Today in Technology History

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February 7

Sending communications from a moving train wasn't always easy. Flags and whistles could be used to send basic signals from a train -- but in order to send detailed messages or ask for instructions the train would have to stop at a station, where telegraph messages could be sent and received. There were some attempts to improve this system in the late 1800s, including a kind of telegraph invented by Granville Woods that allowed a moving train to communicate telegraphically via a wire near the tracks; it was an ingenious concept, but it didn't catch on.

Only with the invention of radio would communication with a moving train become really practical. The first successful test of a radio system for sending messages from a moving train took place exactly 88 years ago in New York State.

Radio messages had already been received on moving trains at least a year earlier. Sending radio signals, however, required more power, and hence special equipment had to be set up -- a process that took four months. A mail and baggage car was gutted so that it could accommodate an electrical generator. The generator used a steam turbine to draw power from the locomotive. The actual radio apparatus was set up in a compartment in an adjacent car.

It took two weeks of experimentation before the successful test on February 7, 1915. Messages were sent from a moving train to a station in Binghamton, New York; the train sent signals from 26 miles west of the city, 26 miles east of the city, and points in between. "All of these messages were received and copied at Binghamton without difficulty," according to a contemporary newspaper account.

The newspaper story also mentions that further experiments would soon extend the range of the radio signal to fifty miles, which was all that would be needed for railroading anyway, since "divisional stations are usually about 100 miles apart." Also, there were plans to allow passengers to send personal messages with the train's radio, through a complicated system wherein the radio signals would be received at a telephone office, transferred onto a phonograph record, and then played over the telephone to the passenger's acquaintance.

Related link:

• The radio transmitter used on this train test was invented by Lee De Forest, whom you can read about here.

 

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