Challenging Marconi - The Race to Span the Atlantic by Wireless: Arthur Baxendale and the Universal Radio Syndicate

by Ian L Sanders, Shane Joyce, Bart Lee (Foreword)

The early history of transatlantic wireles communications is largely dominated by the achievements of Guglielmo Marconi. This book sets out to chonicle attempts to compete with the Marconi Company and focuses on one such bid. The Universal Radio Company led by one Arthur Baxendale went head-to-head with Marconi using the Poulsen arc technology developed by the Danish inventor, Vademar Poulsen. Wireless stations were built in Ballybunion, Ireland and Newcastle, New Brunswick. The enterprise ultimately failed, as did previous bids, but its story is an integral part of the frenetic history that was wireless telegraphy in the first decades of the twentieth-century century. Baxendalee - a product of the British Empire - served as manager of posts and telegraphs in Malaya, was Londond Manager of the Pacific Cable Board and wrote extensively on international currency and exchange rates.

Hardcover

Published October 15, 2020