Chapter 233
1/1/2010
Ch 233 A Titanic Chapter
going wireless again for the first time
Some of you may have forgotten, but it was just a hundred years back that going wireless had a whole different meaning than it does today. I've always loved locks and somehow picked this one up. Always intrigued by the scene but just began looking more intently for the first time. Its a sinking ship on the ocean sending out a signal: C.Q.D. Believe you can see 2 faces on board and one tiny head floating on the sea. After Googling, I filled in the rest of the story. CQD was Marconi's 1904 code for "Calling anyone Distress". It is still used by British Marine and was sent out by the Marconi's crew aboard the Titanic before it went down April 15, 1912 . (The SOS code was adopted in 1906 more or less internationally.)
It turns out the Simmon's Hardware Company of St. Louis, Missouri produced this lock from 1910-1917, obtaining a patent in 1911. Then it all came back to me. Who could forget the Bill Gates of his time, 21 yr old Marconi's invention of radio and sending the first wireless telegraph message over open seas in 1897. That was just a few scant years preceding this very lock I hold in my hand. It's so historic that some refer to it as the the Titanic SOS, Simmon's Wireless, or the CQD lock. I'm sure you recall me previously mentioning my Morse Code practice on the telegraph keypad and sending out a CQ message with old Ham novice operator & email buddy Bob Hammer. CQ was the general call to which other hams would respond from as far away as California or upper Canada. He strung up an 80 meter (3MHz about same as Marconi) doublet antenna across the road to a power pole. He'd send out code at night for better reception but only when his family didn't complain about the TV interference. A thunderstorm electrical surge eventually fryed his Heathkit power supply and he gave the remnants to a paperboy in Montana where he lived.
As we travel the electromagnetic radiation highway from Marconi to iMac and macaroni and cheese, it is remarkably just a short hop. At Christmas the kids were wired into 3 GigHz cell phones, wireless laptop Skyping with friends . Whether it's ship to shore, the security scanner at Walmarts, microwave popcorn or the wireless mouse click, you gotta love the radio wave, and Guglielmo Marconi.
1901 first trans atlantic signal sent UK to Canada
1902 first trans atlantic signal from Canada to UK
1903 first trans atlantic 2-way Welfleet
1910 padlock patent applied for
1910-1917 padlocks produced
1912 Titanic sunk
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$135 with key ebay
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