It
was in April 1899, that Professor Jerome Green at the University of Notre Dame
at South Bend, in the north of the state of Indiana, made his first experiments
in wireless transmission. Working with
several interested students, Professor Green assembled the necessary equipment
for a spark transmitter and a coherer receiver as a locally made copy of the
equipment assembled by Guglielmo Marconi in Italy and England.
In his first experiments, Professor
Green hung a wire ten feet long from the ceiling in the Physics Laboratory in
Science Hall (now La Fortune Hall) as the antenna, and another wire connected
to a nearby steam pipe as the earthing system.
The transmitter was a battery powered spark coil that could produce
sparks nearly a foot long.
In an adjoining room, a suspended
wire six feet long formed the antenna and the earthing wire was again connected
to a nearby steam pipe. The receiver was a coherer, that is a very small glass
tube with an internal diameter of just 1/8th
inch, filled with silver and nickel filings.
Successful wireless transmissions were achieved with the sending and
receiving apparatuses in the adjoining rooms.
Next they set up their apparatus in
two separate buildings 100 feet apart, with similarly successful results. Then they ventured further apart, with the
receiver in another building, Sorin Hall, 500 feet distant. On each occasion, the transmitter remained in
the Science Building, and the receiver was installed in buildings progressively
further apart.
However, we should mention that on
each occasion, the earth connection from the transmitter and the earth
connection from the receiver were always attached to nearby steam pipes. It would seem to us that on each occasion the
transmission was achieved successfully through both pathways simultaneously;
through the air from the transmitting antenna to the receiving antenna and also
through the connections to the steam pipe system.
However, in a subsequent experiment,
they attached the transmitting antenna wire to a flagpole 125 feet high and
reception was achieved at a distance of two miles. The receiver was then moved to another
location another mile further distant with suburban South Bend in between. Strong signals were again received in this
experiment over an air distance of three miles.
Their next experiment was from Notre
Dame University to a location in Mishawaka, an air distance of six miles. However, that distance was just too much for
their primitive apparatus, and this time no signal was received. That failed experiment was the end of the
wireless experiments at the Notre Dame
University in April of the year 1899.
However, due to their successful
experimentation in South Bend, Professor Green was invited to conduct similar
experiments during the month of May (1899) in the downtown area of the city of
Chicago in nearby Illinois. Initially
the transmitter was setup at the Polk Street Railway Station and the receiver
in the Tribune (newspaper) Building, a distance of ¾ mile. Due to excessive electrical interference from
many intervening wire systems, this experiment was not successful.
In a subsequent experiment, the
transmitter was installed in the new skyscraper Monadnock Building and the
receiver again in the Tribune Building, a clear distance of less than half a
mile with no intervening wire systems.
The received signal on this occasion, according to a news item in the
Tribune newspaper, was described as strong.
Similar experiments also occurred in another new skyscraper, the Marquette Building.
Later the transmitter was set up at
the Life Saving Station at the mouth of the Chicago River and the receiver on a
tugboat out on the lake. That final
experiment was indeed successful with the reception also of a very strong
signal.
In all of those wireless
experiments, Professor Green acknowledged that he invented nothing, that all he
did was to copy the work of the famous Guglielmo Marconi, and he demonstrated
that yes, the Marconi system did work.
Transmissions over water, he affirmed, were stronger than over the
land. However, his pioneering work at
Notre Dame University is accorded the honor of being the first wireless
experimentation in the state of Indiana.
(AWR Wavescan)
