science · 23 August 1899 · 125 years ago
In 1899, the first ship-to-shore wireless message to be received in the U.S was: "Sherman is sighted." U.S. Lightship No. 70, San Francisco, announced the arrival of the U.S. Army troopship Sherman to the crowd assembled at the Cliff House. Reporters there from the San Francisco Call, who relayed this information to a city awaiting the return of its hometown regiment from the battlefields of the Spanish-American War. The lightship, miles out at sea in deep fog, relayed this message via wireless telegraphy (later known as radio) through the fog to the Cliff House. This was the first 19th-century working use of wireless telegraphy outside of England. The method was still primitive, using sparks to emit intermittent radio waves and code messages.
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