The Marconi Room

The Wireless telegraph was invented by Guglielmo Marconi in 1910 but the true inventor of the wireless telegraph was Samuel Morse. Morse didn't only invent the telegraph, but also invented a code called Morse Code. Before the telephone, dots and dashes were how people communicated and were able to send messages faster than by mail. The differences between Morse and Marconi's designs were that Morse's telegraph needed wires to connect and Marconi's sent messages by using antennas. The wireless telegraph sent messages by sending sound waves of dots and dashes through the electric currents in wires which was sent from one antenna to another. The message then goes through the wires up to the headphones. With Marconi's version, you could also adjust the range and volume of the messages. On the night of April 14, 1912, the ship R.M.S. Californian sent an ice warning to the TITANIC but Jack Phillips the chief wireless operator on board the giant ship said "Shut up, Shut up I'm busy!" The reason for his anger was that he and junior wireless operator Harold Bride had been up the whole of the previous night working on a problem which turned out to be only a disengaged wire. The wireless operator rooms or "Wireless Shack" consisted of a wireless operator room, sound room (for controlling the range and volume and adjusting the power, and the sleeping quarters for one or the other while off duty. Jack Phillips was lost that night in the sinking of the TITANIC and Harold Bride barely made it. When the rescue ship Carpathia arrived in New York, Guglielmo Marconi and a reporter came aboard to honor Bride of his heroic service (see Wireless
Shack). In 2001, submersibles went inside the ship and found the table and a machine
still in the shack and they found the power adjusting handles where Harold Bride last
placed them because of the weakening power.