The War to End all Wars
It was obvious to most observers at the outbreak of World War I in 1914 that wireless had become a technology of great strategic importance. Unfortunately the British military were still in part stuck in the previous century. Outside of the Royal Navy little effort had been put into the development of wireless equipment nor the understanding of tactics or possible battlefield usage.
At 5 am on July 30th, 1914, with the great naval review at Spithead just over, the ‘first fleet’, the British Royal Navy had just left Portland. It was urgently recalled by wireless telegraphy, and instructed not to disperse for manoeuvres as had been previously arranged. The wireless signals from the British Admiralty, sent via Marconi transmitting stations moved the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet to immediate battle stations throughout the world.
On 1st August 1914 the use of wireless was forbidden to all ships sailing in territorial waters, unless you were British. On the following Sunday, August 2nd, the London Gazette issued a special notice that it had become:
'expedient for the public service that His Majesty's Government should have control over the transmission of messages by wireless telegraphy.'
On
August 3rd the Admiralty prohibited the use of wireless telegraphy on
all merchant ships in territorial waters, providing for the
dismantling of all wireless apparatus on merchant vessels in the
territorial waters of the United Kingdom and Channel Islands.
On the same day a second order decreed the immediate closure of all experimental wireless telegraphy stations in this country and arrangements were made for the equipment to be impounded. The communiqué asked for the co-operation of the public in order to secure:
'information of any wireless station which may be observed to be kept up in contravention of his orders.'
Radio was now at war, a vital asset, that must be safeguarded at all costs.
Across the North Sea, the German radio transmitter station at Nauen also sent out an ominous call to all German merchant shipping on the high seas to make for the nearest German ports, or, if too far away, for a neutral port.
On August 2nd 1914 German troops had entered France. On August 4th Belgium was invaded. At 11 pm the British ultimatum to Germany expired and the two countries were therefore, automatically, at war.
Urgent wireless messages were sent to all units of the British Grand Fleet.
‘Commence hostilities against Germany’.
The World was now at War
As the huge Marconi Poldhu transmitter broadcast the declaration of war across the world, one of the first acts of war was to cut the German undersea telegraph cables and, with this done, Nauen became that country’s sole means of telegraphic communication with the rest of the world. This station, at the time the most powerful transmitting station in the world, at once opened up traffic with another new German giant at Kamina, in Togoland, with Windhoek in S.W. Africa and with German stations which had been built in the U.S.A., pouring out propaganda on a 24-hour basis.
Germany, more than any other belligerent, was placed in an exceedingly difficult position as regards external telegraphic communication, surrounded as by enemies on all sides. With the nation's main cables cut or disconnected the only electrical communication with the outer world was by wireless. At the outbreak of the European war Germany had 17 government wireless stations, Austria-Hungary, 4; France, 18; Russia, 28; and England, 47. One of the first tasks of the wireless for the various warring countries was to fill in the gaps caused by severed and destroyed cables.
The First World War bought huge and immediate changes for the Marconi Company. The British government immediately took direct control of most parts of the Marconi Company and government restrictions meant that public developments and company research projects had to be suspended. But the demands of war that had to be waged on land, sea and in the air meant that other technical developments and research were accelerated. The Company also allowed government 'censors' to monitor all communications through all their long-distance wireless stations.
Immediately on the outbreak of war the Marconi New Street Works at Chelmsford was taken over by the Admiralty. The Clifden to Glace Bay transatlantic circuit was allowed to continue its function as a commercial station, but with interruptions and a change of wavelength to handle all Naval traffic. The control of the huge Marconi stations located at Caernarvon and Towyn in Wales also passed into the hands of the General Post Office and later to the Admiralty, the Marconi Company operating them for the Government. Stations for the interception of German wireless transmissions were hurriedly pressed into service at the Hall Street experimental station in Chelmsford, while the New Street factory itself was put under huge pressure to meet the supply demands of the armed services
As the world’s leader in wireless communication it was inevitable that the whole Marconi organisation would be turned over to war work and would become a vital industry for production, installation, training, research and development.
One thing was very certain. Wireless was no longer the experimental toy of the Boer War; it was now a vital and indispensable tool for modern warfare.