[HCARC] Marconi Radio to be salvaged from Titanic

[Clayson Lambert]

This is from the latest Popular Mechanics magazine

*Salvagers Plan to Pry Open the Titanic to Retrieve This Treasure*

*BY CAROLINE DELBERT
<https://www.popularmechanics.com/author/224127/caroline-delbert/>*

MAY 21, 2020

·         After a court battle, a salvage group plans to retrieve a
priceless Marconi radiotelegraph
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/explorers-can-take-titanics-marconi-telegraph-cutting-into-wreck-for-first-time/2020/05/19/bbe39b70-8a47-11ea-8ac1-bfb250876b7a_story.html>
from
the wreck of the Titanic.

·         International law allows for retrieval of artifacts that are in
danger of deteriorating
<https://www.popularmechanics.com/about/a28773634/deteriorating-titanic/>.

·         Marconi's radiotelegraph was the first way to send wireless
messages to and from ships on the ocean.

A judge in Virginia has ruled that a designated salvage company can open up
the hull
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/explorers-can-take-titanics-marconi-telegraph-cutting-into-wreck-for-first-time/2020/05/19/bbe39b70-8a47-11ea-8ac1-bfb250876b7a_story.html>
of
the RMS *Titanic* to retrieve a valuable piece of equipment: an original
Marconi radiotelegraph. And as it has for over a century, the wreck of the
*Titanic* continues to inspire strong opinions and deep curiosity.

Is it right to open up what amounts to a mass grave to loot what’s inside?
Does the technological significance of that loot make a difference? These
are hard questions, but even after this week’s ruling, the RMS
*Titanic *company
must still submit a funding plan for approval before it can begin any work.

Guglielmo Marconi was a gifted, hardworking inventor
<https://www.britannica.com/biography/Guglielmo-Marconi> following closely
in the footsteps of fellow radio pioneers like Heinrich Hertz—yes,
*hertz* Hertz.
Marconi began experimenting with conductors and radio waves and continued
to move his stations farther and farther apart, and after filing a patent
and starting a company, he went around pitching investors in largely the
same way people do now.

What he developed is called radiotelegraphy: a way to send messages in
Morse code over the air instead of over interconnected wires. People
believed radio waves could only travel in short distances before they’d fly
off into space instead of hugging Earth's rounded surface. Marconi finally
proved them wrong with a message from England to Canada in 1901.

By 1912, *The Marconigraph* magazine advertised
<https://www.americanradiohistory.com/UK/Wireless-World/MARCONIGRAPH/Marconigraph-1912-03.pdf>,
“Marconigrams are accepted by all public telegraph offices in Canada for
transmissions to incoming or outgoing vessels fitted with Marconi’s
wireless telegraphy.” And, near the back of the issue: “During the last two
years all passenger ships of the P. & O. Orient, White Star, and Aberdeen
lines have been fitted with Marconi apparatus.”

*Titanic* was the White Star flagship, and the Marconi radiotelegraph
equipment would have taken up an entire room by itself. It’s not the kind
of thing divers can zip in and remove without leaving a trace.


-- 
Clayson Lambert
Mobile: 830.285.8580
Office: 256.417.3819
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