A family history study set on both sides of the falls, feat my maternal great grandfather Thomas, who spent the greater part of his adult life working at his passion for wireless engineering, earning him the nickname ‘wireless wizard’.
Electrical engineer genius Nikola Tesla flicked the switch on his electric generator invention at Niagara Falls on the 15th of November 1896, transmitting electric power to Buffalo City, New York. This momentous event marked the beginning of the electrification of the United States and the rest of the world and kick started the greatest wave of world-changing technology inventions in human history.
A Wireless Wizard
“Necessity is the cause of many inventions, but the best ones are born of desire” – Marconi
Stories of my great-grandfather Thomas inspired my initial interest in family history many years ago. The details of his life’s work in wireless technology were passed down the generations and have been the topic of many conversations in the family. I have early memories of pointing up at certificates hanging in the hallway of my grandparents’ house and remember well the fond recollections that followed about “great-grandfather Thomas”.
Over the years I have wondered where grandad Tom’s great passion for engineering started. Who, or what, inspired his initial interest?
Thomas’s early life in agricultural Heapey on the outskirts of Chorley doesn’t appear to provide the answers, so I turned my attention to his time in Canada and the United States. Thomas emigrated with his family aged fourteen in 1901. He spent approximately eleven years abroad, a timeline that sat within the great age of electricity and the invention of wireless.
Lake Ontario to New York County
1908
1908 made its mark during the United States’ progressive era for the invention of the vacuum cleaner and the official launch of Henry Ford’s Ford Model T automobile. Theodore Roosevelt was succeeded by William Howard Taft as president, and my Lancashire-born great-grandfather made his journey across the border from Canada into New York State.
Meanwhile, back across the pond in England the same year, Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton provided in a letter to the scientific journal Nature the theoretical basis for the electronic television. Three decades later, this idea for electrical transmission of images would become Grandad Tom’s obsession.
“Anything, everything, is possible.” —Thomas Edison, 1908
Lockport City, New York
Thomas’s first address in America was a timber frame house on High Street in the centre of Lockport City. He lived there with his mother and sister Helena.
A collection of street photographs taken in downtown Lockport in the early 1900’s by a Lockport resident named H.H. Carter provides a fantastic resource for going back in time when the Taylor family lived there. Photographs of buildings, businesses, construction and fashions of the day are included. I highly recommend the following link to view this invaluable collection.
https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/digital/collection/lew_carter/search
Niagara Falls, New York
In 1911, Thomas was east of Lockport, 19 miles as the crow flies in Niagara Falls City. Records put him working as a waiter at the Niagara Club on Buffalo Avenue.
The neighbourhood of Buffalo Avenue saw a period of industrial growth during the late 1800s with the advent of cheap electrical power. This area of Niagara Falls was unique, as it had an identity that was both high-end residential and industrial. The Niagara Club was located next door to ‘Hotel Kaltenbach’, a 50-room hotel fronting the state park. The hotel looked out to the Niagara River and was built and run by German revolutionary Andreas Kaltenbach.
X marks the approximate spot on the map below.
Image Credit – City of Niagara Falls, Matthew – Northrup Company 1893. Boston Public Library
Gentlemen Only
The Niagara Club was a private gentleman-only club formed by one hundred charter members in 1901 and was a meeting place for the city’s business and professional leaders. The grey stone building on Buffalo Avenue was purchased by the club in 1906. I was lucky in my research to come across descriptions of some of the furniture, which helps to paint a picture of the club as Thomas would have seen it.
Felt-covered card tables played host to the distinguished members, and the dining room, where Thomas would have spent most of his time waiting on, boasted large windows overlooking the upper rapids of the Niagara Falls. Dining tables as long as ten feet hosted the Gentlemen members. The steward of the Niagara Club in 1910, when Thomas was employed there, was German-born Paul Dietz.
“Through the years the club was the setting for some of the city’s most important social events. It had a reputation of of tradition, privilege, secrecy and selectivity, more exclusive than the Niagara Falls Country Club.” – Ronald. L Burns, Club President in 1995.
Small Pox Scare
1909
“Consternation and anxiety was thrown into more than a hundred homes of the business and manufacturers of this city yesterday afternoon when it became known that one of the domestics employed at the Niagara Club was an inmate of the pest house, suffering from small pox.” – The Buffalo Times
The club’s servants’ quarters were consequently fumigated, and all staff members who encountered the woman were quarantined. Thomas could well have been one of these staff members!
Radio
Where it all began
Whilst researching this period of Thomas’s life, I came across a quote which I think really helps to visualise how things were at this time between the advent of electricity, regular people like Thomas and the invention of radio. It may also describe the leaps in Thomas’s imagination or perhaps identifies the match that lit his enthusiasm for radio.
Once electricity came into people’s worlds, I think they thought it was quite benign. For one thing, it was no longer a live flame, which in itself seems much safer. Again, it was a bit of a luxury. By 1907, only 8 percent of Americans lived in homes served by electricity nationwide. It was not dispersed super swiftly because the infrastructure had to be built. Once that was in place, the question was whether you could you afford it. For every new technology, people have to be persuaded that it’s important. I think the thing that made them really want electricity was the radio, which didn’t become ubiquitous until the 1920s and ‘30s. – The war of currents, Bloomberg.com
Canadian-born American inventor Reginald A. Fessenden sent what is believed to have been one of the first wireless transmissions on Christmas Eve of 1906. His transmission of the human voice from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, travelled across the Atlantic to the astonishment of ships’ wireless operators, who were then only familiar with hearing the dots and dashes of Morse code. From this time until the advent of musical radio concerts in 1920, radio became a domain for hobbyists like my great-grandfather Thomas.
Across the Niagara River from the Niagara Club, where Thomas was employed, stood the first power-generating station at Niagara Falls, engineered in part by Fessenden.
Marconi
The first radio training school was founded in 1909 by the United Wireless Telegraph Company, later renamed the Marconi Institute. The small classroom was located on the top floor of a building at 42 Broadway in New York City.
Preceding the Titanic disaster of 1912, the movement to increase the scope of wireless took off. To protect the ships’ operators from picking up amateur air traffic, the Radio Act was introduced, enforcing licences for all those with wireless sets. Noncompliance led to penalties. This brought about a wave of radio enthusiasts rushing to get licences.
Thomas gained his first certificate of proficiency in 1912. Where is unknown, but research puts him journeying between New York State and Vancouver, British Columbia.
“There were 10,000 wireless stations, most of them amateur ones, around New York.” – Early Radio History
“Hundreds of boys are busy picking messages out of the air – some of them have powerful sending apparatus – Poles on roofs of houses, barns and hotels are multiplying fast – Young operators who are crackerjacks at the business”
– The Boston Sunday Globe, March 1909
Marconi Wireless
Wartime
In July 1918, Thomas is recorded in his first wireless operator position on board a Canadian oil tanker named Turret Cape. Thomas gained the position after successfully passing all requirements for the Postmaster General’s certificate of proficiency three years earlier in 1915.
Peacetime
After the war, Tom’s enthusiasm for wireless technology and electrical engineering expanded further. He settled back in his home county of Lancashire and earned an income working with radios and their accumulators, even manufacturing his own and selling them.
“In the early days of radio, a glass cased battery, known as an accumulator, was required in order to supply voltage to the valve heaters. These accumulators required charging on a regular basis and were taken to electrical shops or garages for this purpose. Tom used to supply this service to the local community and my friend had the task of dropping the discharged accumulator off at his house on the way to school and collecting a charged one on the way home.”
– A Leyland Resident
In 1909, Marconi received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in wireless communication. During World War I, as an Italian Officer, the scientist pioneered the development of VHF (very high frequency) radio waves, which in the future would allow television transmissions. – NYC Parks
One Step Further
Much like Marconi, Thomas’s interest wasn’t limited to wireless radio; he was enthusiastic about the whole field of electrical communications.
“He was radio-mad… It was his job, his hobby, and everything else. He had one night off a week and the rest of his time he would be in his work shed.”
– Lilian Taylor (Wife of Thomas)
On the 7th of February 1926 two-way communication was held for the first time between England and the United States. Eleven months later, in January of 1927, the transatlantic telephone service was opened to the public. I imagine Thomas jumped at the opportunity to contact his friends across the pond!
Telegraphy to Television
The first glimmer of the possibility of television appeared when the properties of selenium were hit upon, quite accidently, in 1873, by Mr. May, an operator at the transatlantic cable station at Valentia in Ireland. May noticed that his instruments behaved in a peculiar manner when the suns rays fell on some selenium resistances in the circuit. The electrical resistance varied with the intensity of the light, and this was at once seen to open up a new possibility, the transfer of light into electricity, that is to say, variations in the intensity of light could be made to produce variations in an electric current. – From Telegraphy to Television, Chetwode Crawley 1931.
Fast forward from 1873, and advancements in this area were made. Selenium was in the end found to be unsuitable, but experiments with cathode rays and the development of the photoelectric cell moved things forwards.
“There have been two outstanding discoveries which have paved the way for television; the first, the photo electric cell by which varying intensities of light can produce instantaneously carrying strengths of electric current (and vice versa), and, secondly, the thermionic valve by which the strengths of these currents can be enormously magnified. Since these discoveries were made scientists and what are called amateur workers, all over the world, have been using them in endeavouring to develop practical systems of television.”
Notably, one of these men referred to in the quote was John Logie Baird of Scotland.
The first demonstration of television was given by Baird in London on the 27th of January 1926. Following this momentous event, his further achievements included the first transatlantic transmission and the first transmission to a ship at sea.
Further progress in this new wireless technology paved the way for experimental television broadcasts in some of the regular broadcasts from the BBC. These first experimental programmes began in September 1929.
The ‘Televisor’
Congratulations from Baird
Thomas became interested in the television at an early stage of its development. His partaking in the picking up of Baird’s BBC transmissions puts him firmly in the club of the enthusiasts known then as “lookers-in”.
It was estimated in 1933 that there were around 10,000 lookers-in’ with Baird apparatus or homemade machines.
Baird’s televisor had the appearance of an ordinary suitcase, about 2 ft square by 1 ft 6 inches in depth. The little glass screen where the pictures would be shown was around 8 inches in diameter. The enthusiast would connect the televisor to an aerial. The set had dual capacity, containing a wireless set and the new televisor for picking up pictures. The looker-in would then tune in to the daily BBC broadcasts transmitted from Baird Studios, adjusting the receiver in much the same way as they would a radio.
The story of my great-grandfather being the first man in the northwest to pick up pictures on his home-made receiver at Midge Hall is well known in the family. This achievement was congratulated by J.L Baird and he was gifted one of Baird’s television sets. My great-grandmother Lilian noted that this set was much smaller than the one that Thomas had built himself.
“He would often go on until two or three o’clock in the morning” recalled Lilian. “And when the Crystal Palace transmissions were on many is the time he has called me out of bed just to show me first, one dot, then another appear on the screen.”
As Thomas’s homemade televisor sets edged closer to perfection, clear images of a ring on a person’s finger could be seen, and the patterns on linoleum were clearly visible. He picked up the experimental programmes using a 50 ft aerial.
Thomas started tinkering with television reception at Midge Hall in Leyland in 1935. News spread that he was receiving Baird’s experimental programmes from Crystal Palace, and people near and far came to see for themselves.
“One curious advert appeared in 1936 (March 7th). It advised readers not to delay buying a set because of the mistaken belief that “television was almost within reach.” ‘Commercial television’, it was stated, “is not likely to come for many years”.
The reason for the warning in 1936 was the opening of T.V transmissions at Alexandra Palace in that year. This was considered too far away for reception in the north but Mr. T. Taylor, a former Marconi engineer who lived at Cocker Lane, Leyland received the transmission regularly.
The image, golden in colour tended to flicker and dissolve after alarming distortions. I remember a woman singer whose body appeared this way so that she looked like a genie from Aladdin’s Lamp. The achievement was then merely of a scientific interest. The set represented an improvement on Baird’s equipment of slotted and spiral discs which I had studied as a schoolboy.
– George Birtill, Author, Reporter and Leyland Resident
Thomas put time, heart and soul into the development of his own model of television. His intention was to sell the sets, but the outbreak of the Second World War put his plans on hold.
Final Thoughts
So, did researching my great-grandfathers time in America and Canada reveal the source of his obsessive wireless passions when he returned to England? Yes, I think so. Thomas went to Canada as a labouring teenager from the print works of Chorley and came back an electrical engineer with a passion for wireless innovation. During the time period that my ancestor was living, working and travelling between America and Canada, the U.S.A. was being recognised as a leader in technological innovation. Big-name electrical pioneers – Edison, Tesla and Marconi – were the men of the day. Newspapers decorated with exciting headlines about the fantastical advancements in technology and industry made for regular reading, and Thomas was not alone as an amateur radio enthusiast in 1912 when he trained for his certificate in proficiency. On the contrary, he was one of thousands taking part in this new wireless movement.
Exploring his time in New York State creates a detailed idea of his surroundings and the kind of things he would have experienced, which were a whole world away from what could be imagined in the rural setting of his home village of Heapey at this time.
During his employment as a waiter at the private Gentlemen’s Club, Thomas would have surely overheard conversations by the important men of the city about developments and the expansions of new technologies. Knowing that he was interested in wireless at this point as an amateur reveals the types of conversations Thomas himself would have been having and tells more about his social life and the places he may have visited. This is all interesting when the vision of Thomas painted by family has always been one of a deep-thinking solitary man who spent most of his time alone with his radio parts in the garden shed.
My impression now of my great-grandfather is a more rounded one; he was zealous, well-travelled, eager and inquisitive. My research across the pond brought the story of my ancestor back to life in a whole new way, proving that it is worthwhile going back to what you think you know about a family member and digging a little deeper. Thomas was a witness to the modern world as we know it right back when it was only just emerging, and we can only imagine how wondrous it must have been at the time. It makes me feel proud to know that he wasn’t just a bystander reading about what was taking place in his local newspaper, but that he took part in the ways that he did.
What better way to end this study than with the words of Nikola Tesla in 1912 and his predictions now realised –
“In the last few years many wonderful possibilities have presented themselves.. but in my opinion, none will be of such far reaching consequences as the complete annihilation of space.
As regards intercommunication a great step has already been made, but a fuller realisation will come when a system is introduced enabling any person to reach any other on the globe, and not simply through a spoken word, but visually. I mean by this that not only must there be a telephone communication from one to any other person, but also a perfect transmission of images which will enable one person to see another as through that other were by his side.”
– Nikola Tesla
In the News
Sources and further reading
- Featured image – Nikola Tesla, with his equipment for producing high-frequency alternating currents Date: 1901
- Historicmapworks
- Ancestry
- Findmypast
- U.S City Directory 1910/1911
- BBC- The Birth of TV
- Wikipedia
- Newspapers.com
- radiocom.net
- americanradioworks.com
- thecanadianencyclopedia.ca
- picryl.com
- museumoftechnology.org
- worldradiohistory.com
- cityoflockport.net