Evening star., 1922-07-02
SUPPORTS CHALLENGER
OF MARCONrS CLAIMS
To the Editor Of The Star.

To the Editor Of The Star.
With much interest ! read in The
Evening Star a letter written by II.
f. Mack, in which he challenges the
right of Marconi to claim the inven-
tion of Communication by radio. MI
Mack's citations are substantially
correct i wish to call the attention
of the Washington public TO an
article headed Wireless to Venus.
which appeared in The Evening Star
of June II, 1911. in which complete
plan of interplanetary communication
was proposed, not merely as a neb-
ulous idea. but rs an operative plan.
Marconi Is now given credit for
the invention of the idea of inter
planetary communication because OF
his announcements about its posi-
bilities with Mars. So little did
Marconi know about astronomy when
he made his first announcement that
he proposed that we could talk to
the stars by wireless. Even this
he did not do until years after the
article appeared in The Evening Star
and until some time after an amplif-
cation of the original idea was
printed in the New York Herald in
April, 1914, under the title, The Co
lumbus of Space
Both articles were based on a
knowledge of the scope of radio
forces and a knowledge of astronomy.
and the reason Venus was chosen in
cause the inner planet seems to pos
sess greater possibilities of intelli-
gent inhabitation than the one be-
tween the earth and Jupiter. As
stars are really suns. like our own
sun, no thought was given to COM
and Herald articles ii was proposed
to initiate communication by the
sending of a series of numbers. in
terrupted by definite time spaces.
That is the first day of trial the
number one would be sent; the sec
ond day the number two. the third
day the number three, until the num-
ber nine was reached. when there
would be cessation of sending for
day, and the series then repeated.
Language is local. even on earth. but
numbers are universal. and a unit
and its plurals must be known to
any beings on other planets, no m6t-
ter what form their languages might
take. A single repetition of a num-
Der, like three, identified as from
space, would establish initial COM
munication. Perhaps it might be OF
interest to reprint the article today.
Europeans have developed great
fondness for taking the ideas or
Americans and claiming them as their
own. Americans are too prone noc
to contest this.
Marconi is not the only one. Stefans-
son, in 1921. sends in an expedition to
Wrangel Island to take possession OF II
for Great Britain VIXEN 1t had already
been taken possession of for the United
States in 1881 by w. E. Reynolds. the
present commandant of the coast
guard. Amundsen calmly apDropriates
the Fairfax Naulty polar flight plan
and does not even go to the trouble
to work out a different route. This
same Amundsen. by the way. is the
man who discovered" eleven American
whalers wintering comfortably in
Beaufort sea when he made his much
advertised northwest passage" And
the joke of II was that American
whalers had been sailing and steaming
Beaufort sea as a matter of ordinary
whaling work for sixty years before
Amundsen ever saw II.
1t is about time Americans were
given some credit for their original re-
search and invention, and about time
thaa they insisted on II.
EDWIN FAIRFAX NAULTY.