously unseen emotions…anger, annoyance, grief, hurt, and sadness…tell us a world of tales. In this photograph, there is only one emotion which pierces time and circumstance, penetrating our present world is his determination. Tesla was determined to proliferate a technology of liberations. He had in fact discovered the technology whose power was so new, so astounding, so completely permeated with unexpected potentials, that humanity would be completely transformed by its use. Tesla had long realized that aether technology was the closest access to the fundamental and truly human agency: consciousness, vision, thought, and sensation. To implement these energies would literally be like turning on a magickal lamp on society. Tesla experimented with hosts of applications, each of which resemble nothing like the world has ever seen. These applications were more like the images evoked by science fiction romance novels where flying platforms serenely sail through luminous pastel skies.