But there was another option. Hertz had shown that something that conducts electricity, in his case a piece of metal, would reflect wireless waves in exactly the same way a mirror reflects light. Thus, Heaviside said, there must be an electrical layer in the sky that acted as a sort of radio mirror, bouncing the signals back down to Earth so that they could defy the planet's curvature.
This isn't as strange as it might seem. All you need to conduct electricity is some electrically charged particles. The electricity that flows through wires into your house is made up of negatively charged electrons. But in principle, an electrical layer in the sky could be made up of either kind of charge—positive or negative. Or, more likely, both.
Although the air is extremely thin aloft, it still contains some floating atoms and molecules of gas. Every atom is made up of a small, very dense central nucleus, which is positively charged, and a floating cloud of orbiting particles called electrons, which are negatively charged.
Normally, these balance out exactly, and atoms and molecules are electrically neutral. But if something (for example, a cosmic ray slamming in from space) were to rip off a few electrons, it would leave behind a spray of positive and negative shards. In other words, the air would become electrical.
Though he never published the detailed math, this reflecting mirror in the sky would come to be called the Heaviside layer. (Since charged particles are called ions, we now call Heaviside's conducting layer of air the ionosphere.)
Heaviside's prediction of the ionosphere was one of the many important salvos in a life's work filled with insights into electricity and telegraphy. But he always struggled for recognition and understanding, even when people managed to see through his difficult manner of expression to the genius that lay behind it.
While other people had made fortunes from patents based on his work, Heaviside was perpetually short of money, especially close to the end of his life. However, he couldn't bear anything that smacked of charity and furiously refused a host of offers of help. When a friend brought him a loaf of bread, he was so enraged that he left the bread on display for a full year before another visitor insisted on throwing it away.
It didn't help his financial situation that Heaviside was thoroughly profligate with fuel. He had a horror of being cold. His room was usually "hotter than hell," with both a blazing gas fire and an oil stove, and the windows kept tightly closed against any possible influx of refreshing air. This fear of cold extended to those around him. He had his housekeeper sign an agreement saying "M W agrees to wear warm woolen underclothing and keep herself warm in winter."
Since he could rarely afford to pay for all this fuel, Heaviside had constant battles with the people he called the "gas barbarians." Toward the end of his life, unable to pay the bills, he was forced to go without gas for light or heat for nearly a year. A neighbor saw him sitting outside in his garden looking cold and ill. Go inside, she said, and sit by your fire. Heaviside smiled. "Madam," he replied, "I have no fire—I have only my genius to keep me warm."
Apart from the gas, Heaviside didn't seem to care too much about material things. He also had very little patience with honors and awards. In recognition of his work on electromagnetism, he was shortlisted for the 1912 Nobel prize. He didn't win, but then again neither did the other illustrious people on the shortlist—including a certain Austrian physicist named Albert Einstein. All lost out to one Nils Gustaf Dalen, who had developed an automatic way of feeding fuel to lighthouses. Einstein, of course, went on to win the prize for physics a few years later, in 1921, but Heaviside didn't get another chance. Perhaps that's just as well, since it is hard to imagine him dressing himself up and going off to Sweden for the ceremony. On June 4, 1891, the Royal Society had tried to elect Heaviside as a Fellow. All he needed to do was present himself in London for the formal admission ceremony. Heaviside's response was a poem:
Yet one thing More
Before
Thou perfect be
Pay us three Poun'
Come up to Town
And then admitted Be
But if you Won't
Be Fellow, then Don't.
Of course Heaviside didn't. (But they made him a Fellow anyway.) Later he became even more eccentric and demanding about awards, turning them down or specifying strange conditions for accepting. Close to the end of his life, when the British Institute of Electrical Engineers wanted to award Heaviside their highest honor, the Faraday medal, they suggested sending a deputation to his house to present it in person. Heaviside was most upset. "Who are they?" he wrote in great agitation. "And I can't talk to more than one at a time, and that is not easy ... and I may not be able to get a room cleaned of the damcoal [sic] dust ... Hadn't you better come one at a time on 4 successive days?" When the news came that the institute had revised its plans and would send only one person with the medal, Heaviside was clearly relieved, and some of his famous impishness crept back into his reply: "Very good ... Alone, or with a lady to protect you against my notorious violence ... I usually get on very well with ladies, with clear soprano voices that are so distinct and so unlike the throaty voices of gruff men. And they like me too, I think ... though I don't flatter them ... No Deputation. A lady for protection allowed."
Eventually, Heaviside couldn't continue alone in the house. (His housekeeper had moved out several years earlier, and nobody blamed her.) When he collapsed, Searle took him to a nursing home, where the nurses and other patients adored him. He died there on February 3, 1925.
Heaviside didn't know it, but his mirror in the sky would turn out to play a crucial role in protecting life on Earth. For now, though, even among physicists, his aerial mirror was simply friendly from the underside, bouncing Marconi's handy signals around the world and ending forever the terrible isolation of ocean-going vessels.
***
SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 1912
Harold Bride woke just before midnight. He lay in his bunk, listening to the crack-crack of the wireless operating key in the adjoining room. Instinctively, he translated the Morse code in his head. It was the usual passenger stuff, business arrangements, dinner party arrangements, see you soon, wish you were here. His friend and colleague Jack Phillips was obviously still working his way through the waiting mound of messages, now that the ship was within range of Newfoundland's wireless station at Cape Race.
More than a decade after Marconi's spectacular stunt at Signal Hill, every major passenger liner was equipped with one of his new wireless stations. They were staffed by boys from Marconi's own company, who could be distinguished from the regular crew by the Marconi emblem on their shiny jacket buttons, and on the fronts of their peaked caps.
Access to wireless was the dernier cri for luxury vessels, regarded by passengers as an engaging, expensive toy. Rich patrons used it to send their personal messages, or to keep abreast of the news during their long, luxurious passage across the ocean. Of course, wireless could be used to call for help, but few people took much comfort from this, or even regarded it particularly seriously.
Still, wireless had made big, exciting news two years earlier when it enabled police to trap the notorious "Dr." Crippen. Crippen's wife had been found murdered, bricked up in his house, her body partly decomposed with lime. A few days before the discovery, Crippen had absconded, taking with him his secretary, Ethel Le Neve. The case was a global sensation. Crippen's face stared out of newspapers the world over, sporting spectacles and a large, drooping mustache.
A few weeks later, the captain of the Montrose, bound for Canada, had found himself growing curious about one of his passengers. This "Mr. Robinson" had shaved his mustache and was now growing a beard. He appeared to have the marks of glasses on the bridge of his nose, though he never wore any. He was traveling with his son, who seemed an unusually delicate youth, with trousers that were far too large for him and a hat stuffed with paper to make it fit. Though the youth was in his twenties, he still frequently held his father's hand.
Surreptitiously, th
e captain ordered the wireless operator to send a message to London. Inspector Dew, who was heading the Crippen investigation, immediately boarded the fast liner Laurentic, which would overtake the Montrose before it reached Canada. As "Mr. Robinson" remained sublimely unaware of the invisible messages crackling to and from the ship's aerial, newspapers printed daily reports and diagrams showing the positions of the two ships. The world watched the race unfold in front of them, and when Dew finally apprehended the two fugitives with the words "Good morning, Dr. Crippen, I am Inspector Dew of Scotland Yard. I have a warrant for your arrest," Marconi's wireless was the hero of the hour.
The ship that Harold Bride was working, the mighty Titanic, had everything of the very best. Its wireless was the latest and greatest that money could buy. Pressing the communications key fired up the main condenser to a full ten thousand volts, and the leaping spark flung invisible waves hundreds, even thousands of miles, with a noise so deafening that the sending equipment had to be contained in a soundproofed room.
Bride's watch didn't begin officially for another two hours, but he knew that Phillips must be tired. Although wireless messages cost a princely twelve shillings and sixpence for the first ten words and ninepence per word thereafter, the Titanic had plenty of passengers who weren't counting their pennies. It was to accommodate this preponderance of wealth that there were two operators on board instead of the usual one. Even so, they had lost seven hours of operation the day before to an annoying electrical malfunction, and since then both boys had been working overtime trying to clear the backlog of messages. Phillips had relieved the exhausted Bride half an hour early, and now Bride decided to repay the compliment. Still wearing his pajamas, he pushed through the green curtain into the operations room.
Phillips was indeed weary. He wouldn't have needed much persuasion to yield his place. But before he could hand over to Bride, the captain put his head through the door. "We've struck an iceberg," he said calmly. "And I'm having an inspection made to tell what it has done for us. You better get ready to send out a call for assistance. But don't send it until I tell you."
The boys were mildly surprised; neither of them had felt a thing. They both waited at the set, and ten minutes later the captain was back. "Send the call for assistance," he said from outside the door. "What call shall I send?" Phillips asked. "The regulation international call for help. Just that," was the response.
This was obviously more serious than it had seemed. Phillips immediately began to tap. "CQD," he wrote, six times over, along with the call sign of the Titanic and its current position. CQD was the standard Marconi emergency signal, adopted in 1904. "CQ" or "seek you," meant "attention all stations," and the added "D" meant "distress." Two years later, the Berlin Radiotelegraphic Convention had recommended "SOS" instead, which didn't mean anything but was a bit easier to recognize in Morse code. Phillips had little truck with the new signal. He stuck to what he knew.
Inside the "silent" room, giant sparks flashed and sent their mysterious invisible waves out into space bearing Phillips's cry for help. The time was 12:15 A.M.
Ten miles away, the Californian had hove to. Beset by ice, her captain had decided to wait until morning to continue. The lights of the Titanic were just visible in the distance, but nobody on board the Californian suspected any trouble. The ship's lone wireless operator had gone off duty at 11:30. He was already in bed.
Fifty-eight miles away, the Carpathia's wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had also decided to go to bed. He was partly undressed when he remembered something that the boys on the Titanic might like to know. There was a tight network among the Marconi operators. Many of them knew each other personally, and they would often chat among themselves, ship to ship, when work was slow. For such conversations, you'd scarcely even need the ship's call sign. After a while, recognizing someone's Morse touch was as easy as picking out a familiar voice in a crowd. You could tell from how quickly he pressed and released the key, from whether his touch was light or strong or hesitant, and sometimes just from little quirks that nobody else would spot. The boys had unofficial shorthands amongst themselves. You could tell someone who was being annoying GTH, "go to hell." And to sign off, you'd say GNOM, for "good night old man" (this in spite of the fact that they were all in their late teens or early twenties).
Cottam was a friend of both Phillips and Bride—in fact, he had recommended Bride for the job. Now he remembered that Cape Cod had some messages waiting for the Titanic. Perhaps he should let them know.
"I say, old man," he tapped out, "do you know there is a batch of messages waiting for you at Cape Cod?"
Cottam had been in his bunk room for the Titanic's first CQD, so he had no idea there was any problem. He was stunned by Phillips's immediate reply to his query:
"Come at once. We have struck a berg."
"Shall I tell my captain?"
"It's a CQD old man. Position 41.46 N. 50.14 W. Come quick."
On the Californians bridge, apprentice James Gibson idly studied the distant lights of the Titanic through his field glasses. At one point, he thought she was signaling with her Morse lamp. He tried to reply, but then decided the lamp was only flickering. At 12:45, second officer Herbert Stone of the Californian saw a warning rocket explode over the Titanic in a sudden flash of white light. How odd, he thought, that a ship should be firing rockets at night. Nobody on the Californian thought any more of the Titanic's strange behavior. The traditional methods of ship-to-ship communication had proved useless. Sight, after all, was blind.
But Heaviside's electrical mirror in the sky had already done its job. Even though the Carpathia was far over the horizon from the Titanic, the waves carrying Phillips's message had leapt over the intervening mountain of sea, before bouncing back down to where the Carpathia's aerial crackled in response. Minutes after the Carpathia's captain was wakened with the news, he ordered her to be turned and all power diverted to the engines. Cottam wired his friends on board the Titanic to say they were speeding to the rescue. They were four hours away, he wrote, and "coming hard."
Bride ran to tell the captain the news. When he returned, Phillips was sending more detailed directions to the Carpathia. "Put your clothes on," Phillips commanded. Until then Bride had forgotten he was still in his pajamas. While Bride scrambled into his warmest clothes, an extra jacket, and boots, Phillips never left the telegraph. He was firing out CQDs every few minutes, responding to any ship that replied, though most were hopelessly far away. He even tried a few SOS's, since, as Bride pointed out, it might be their last chance to use the new code. Meanwhile, Bride draped an overcoat over Phillips and strapped one of the Titanic's distinctive white life belts to his back. They could both now feel the ship list forward. The water was up to the boat deck, and word came that the power would soon be gone.
At 1:45, the Titanic sent another message to the Carpathia: "Come as quickly as you can old man; engine room filling up to the boilers." That was the last message she received. A few minutes later, the captain appeared and formally released the two boys from their duties. From now on, he said, it's "every man for himself." The time was 2:00 A.M., and the lifeboats were all gone. Bride rushed to the bunk room to get his and Phillips's money. As he returned, he saw a stoker who had sneaked into the wireless room and was silently slipping the life belt off Phillips's back. Bride was filled with rage. He recalled, "I suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor's death. I wished he might have stretched rope or walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him. I don't know. We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room, and he was not moving."
The bandmembers had given up hope of escape and stayed heroically at their posts. They had switched from their insouciant ragtime music. As Bride ran to help some men struggling with a collapsible boat, which was lashed to the deck, he heard strains of the hymn "Autumn," as if for a prayer: "Hold me up in mighty waters, keep my eyes on things above." A wave took hold of the boat and washed it offshore. Bride found himself be
neath it, shocked by the cold of the water, then somehow on top of it. The boat had overturned, and its occupants were now clinging to the waterlogged underside.
The night was eerily clear, brilliant with stars that reflected off the surrounding ice. There were no more sounds from the band. Also hanging from the upturned boat, seventeen-year-old passenger Jack Thayer was watching the ship with a horrible fascination:
She was pivoting on a point just aft of amidships. Her stern was gradually rising into the air, seemingly in no hurry, just slowly and deliberately ... Her deck was turned slightly towards us. We could see groups of almost fifteen hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly, as the great after part of the ship, two hundred and fifty feet of it, rose into the sky, until it reached a sixty-five or seventy degree angle. Here it seemed to pause, and just hung, for what felt like minutes.
Then the lights went out. The ship's engineers had done their duty. They had stayed at their posts to feed electricity to the wireless set and power the waves that were spreading throughout the Atlantic, bearing Phillips's calls for help. Now every one of them was about to die.
The collapsible boat was so close to the ship that she was gradually being sucked back toward the great pivoting mass. Those who could crane their necks upward were aghast to see three huge propellers loom up over their heads. But then, the final intact bulkheads burst with a series of muffled thuds, and the Titanic slid gracefully and silently into the sea.
Jack Thayer heard nothing then but a single collective sigh. He recalled, "Probably a minute passed with almost dead silence and quiet. Then an individual call for help, from here, from here; gradually swelling into a composite volume of one long continuous wailing chant, from the fifteen hundred in the water all around us. It sounded like locusts on a midsummer night, in the woods of Pennsylvania."
An Ocean of Air Page 21
