Stephen Kern's Wireless World

Stephen Kern, a professor of history at The Ohio State University, wrote the chapter “Wireless
World” about the famous sinking of Titanic. Kern writes about how the wireless technology used by the boat was essential for communication and the safety of its passengers. The Titanic,
Known for being one of the newest and largest ships at the time, headed high speed through the North Atlantic waters. At 11:40 P.M. an ice berg was spotted and as the ship made a rapid turn, it skimmed the ice causing a three hundred foot gash. After realizing the severity of the problem, a wireless operator sent out a distress signal and soon enough ships all around were notified of the possible sinking. Ten ships heard the call but were too far to respond in time.
One ship close enough, the

“enabled the peoples of many lands to stand together in sympathetic union, to share a common grief” (William Alden Smith). In the days after the event Kern states that people were praising the communication that made it possible to save the lives they did. The history of this technology begins with a theory by James Clerk
Maxwell in 1864, who said that electromagnetic waves should have the ability to be propagated through space. This theory came to life when Heinrich Hertz created those waves and seven years later Guglielmo Marconi created a device that could transmit and receive them. Kern states that Later on Marconi went to England where he established the first coast station on the
Isle of Wight so that it was possible to communicate with ships at sea. This type of transmission became so popular that in 1904 Marconi’s company created the first news service. This type of wireless communication got a lot of attention when a message was transmitted that allowed for the arrest of a man who murdered and buried his wife. The technology did end up saving lives at sea, in 1909, 1,700 lives were saved just because of a wireless call. Along side all the