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| Spring 1999 issue | . | On the air since 1899 | |
LINKS: Notre Dame's Department of Electrical Engineering |
The sign in front of the tent-shaded tables outside the
stadium read, "100 Years of Wireless at Notre Dame." The display commemorated
the anniversary of the first wireless transmission in North America, which occurred
between the Notre Dame and Saint Mary's campuses 100 years ago, on April 19, 1899. Notre Dame electrical engineering professor Jerome Green used equipment built in University machine shops to conduct the transmission. After a series of experiments on the Notre Dame campus, he connected a transmitter to a flagpole and wired a receiver to the Saint Mary's clock tower a mile away. The first "long-distance" message: three Morse code dots, which translate as the letter S. Green's experiments came four years after the inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi of Italy, sent the first wireless message in history. In 1933 Marconi was awarded an honorary degree by Notre Dame, and when he came to South Bend to accept it, members of the Saint Joseph Valley radio club demonstrated American amateur radio to him. Two longtime members of the club who participated in that visit were on hand for the 100th anniversary demonstration. George Scheuer, class of 1928, now 93 years old, helped arrange the meeting with Marconi but was unable to attend. However, John Pine, 87, did meet Marconi and got the inventor's autograph. He brought it with him to the anniversary display. During the day, Notre Dame's Amateur Radio Club set up two high-frequency stations that made contact with more than 400 amateur radio operators from as far away as Denmark, England and Alaska.
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