RESPONSES

Because of this exceptional “geophysical access” to the environment, Marconi was able to discover several natural phenomena which influenced both his VLF transmissions and signed receptions. These influences seemed especially powerful during certain times of the day, a feeiture which Marconi secretized. Signal anomahes commenced almost immediately with the first application of current in each Marconi VLF Station. Transmission intensities were found to vary forty times within a single minute of signcdling. Marconi had also long observed the “distortion” of TransAtlantic signals, a phenomenon which shifted the fi-equency of signals transmitted and received. This was yet another secret which remained “Company business”. These were, in his thought agenda, likened to industrial secrets. He did not permit his operators to share these “operating secrets of the art” with the outside. Marconi kept these phenomena secret, sharing them only among his operators, out of fear. The fear was that his wealthy patronage, for whom the wireless financial reports rendered service, would drop his systems in favor of the much older established wired telegraph lines.

At the time, Marconi did not really offer a competitive advantage against those TransAtlantic telegraph cable companies. His construction and maintenance costs were far less lucrative than he would ever admit, a fact which was never mentioned when Tesla was upbraided for the cost of the Wardenclyffe Power Broadcasting Station. Furthermore, for all their size, excessive power requirements, and costs, Marconi VLF stations were useful only in telegraphic communications. They were slow, capable of transmitting a few words at most per minute. Telegraph operators required a very “steady hand” when sending signals through these gigantic systems. The entire aerial system glowed and buzzed with a deadly violet corona with each dot or dash. The entire structure sizzled and actually rang with each signal. Anyone who knew the code could hear whatever was being transmitted merely by hstening and watching. Those who wished to “steal” insider financial reports would simply need a good telescope.

VLF wave signals arrived in European stations with greatest difficulty at certain hours of the day. These signals were often totally distorted by unknown cause, the result of wave transmission modes on which Marconi insisted. Stub-bomly ignoring he “fundamental obvious”, Marconi looked everywhere for answers to these perplexing natural interferences. Tesla had already foreseen these foibles, constantly deriding Marconi in his very technical and pointed pubhc statements. Where publishers would permit him a platform to express these views, Tesla made the best use of his moment. Tesla already knew that Marconi was unable to exchange signals at certain hours of the day. He also peered into the Marconi “secrets” and exposed the probable fact that certain VLF frequencies would most likely give the Marconi Company a most difficult time because of natural static and other prevalent interference. Marconi hated these technical truths, unerringly accurate in their assessments of his best efforts. Indeed though coastland weather on either sides of the Atlantic might be clear, storms prevalent in the intervening seas could introduce “natural noise”. Signals, though sent out with greatest available power, would become a crashing incoherence once passing through a midoceanic storm.

VLF signal propagation was completely at the mercy of natural influences which indeed varied in complex ways throughout the year. Weather patterns modified the signals beyond recognition at times, and thunderstorms prohibited signalling for fear of lightning strikes. Lightning, the bane of telegraph operators, often killed men at the keys instantly without warning. The Marconi aerials were so large that dielectric field stresses produced deadly voltages which, if merely brushed against, would kill. Storms were not the only natural static generators which produced interference. There were indeed others which, while introducing so much static that they eradicated the clearest and most critical financial reports, could never be explained by conventional science. Implacable in his attitude, Marconi continued withholding “his big secret”. Foreseeing the exposure of this very apparent frailty, Marconi attempted the premature introduction of his “world wide radio circuit”.

Reginald Fessenden, the famed Canadian radio investigator, was more the pure experimenter than Marconi. Equipped with independent means, and thoroughly impassioned in his devotion to wireless science. Dr. Fessenden decided to announce his findings on VLF interference. He published a rare report exposing the fact that his Trans Atlantic signals often varied with each minute of transmission time! According to Fessenden, these mysterious signal annulments came through misunderstood high atmospheric conductivity effects. Voicing the opinion that an ionospheric layer was responsible for the fluctuations, research commenced at once on the task of determining ionospheric pulsations. Reliance on the reflectivity and conductivity of the ionosphere proved to be the Achilles heel of shortwave radio, even as Tesla had stated years earlier. Regardless of frequency or power, wave radio relied on the vagaries of ionospheric conditions which were beyond the control of the operators, a singular fact that was known by Marconi even in his early shortwave experiments.

Linking the VLF signal variables directly with both the daily or seasonal spatial and solar variables seemed far too unscientific and metaphysical for many academes. Nevertheless, these facts were empirical and consistent. When stating these views, each honest researcher was simply echoing the very words which Nikola Tesla had mentioned throughout the years. His statements, also based on astute empirical observation, were unerring in their accuracy. Tesla also had mentioned more esoteric phenomena which none were yet able or willing to accept. He spoke of cosmic radiations and their causative effects on ionospheric pulsations. Tesla also spoke of these cosmic radiations and their relationship with planetary and lunar influences, not a popular topic for academes to entertain. Nevertheless, the unwanted Fessenden report seemed to spell disaster for the early Marconi Company, an exposure of inherent frailties in VLF wireless; a fact which Marconi wished had never been told. Nevertheless, the report which Dr. Fessenden published provoked commentary by the silent Marconi; who very promptly published his statement, insisting now that he had been “first to observe” these effects. Thereafter, research commenced among the small consortium of VLF wireless experimenters, with the expressed purpose of determining the variables of VLF propagation.

Stockholders were outraged. The proud Marconi maintained his glacierlike effrontery, and declared that a only worldwide circuit of wireless stations would absolutely solve the problem. They believed him. With increasing finances, Marconi was able to begin construction on every world coastland. This included the vast Pacific Basin, a task which seemed unconquerable. Marconi knew that TransAtlantic signals did not easily “flow” along east-west lines, but later found that Transpacific signals exhibited the same weakening effect along north-south lines. There was indeed also evidence that a natural predisposition for the efficacy of certain frequencies would place other ruling restrictions on wave radio, the very fact which Tesla tacitly mentioned.

With increasing experience came increasing observations. The manner in which the natural environment “treated” the VLF wave launches showed an uncaimy behavior, a response attribute not normally ascribed to inert forces. Were these natural distortions and interference patterns to be interpreted metaphorically, one might be compelled to declare them as evidencing “geobiological” responses to the electrical irritant Indeed, Nature seemed to actively “digest” and “catabolize” the signals. Launched signals did not take straight paths. This became obvious in the Pacific, where relay stations often had great difficulty intercepted VLF signals which “should have been” found along a very straight line path. Engineering adjustments in relay aerial directions showed that these signal paths not only curved, but meandered all along the propagation path: natural radiowave alleys. VLF propagation was not found to occur in a “smooth” glide function across geological and oceanic surfaces, the result of simple conductivity variables. Contrary to theoretical papers and analysis in later years (Austin, Appleton), theoretical reductions which seemed “simple and reasonable”, the propagation of VLF waveforms engaged suboce-

Anic influences more in the manner of response. In all of these VLF deformations, operators observed evidence of a biodynamic structure having total influence on every irritating VLF application to the environment.