The first radio signal across the Atlantic was a single letter S
In 1901 three faint clicks crossed 2,000 miles of ocean and ended the belief that radio could not bend with the Earth.
On 12 December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi crouched in a draughty room on Signal Hill in St. John’s, Newfoundland, an earpiece pressed to his head. Lofting his receiving antenna on a kite against the gale, he listened for a signal sent from Poldhu, Cornwall, more than 2,000 miles away.
What he heard was the simplest possible message: the Morse letter “S”—three short clicks—repeated again and again. It was the first time a radio signal had crossed the Atlantic Ocean.
Many scientists had insisted this was impossible, because radio waves should travel in straight lines and shoot off into space beyond the curve of the Earth. Marconi’s faint S proved otherwise. The waves had bounced off a charged layer of the upper atmosphere, later named the ionosphere, and curved back down to Canada—opening the age of long-distance wireless communication.
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