the first time, a distance of about 140 kilometres. His transatlantic
triumph came on the 12th December 1901 when the morse letter 'S' was
transmitted from Poldhu, in Cornwall and received by Marconi himself
at St. John's, Newfoundland, who recorded the historic event in his
pocket book simply "Sigs at 12.20, 1.10 & 2.20".

The operation of Marconi's transmitter was itself quite
spectacular. To produce the oscillations he employed the oscillator
designed by Augusto Righi. Depressing the key closed the circuit and
brought the inductor coil into action. Vivid sparks occurred between
the balls of the oscillator, to the accompaniment of a succession of
sharp cracks, like the reports of a pistol, and some energy was sent
off the square metal plate in the form of trains of electromagnetic
waves, which radiated out in all directions. But the energy occupied
a very large bandwidth and the receivers of that period could not
separate two transmissions. William J. White of the Post Office wrote
in 1908, "The chief objection which has been raised against modern
wireless telegraphy is its want of secrecy. With a transmitter
sending out waves in all directions, it is possible for unscrupulous
persons to receive the messages and make an improper use of them.
This form of 'scientific hooliganism' has, in fact, become somewhat
notorious. When two or three transmitters are each sending out their
electromagnetic waves, the result, naturally, is utter confusion."
White added that the British Postal Administration was refusing to
grant licences for more than one system in the same area, in spite of
the fact that there had been some 'alleged' solutions of the problem.
The phenomenon of resonance was known and Dr (later Sir Oliver) Lodge
had taken out various patents between 1889 and 1898 in connection with
receivers. Marconi and his assistants ultimately solved the problem
by modifying Lodge's syntonic Leyden jar tuned circuit. They added a
tapped inductance in the aerial circuit of the transmitter and used
variable capacitors instead of fixed ones. This was probably the most
significant modification made in the development of wireless
telegraphy. (In Greek the word syntonismos 'to bring to equal tone'
is used for 'tuning'.)

Apart from the patents taken out by Sir Oliver Lodge and Dr
Alexander Muirhead, in 1897, patents were taken out in Germany by
Professor Braun of Strasbourg, who was joined by Professor Slaby and
Cou