When Sir John Fleming, inventor of the vacuum tube, was lecturing on wireless transmission at the UK’s most revered scientific lecture hall at the Royal Institution, it was agreed that a dramatic addition would be the live receipt of a radio-ed message from none other than Guglielmo Marconi.
A suitably weighty and inspirational message was composed and, at a pre-appointed moment in the lecture, the receiver crackled into life.
Those entrusted with the decoding of the message, sent in Morse Code, were appalled to read:
‘There was a young fellow of Italy
Who diddled the public quite prettily’
A transmitter had been smuggled into the Royal Institution to make the serious point that the wireless telegraphy being touted by Marconi was very far from being secure.
Subscribe to this blog's feed