This is the Marconi station today (compare with historic unveiling image below). The first engineer hailed from my alma mater. Go Bears!

Editor’s Note: This is part 2 of a three-part entry on wireless radio telegraphy during World War I. In part 1, we saw the British dominance in wireless prior to World War I and the early ties between government and business. This week, we’ll follow the outbreak of the war, how it affected the Marconi wireless telegraph stations, and how General Electric cemented a permanent place as a corporation cozy with the the Defense industry.

While the shot was heard ’round the world, the British Marconi Company was touring the German radio station at Nauen. Right up until the very declaration of war, British Marconi and German-owend Telefunken were on friendly terms, but the “halcyon days,” as W.J. Baker calls them came to an end (Baker W.J., 158).

At the time, Germany‘s Nauen was the largest station in the world, carrying signals as far away as the South Pacific. For Germany, a country that depended on telegraph cables in the English Channel (susceptible to British sabotage) — nothing was more important than wireless communication. On July 29, moments after the British Marconi scientists left Nauen, the German military took over the gigantic 300,000 watt, 750-foot transmitter (Coe 214-215). Only days later, the British followed suit, ending all wireless messages and sequestering stations across the British Empire (Baker W.J., 158). Then, came the moment that allowed wireless to shine. The Brits cut Germany’s only land-line connection to the outside world. Without Nauen’s wireless towers, Germany would have lacked communication.

Nauen’s radio tower served as a vital hub for communication. Without the behemoth towers of Nauen, German would have had to depend on telegraph cables, which were often sabotaged by allied forces.

What World War I allowed the U.S. to do (whether intentional or not) was to build up a telecom infrastructure that would surpass even Britain’s. Despite the fact that it was corporate-owned, it was still government-influenced. As far back as the earliest days of the war, the spectre of military representatives were regularly described as presiding over groundbreaking ceremonies for major wireless stations. Hawaii’s Kahuku station was fast-tracked to be completed just months after the war broke out in Europe. Honolulu’s Pacific Commercial Advertiser quotes an official from Kahuku’s transpacific wireless unveiling on September 25, 1914:

“We celebrate today opening Marconi radio plant of O’ahu. The radius of action is upwards of 5,000 miles, and insures communication in time of war, regardless of any cutting of the cable.”

The quote was from Major-General Carter who, along with Rear Admiral Moore, Brigadier General Edwards, and “other prominent members of the Navy” were present at the unveiling.

The Honolulu Advertiser (then known as the Pacific Commercial Advertiser) reported on the fast-track inauguration of the Kahuku Wireless station. Kahuku was originally planned to be completed much later, but a war in Europe meant government interventionism.

Despite Wilson’s non-interventionism, the U.S. took a strong stance on building up its military infrastructure. United States’ apparent neutrality in the war was challenged when Germany’s station in Sayville New York was taken over by the government in 1914. Tensions were growing. War-hawks were squawking. On the other hand, Daniel R. Headrick in The Invisible Weapon says that “nationalistic officers of the U.S. Navy perceived American Marconi as a foreign firm, and an agent of British imperialism, and thus an enemy” (126).

The Navy, along with General Electric, was on a corporate war path to take out British Marconi. They signed contracts with American corporations to illegally produce patented Marconi apparatus. When Marconi took the case to the court in the case of Marconi Wireless v. Somin it was summarily decided that the U.S. government acted lawfully and only owed Marconi “just compensation” on the basis of “an exercise of the power of eminent domain” (“Patents”, 339). Soon, the U.S. had joined the war in 1917 — and like Germany and Britain in 1914, the military had come in to administer all wireless communications.

Please see part three to find out what happened to wireless telegraphy after the Great War, and to see how the Military-Industrial Complex also found its niche in the dominance of the country’s greatest media corporations.

The Kahuku Radio Station, as it looks today as a shrimp farm. Stay tuned for part 2, containing images from its 1914 emergency wartime inauguration.

And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.

Dylan’s verse from “When the Ship Comes In” personifies the climate of 1914. The world’s seas were chained together by a vast network of underwater cables. The cables connected colonial satellites like never before. Telegraphy had been a boon to Britain. In concert with land-grab, colonial powers were grabbing communication rights, even if it wasn’t on their own shores. Dylan’s fourth verse, though, speaks for a more covert hostile takeover and the first of its kind: Imperialism in the airwaves.

Map of the world’s telegraph cables prior to the rise of wireless and World War I

No longer did physical lines — susceptible to sabotage or destruction by foreign enemies — have to be laid on the bottom of the ocean. The “chains of the sea” were broken. Ships could openly communicate with each other. Because radio waves could be intercepted by any enemy, cryptography (“to get the ship confused”) soon followed and Marconi’s invention of radio telegraphy had turned into a weapon of war.

As soon as government had recognized this power, even free-market and democratic governments abandoned their laissez-faire tenets in place of eminent domain and national security. Wireless telegraphy was the origin of the military-industrial complex, and the most salient case example was in the formation of RCA, which sprouted from Marconi’s invention.

Colonial Growth of Cable (1898-1914)

In the early 1900s, Britain had a virtual monopoly over cross-continental telecommunications. More importantly, a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi had approached Britain with his new invention: wireless radio. The War Office of Britain was amused by Marconi’s contraption and fortuitously just in time for their Second Boers War. Britain’s imperial prowess in distant colonies was soon trumped by its prowess of the airwaves and land-line telegraphy. Their two-pronged system of submarine cables and transatlantic wireless communication was unparalleled, and extremely powerful in the years preceding World War I.

Despite the fact that the U.S. was far behind Britain in its adoption of Marconi’s invention, it still saw the power inherent in wireless. A victory in the Spanish-American War meant that the U.S. had to communicate with their newly acquired “protectorate” in the Phillipines. The U.S. was irked at the fact that all communique between Washington and the Phillipines had to go through a foreign cable (Britain’s), across the Atlantic, in a circuitous route through the Mediterranean and around Asia. In 1903, Commercial Pacific Cable established a direct line from San Francisco to Manila (Headrick and Griset 566).

Then, in 1904, President Roosevelt appointed a board to discuss wireless telegraphy. Already, British-owned Marconi had constructed stations across U.S. coasts. The board recommended that the Navy operate all coastal stations. Perhaps to quell any public opposition, it proposed “free commercial ship-to-shore service.” If the recommendation had gone through, the U.S. would have had a state-owned wireless monopoly. As it turned out, the press caught wind of the proposal for government-operated airwaves, and it was widely considered a “blatant attack on private enterprise” (Headrick, 125).

The engraving for the Marconi company’s stock certificate in 1913

Corporate Wireless Property Grab

The corporations, however, took the place of government in snatching up as many stations as it could. United Fruit Company (the progenitor of Chiquita) had their Tropical Radio subsidiary for their fruit shipments from the banana republics and had captured much of the South American market. Western Union set up a wireless shop to try to capture the lucrative transatlantic market. In time, the U.S. corporations, vast and disparate, would form stations across the world, from Hawaii to China, the Dutch East Indes, Liberia, Cuba, Brazil, and far beyond — it was a type of corporate empire unseen in history and the largest ever. The government idly stood by, often ineffectually using wireless technology in Naval operations until the 1910s, yet encouraging private enterprise to build up the infrastructure.

Next week, we’ll see how the outbreak of World War I affected the United States, its tenuous ties with both the Britons and the Germans, and the beginnings of the formation of RCA, which marked the true beginnings of the military-industrial complex. Most importantly, we’ll find out what set in motion a government-controlled media enterprise unprecedented in history.

Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of a three-part entry on Wireless Telegraphy during World War I. Here is part two, which contains more information on the significance of the Kahuku Marconi Wireless Station (the link contains a site overview).

The Marconi Wireless Station at Kahuku on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii.

Long ago, before my grandfather was born, a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi developed a process of communicating without the aid of land-line telegraph cables. The birth of wireless telegraphy was embraced by the British during their Second Boer War, but the promise of communication across vast oceans between families and friends, businesses and diplomatic bureaus was where wireless truly shined.

I recently traveled to Hawaii to visit a friend (ostensibly), but also to explore the island’s many historical locations (I have my ulterior motives). Earlier, I had spoken of the abandoned sugar refinery on the North Shore and its incredible ties with bird guano (believe me, there’s a connection). In the future, I will talk about Battery Harlow in Diamond Head, a World War I-era array of guns designed to defend the new U.S. territory.

Most important, though, is this station on the North Shore (The Kahuku Marconi Station). In the details of this station, one can parse out a history and trace the root & origins of the Military-Industrial Complex. Today, parts of the station are occupied by a krill farm. The old powerhouse, which supplied the 300 kW towers with their much-needed electricity, is now full of temporary above-ground pools of growing shrimp (and large bull frogs, as well). The old “Hotel” as it was known (which often housed unmarried Marconi workers or visiting dignitaries including Jack London himself) is a crumbling and empty bone.

Image courtesy Library of Congress
If there is any place in Hawaii that desperately needs National Register status, it is this place. When World War II broke out, the Marconi wireless towers were no longer needed (long-wave radio transmission was a thing of the past), but the original line of towers was replaced by an airstrip that sent out cargo planes to their destinations across the Pacific Rim.

I visited the Kahuku Station during the day. The krill farm, though active, was eerily vacant of people. A gentle breeze — like any Hawaiian breeze, warm and humid — came in from the North. The palms danced to the cadence of the wind, which wound its way through the broken window frames of the Hotel. Krill pumps hummed, and I imagined how similar they sounded to the original transformers for the wireless towers.

Photo courtesy Library of Congress
The humidity has a different sort of effect on the plaster and paint of abandoned buildings. Living in California, it was a rare sort of sight for me to see. Each layer of paint peeled away to reveal an older, more colorul version of the wall. And the arched doorways and stairwells gave me an idea of its once grand design — despite the hotel’s utilitarian purpose.

I think the Kahuku Station and its related history deserve so much attention that — in the coming days — I will post a three-part entry on Wireless Telelgraphy during World War I. I hope you enjoy the history as much as I did. This is meant only as an introduction to a fascinating story about government, communication, corporations, and war.