Q: Tell me who James Gordon Bennett was and how he got involved in 1899 in
bringing Marconi over to Sandy Hook to demonstrate his thing.
PP: James Gordon Bennett had a lot to do with
coming out and bringing Marconi to America. James Gordon Bennett had heard
about Marconi's invention and he was a very progressive publisher of the "New
York Herald." In that time, the famous yacht races were going on, and they were
racing off of Sandy Hook. Now when they had this race, every time they had it
before radio came along, the fellows went out in their boats off of Sandy Hook
and come back with the race results. They had to come ashore, go to the
telegraph office, and find a copy, and a few minutes later would be in the
"New York Herald" terminal up there in New York. They would print up
his paper, but that took several hours to get it up to the operator, up to New
York. So James Gordon Bennett, he heard about Marconi, now using a wireless
system to report the races that were going on in a local yacht club to the
shore and to people in and around England. And he said, "Oooh, I'm going to see if
I can get Marconi to come over here and demonstrate the use of his wireless off
of Sandy Hook, and then I can scoop the other newspapers here and be the first
with the copy -- and those days you got to remember there weren't radio
stations yet. So he got him to come over. Marconi was eager to come over.
He brought his apparatus and he set it up on the Twin Lights lighthouse
near Sandy Hook, on the northern New Jersey coast. As a result in that race, Marconi
was able to send thousands of words of copy all during that race period right
to the publisher's office in New York City within minutes from a boat out next
to the yacht race. All the other newspapers had to wait 'til
their paper man came in and filed it at the local telegraph office in
Highlands. The result was so successful that the editor, James Gordon
Bennett, again, publisher of the "New York Herald," gave all kinds of accolades to Marconi in the press.
Soon thereafter, this was a catalyst if there ever was one, that showed that this
service is a thing for the future and we should get behind it.
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