On October 10th, 2019 I had the pleasure of meeting Walter W Massie, Grandson of Walter W Massie, Radio Pioneer at the New England Wireless and Steam Museum. One of the highlights of the meeting was his reading of a document entitled ."Memories of my grandfather". Throughout these pages you will find small snippits of information from this document.
Charle O Cressey, in 1909 worked for the the Massie company as a every capacity from operator to junior engineer.
Radio World October, 1927
IRE Radio Pioneers, 1945
Station PJ Between 1910 and 1983
Just after Massie closed the station in 1910 and was forced to sell out to the Marconi Corporation it seems one of it's last operators, Jesse W Cunningham was using the station as a Western Union land line telegraph station, handling market information for the nearby fishing village of Galilee until just before the second World War. 22
It then seems to have become the Cunnningham's summer home, with Cunnningham even holding his daughters wedding there.
Providence Journal April 16, 1911
Providence Journal April 18, 1911
Providence Journal July 18, 1926
Providence Journal May 13, 1928
Providence Journal June29, 1930
Providence Journal August 15, 1937
Providence Journal May 9, 1948
Pawtucket Times May 14, 1928
Station PJ
Original Acquisition Announcement of Station PJ
The next museum acquisition is spectacular both in size and historical importance. Mr. and Mrs. Albert Cellemme of Narragansett, R. I. have given the two and one half Story Station house of the old Point Judith coast wireless statlon, call letters, "PJ". This station house is perhaps the oldest building built expressly for a wireless station surviving in the world. "PJ" was in operation from 1903 through 1910. It was the key station of the MASSIE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH SYSTEM. Massie beat Marconi in outfitting all the vessels of a single steamship line with wireless. The Fall River Line has this distinction.
To a radio man, going into Massie's station is like going into a time machine. The site is among the dunes right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The building is remarkably unaltered from the day it was built. The interior is entirely finished in narrow tongue in groove varnished siding. The place for the antenna lead-in is as it was when built, large Elektrose insulators of an uncommon type used to hold the 200 foot wooden lattice tower were still stored under the building, spare foil covered glass plate condensers were in the attic along with extra heavy copper antenna wire. Buried in the sand are numerous Edison LaLande primary cells and lead sheathed power cables to the separate battery house for in those days there was no commercial power to that desolate site.
The station has two rooms up stairs and two similarly sized rooms down stairs. It is our purpose to restore the Massie wireless equipment as it was in one of the up stairs rooms. The other three rooms will provide much needed office space and additional display space.
The acquisition of this building is an exceptional event. Moving it to the museum twenty miles away will be no easy task but we will do it. The concrete foundation with full cellar is now ready. The moving crew consists of Jeff Berry, Mark Beezer, Charles A. Moore III, Jonathan Stevens with Mr. R. B. Hanson providing the engineering wisdom. All these men are old hands in conquering challenging problems. In this project there are certain unavoidable costs which brings us to the next subject.
The Massie Wireless Telegraph Station at Point Judith, with call letters "PJ": The station is on the National Register of Historic Places. Formerly on the exposed beach at Point Judith, it had survived several hurricanes. When the state wanted to tear it down, the New England Wireless and Steam Museum mounted a campaign to save it. In 1983, with the help of many enthusiastic volunteers, the entire station was moved to its present site on the museum grounds in East Greenwich, RI. It is the oldest surviving wireless station in the world, and it is complete with its original straight gap, 400 watt battery (Edison LaLande glass jar batteries) operated and its Massie Resonaphone receiver. Even the operating table is original. When the Massie Wireless Telegraph Company closed down in 1910, all of the original equipment had luckily been saved in the loft of a barn in Wrentham, MA by the Massie family. The descendants of Walter Massie donated this priceless equipment to the museum and it has now been reinstalled to complete the exhibit.
PJ, The Old Wireless Station at Point Judith, R.I.;
Possibly the Oldest Surviving Radio Station
Building in the World
by
Bob Merriam
The first radio communication at Point Judith, R.I. took place in the summer of 1903. It came about because The Providence Journal Co. thought Block Island needed a news link to the mainland. Point Judith was chosen for the mainland station site because of its nearness to Block Island.
In 1903 Lee deForest was the most conspicuous wireless man in the United States. He was racing around the country promoting his wireless schemes. He found a willing buyer in the Providence Journal and set up the Point Judith station for them late in that summer. With the Point Judith station completed he was ready to begin the Block Island station but the cup races between the Shamrock III and the Reliance were about to start off Sandy Hook, New Jersey so he rushed to New York to cover the races and to generate more deForest publicity. Marconi, Fessenden, and Shoemaker were already there for the same promotional reason for their own causes and doing their best to jam each other's signals. deForest chartered a tug, outfitted it out with hurry-up wireless installation and joined the fray; but the interference from the other wireless signals drowned him out. In spite of this failure he did indeed manage to get his message through by wireless but he had to make use of the good old fashioned wig-wag flag system to do it.
With the cup races behind him he came back to Rhode Island to complete the Block Island end of his Providence Journal System. With this done and when both Block Island, "BI," and Point Judith, "PJ," first went into operation deForest had unknowingly established the world's first press wireless system. This was in October, 1903.
Unfortunately "BI's" three section spindly mast blew down in the first big storm. The Providence Journal decided it needed someone spread not quite as thin as deForest to straighten out the problem, as well as to run its stations, so it hired a young Providence wireless man named Walter Wentworth Massie. Massie had studied engineering at Brown and Tufts and he was an employee of the Providence city engineers office. He had been experimenting with wireless as an amateur since 1896. By 1903 he had already given a number of public wireless demonstrations and had established a reputation locally as an expert in the field.
With "BI" repaired and the system back in smooth operating condition, Massie decided to expand his business. He reasoned that the Long Island Sound steamers could use wireless telegraphy to advantage. To prove the point he persuaded the management of the Fall River Line to allow him to install a trial system on the steamer, PILGRIM, completing the installation on March 21, 1904. On the first trip to New York the PILGRIM "GM" maintained communication with "PJ" for three hours as it approached and left Point Judith. The steamship line's management was so pleased that it commissioned Massie to outfit the rest of its fleet. When this was done the Fall River Line became the first fleet in the world to have all of its vessels wireless equipped. Massie was ahead of Marconi in this accomplishment.
Massie's company grew. By 1908 he had important coast stations on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as well as in Alaska and in the Philippines. He had equipped a good number of steamers and he had also supplied the Signal Corps and the Navy with equipment from small portable sets to 20 KW coast stations. He had patented several wireless inventions, the most interesting of which is a tuner which tunes both L and C by the same control dial giving it the remarkably wide tuning range of 200 to 2,000 meters. He was also an active member of The Society of Wireless Telegraph Engineers, which was the first of all professional electronic engineering associations and which later became the parent of the IRE and the grandparent of the IEEE. When the IRE was formed in 1912 Massie was one of its charter members.
In 1907 he decided to improve "PJ." He designed and built a two and one half story station house in the then lonely dunes west of the Point Judith lighthouse. Seventy five feet away from this building he erected a 300 foot high, parallel sided, wooden lattice tower. The corner posts of this tower were eight by eight inch timbers set four feet apart. The tower was guyed at four levels with tarred hemp line; and suspended from the top of the tower was an eight conductor fan antenna which was spread open half way down by means of lateral insulated guys which made the antenna into a sloping diamond shaped affair somewhat like an inclined hammock.
The antenna led by way of an ebonite insulator into the second story room which faced the ocean. This room contained the bureau sized spark transmitter, the receiver, a land line telegraph set, an operating table, a few straight back chairs and a 'large telescope on a tripod for scanning the ocean, in quest of passing ships since Massie also ran a ship's position reporting service via PJ's Western Union telegraph line. Also in the middle of this room a ship's ladder led upward through a hatch in the overhead to a small lookout tower which gave the observer an even better command of the sea to the east, south and west. Power for the wireless equipment came from 100 Edison LaLande primary wet cells since the nearest commercial power was several miles away. Electrodes and electrolyte had to be renewed weekly to maintain power which was approximately 400 watts.
The entire interior of the building was finished in varnished narrow tongue-in-groove hard pine siding. Today this wood still has the original varnish on it in surprisingly good condition. The remaining three rooms of the building were used for living quarters for the operator and for the Massie family during summer visits.
In 1907 "PJ" was a lone building in the dunes six miles by horse and buggy from the terminal of the Seaview Electric Railroad in Narragansett village. Massie used the Seaview to travel to his home in Edgewood near Providence. The Massie Wireless Telegraph System's headquarters station was on the roof of the old Narragansett Hotel in Providence. The next Massie station to the west of "PJ" was "WN" at Wilson's Point, Connecticut, located forty miles east of New York City.
These three stations were connected by a Western Union telegraph loop; the operators being expected to handle land line traffic in addition to wireless traffic. After "PJ" closed down in November of 1910 the station building continued to serve as a land line telegraph station into the 1930's. Since that time until 1981 it has served as an unusual but pleasant summer house close to the beach for a series of owners.
A few years ago the state of Rhode Island declared that the Massie station house was in a hurricane hazardous zone and that it either had to be moved or demolished. By a fortuitous combination of circumstances "PJ" was given to the New England Wireless and Steam Museum in 1981 by its then owners, Mr. and Mrs. Al Cellemme. Since 1981 the station building has been carefully dismantled and moved twenty miles to the New England Wireless and Steam Museum's site in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, where it has been erected and is in the process of restoration. Also by another combination of fortuitous circumstances almost all of the original wireless equipment has survived in eluding the operating table. This remarkable early station will be reassembled and will become one of the historic treasures at the museum.
As far as we have been able to determine "PJ" is the oldest surviving structure built expressly to be a wireless station in the world. The fact that it has survived at all and has been rescued is close to a miracle. The successful moving of it by a volunteer crew represents both high adventure as well as Yankee ingenuity and persistence. The only access to the station was by way of a quarter mile of dune buggy road through soft sand. It took tiresome shoveling, plywood tracks and a never say "die" spirit on the part of Brian Bouchard to get his huge trucks near the building. Frank Hilton, the operator of the crane, showed the same kind of spirit. Fortunately Frank had no trouble getting the Rhode Island Engine Company's four wheel drive crane to the site. Also fortunately Frank Hilton had the skill and the will to stick to the job through some tense and also tedious moments. Working in the sand with truck and cranes gave us a good appreciation of the tribulations of Montgomery and Rommel at El Alamein.
The overseer of the entire project from the beginning has been director Dick Hanson. The strategy of the move was complex. Dick carefully worked this out. The site was difficult to reach. The way out was blocked by a high tension line which feeds the entire village of Galilee. Both to get the building under the wire and to allow it to go legally over the road it had to be reduced into smaller parts. Dick figured out all the details; how to make the sections with a minimum of damage to the building and how to reinforce them for the trip. First the roof and tower were removed. This is easy to say but it entailed cutting the nails in the double plate around the perimeter of the roof in the attic with a hack saw blade and then designing and bolting into place an intricate bracing system so the roof would not collapse when picked by the crane. Next, the second floor had to be cut everywhere at the floor line and more bracing provided. Finally the ground floor had to be divided into four sections and each section turned on its side to meet the height limitation of the state highway department. Even with the building reduced into six smaller parts, one whole sand dune had to be dozed out of the way to permit the huge loads to get under the high tension line. Of course when the job was done we had to restore the sand dune to its original shape to keep peace with the ecology.
After travelling twenty miles to the museum site the parts were put together again. Today it stands on the quadrangle at right angles to the meeting hall It is a unique historic relic and a valuable addition to the museum. When finally restored one ground floor room will be used for the museum office, the other ground floor room will be used to display steam engine models and to store the museum's extensive collection of steam engine drawings. The upstairs room which held the original station will be restored as it was and the other upstairs room will be used for much needed additional wireless equipment displays. The successful move is a high tribute to the skill and dedication of Dick Hanson and all his helpers. These are: Jeff Berry, Mark Beezer, Brian Bouchard, Bob Broz, Dan Fay, Barry Gallup, Frank Hilton, Paul A. Merriam II, Charles A. Moore Jr., and Jonathan Stevens. Of course many others helped as well including Antionette Downing, Nancy Merriam, Robyn Vaughan, and the Rhode Island National Guard 861st Engineers. The museum owes great thanks to all of these people and others who have supported the project with enthusiasm and donations. The New England Museum of Wireless and Steam may now have as one of its valued buildings the oldest radio station house built expressly for that purpose in the world. Walter Massie was the son of a Providence, Rhode Island, banker, John Gardner Massie
. He was born on December 15, 1874, and he died on January 22, 1941, at his son's farm in Sheldonyille, Massachusetts.
Walter Massie, a Remarkable Wireless Radio Pioneer By Brian L. Wallin
Wrapped in a blanket, a lone radio operator sat huddled in his chair on the second floor of the Massie Wireless Telegraph station at Point Judith, Rhode Island, located in the dunes at what is now the east end of Sand Hill Cove, now better known as Roger Wheeler State Beach.
It was a cold, windswept February night in early 1905. Only a small amount of warmth made its way into the second floor room through a floor grate leading to the first floor where there was a Glenwood stove. Periodically, the operator would climb up a ladder to an observation tower and peer through a telescope searching for the appearance of the Fall River Line night boat SS Plymouth headed for New York.
Suddenly, the spark of an incoming message broke the silence. CQ-PJ-D-PX. The liner's wireless operator, also a Massie employee, was signaling the Point Judith shore station call letters PJ with his call sign PX (the Morse code letters CQ signified an outgoing call and D identifed the originating station). Incoming traffic meant revenue. A businessman aboard the ship had a telegram for a New York City client.
The Point Judith Massie station had installed poles and a land wire to connect with the Western Union telegraph several miles away at the Seaview Electric Trolley Line Station in Narragansett. Quickly copying the message, the operator stepped across to his telegraph desk and relayed the message. One of the modern miracles of twentieth century communication, it was thanks in part to the innovative genius of a Providence engineer turned entrepreneur named Walter Wentworth Massie. He was a contemporary of communication pioneers such as A. Frederick Collins of Newark, New Jersey, Lee deForrest of New York, Thomas E. Clark of Detroit, and Italian-born Guglielmo Marconi (the Nobel prize winner often called the father of long-distance radio transmission). Marconi was soon to play a profound role in our story.
Telegraphy was invented by Samuel F. B. Morse. Alexander Graham Bell followed with the telephone in the 1870's. The communications age took a dramatic turn in the 1890's with the advent of radio telegraphy, a far more economical approach since there was no need for copper wires strung on poles. Numerous experimenters on both sides of the Atlantic developed the technology and by the turn of the century, wireless telegraphy was up and running to be followed soon by wireless voice communication and the rest, of course, is history.
Our story is about Rhode Island's contribution, specifically that of Walter Massie.
In the early 1900's, New York-based wireless entrepreneur Lee deForrest was travelling around the country promoting his services. The Providence Journal latched on to deForrest when its editors decided that the wealthy summer residents on Block Island would benefit from an edition of the newspaper printed on the island from material transmitted from the mainland. They hired deForrest to set up a station at Point Judith (Station "PJ"). Before the system could be completed, deForrest departed for New York to promote his services during the summer 1903 America's Cup Races off Sandy Hook. The Journal waited patiently. In October, deForrest returned and completed the Block Island station (Station BI). The Journal began what turned out to be the world's first wireless press system. A storm blew down the Block Island's slender antenna tower and deForrest lost interest in the deal. The Journal needed someone with local ties to keep things in hand.
Enter Walter Massie. Well known locally for his wireless experiments and demonstrations, he replaced deForrest as the Journal's resident wireless expert. When the Journal indicated it wanted to divest itself of the venture, Massie bought the Point Judith and Block Island stations. He had already decided that the steamships travelling from New England to New York City would benefit from wireless communications. He convinced the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, owners of the Fall River Line, to allow him to install a trial system aboard the steamer Pilgrim. Commencing in March of 1904, the system quickly took hold and the line commissioned Massie to install systems on the rest of the fleet's ships. An astute businessman, Massie employed operators and placed his own equipment in specially built soundproofed cabins that were quickly duplicated on other vessels. His business rapidly expanded.
Steamers easily communicated with shore stations on Block Island, Point Judith and farther south. Soon, the steamship company owners contracted with Massie for wireless facilities on the other Providence-New York boat, Plymouth, and the Fall River-New York boats, Puritan and Priscilla. Initially, receiving signals over the longer distances was not reliable, necessitating the need to construct a number of new facilities. Gradually, transmitters and receivers improved and power increased. Atmospheric conditions also played a role.
The boats could also communicate with one another, ensuring a safer sailing environment as well as a thriving commercial enterprise. Massie's telegraph line from the wireless station up to the trolley station at Narragansett Pier created a highly effective (and profitable) ship-to-shore network.
In June of 1904, Massie opened station "WN" at Wilson's Point in South Norwalk, Connecticut, for the NYNY&H Railroad. The station was quickly upgraded to become even more powerful than the Block Island and Point Judith facilities and could even reach Key West, Florida. Massie also installed station HG on the roof of the Narragansett Hotel in downtown Providence. Before long, he had wireless facilities operating on both coasts serving both civilian and military interests. These stations also exchanged messages with facilities operated by other companies.
In 1907, Massie built a new, sturdy structure on the beach at Point Judith a few hundred feet away from the original rented facility which burnt to the ground. Along with several other American radio pioneers, Massie had made wireless telegraphy a household word from coast to coast and beyond.
Providence Journal October 26, 1907
Woonsocket Call October 26, 1907
Today Massie's legacy lives on thanks to the New England Wireless and Steam Museum in East Greenwich (NEWSM), led by Museum Director Robert Merriam, whose staff and volunteers rescued the Point Judith wireless station from destruction in 1983 and moved it in its entirely to the museum grounds. The station's entire operating equipment, which remained in excellent condition and had been moved earlier to a farm owned by the Massie family near Wrentham, Massachusetts, was donated by the Massie grandchildren to the museum. The equipment has been lovingly reassembled and fully restored, making Station PJ the oldest surviving example of its type in the world.
Walter W. Massie was born in 1874 to Providence banker John Massie and his wife Harriet. Young Massie began experimenting with wireless communication in 1895 while still completing his education at Brown University and Tufts University. A year later, he joined the Providence City Engineer's Office and continued his experiments in wireless telegraphy at his home on Public Street.
He perfected and later patented a number of innovative transmitting and receiving devices that would form the basis of his entry into the burgeoning wireless business. In 1899 Massie married the former Ethel Farrington. They had two sons, Wentworth and Gardner. While working at his day job, Massie avidly continued his radio experiments. Also a talented woodworker, Massie built housings for his inventions and portable cases for public demonstrations. These display kits were also recovered from the Massie family and are now on display at NEWSM. They include a telegraph key connected to audible and visual signal devices (a doorbell and light bulb) and a device called a coherer, an early type of radio signal detector and the basis of wireless transmission systems.
A primitive form of the coherer had been developed in Europe in 1890 and was quickly put into use by a number of inventors on both sides of the Atlantic, including Marconi, who obtained a European patent for his device. A coherer is a glass tube with two electrodes, spaced apart, with metal filings in between. When a radio signal is applied to the coherer, the magnetized metal filings come together or "cohere," which reduces resistance and allows an electrical current to pass through it. The current triggers a signaling device, such as a bell or light bulb or a paper tape strip on which a record can be made of the signal.
Massie's coherer proved to be more sensitive and durable than those of his contemporaries. He later received U.S. patents for this invention and several related devices in 1905.
In the midst of his early research, Massie gave a lecture in the Olneyville section of Providence along with several men who were working for Lee deForrest, a New York-based radio pioneer. This brought him to the attention of other major experimenters in the field.
In an article published in the July 29, 1905 edition of Electrical World and Engineer Magazine, another well-known radio engineer, A. Frederick Collins, credits Massie for taking what was considered theoretical in nature and turning it into a "workable apparatus." The June-July 1910 edition of National Magazine recounts Massie's personal intervention in obtaining help for victims of a collision between two steamships in the fog off Cape Cod. A Massie operator at the Point Judith station picked up a distress call from one of the ships. Massie himself contacted a New London marine rescue company, which immediately dispatched help to the scene. This was to be repeated countless times over the years as radiotelegraphy grew in importance.
Backed by patents on his key inventions and with additional investors, Massie incorporated his Providence-based business and things really took off. Within a few years, Massie stations were installed on numerous civilian vessels and shore stations on both coasts, including wireless installations for the US Navy as far away as Alaska and the Philippines.
Massie's sturdy, two-story frame and wood-shingled, gable roofed building at Point Judith was set on a stone foundation behind protective sand dunes inside the Harbor of Refuge and a short distance above the shoreline of Sand Hill Cove (now Roger Wheeler State Beach). The structure with its observation tower has been perfectly restored by the museum. Built to withstand the treacherous New England weather, the building survived many storms and several major hurricanes over the decades.
With four rooms (two up and two down) and paneled in dark pine, the building offered primitive living conditions for the operators who individually manned the station around the clock. An outdoor privy was located in the dunes. In addition to windows offering a panoramic view of Rhode Island Sound, the building included a small observation tower at one end of the roofline, reached by a drop-down ceiling ladder. The station's antenna tower was wood lattice, four feet square and 300 feet tall supporting an elaborate wire antenna array (the Museum has a scale model of a tower section).
My grandmother told that they spent a few summers at Point Judith, near the radio station. One day she wanted to speak to my grandfather, but could not find him. She looked everywhere, she thought, without success. When he later re-appeared, he explained that he had been up in the radio tower working on the
antenna.
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Walter W Massie, Grandson
In 1910, Massie joined forces with companies owned by fellow radio pioneers deForrest, and Collins, along with Thomas Clark of Detroit, to incorporate as the Continental Wireless and Telegraphy Company with a view to establishing a coast-to-coast communications network. But, before the new venture could take hold, disaster struck in the form of crippling industry-wide lawsuits filed by Marconi against Massie and other American wireless company owners, charging patent infringement.
Marconi was relentless in his efforts and soon put his competition out of business. By 1912, Massie had closed his Point Judith station, as well as others, and sold out to the American Marconi Company. Although he was offered a job with the Marconi interests, Massie declined and returned to work as a civil engineer in Providence.
Massie remained active in radio, serving as a communications officer in the Naval Reserve in World War I. He was instrumental in forming numerous professional organizations and for a number of years after the war served as City Engineer in Cranston. He also operated a radio consultancy business in the Edgewood section of Cranston and became an avid yachtsman on Narragansett Bay. He owned a handsome motor yacht, Maurence, named after sisters Maude and Florence, two of six total Massie siblings. Both died very young. 89.
. (Needless to say, his craft was wireless-equipped.) Massie installed a wireless system at the Rhode Island Yacht Club, where he also served as commodore for a number of years. From his office-workshop in Pawtuxet (overlooking the yacht club), he continued to build and lease powerful wireless systems to marine and commercial interests into the 1930's.
My grandfather was a yachtsman and Commodore of the Rhode Island Yacht Club for a year, (possibly 1905).
.
In the 1920s my grandfather wrote articles about radio that were published in the Providence Journal. He also had his own business selling and servicing radios. It was apparently not an especially prosperous business. My grandfather was a good inventor and engineer but a terrible businessman.
He, his wife and their two sons are buried in a simple plot in North Kingstown's Elm Grove Cemetery. If it were not for the efforts of Bob Merriam and the NEWSM, his family gravesite would be his only monument.
The Marconi lawsuits continued to work their way through the courts. In 1943, two years after Massie's death, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a series of lower court decisions and restored to his estate some of the prior patents challenged by Marconi. But by that time Marconi, Massie and all the other American inventors named as defendants in the suit had died as well (Marconi in 1937 in his native Italy). The high court did state that its decision determined only that Marconi's claim to certain patents was in question. It did not challenge Marconi's claim to be the first to achieve radio transmission.
Interestingly, while Marconi never visited Rhode Island, the state's large Italian-American population wanted to commemorate him. In the late l930's, after Marconi's death, a campaign was undertaken to build a memorial for him at Roger Williams Park. World War II interrupted the effort and the memorial was not dedicated until 1953.
Another and more unusual memorial to Marconi is located at the Cranston-Johnston town line at the corner of Atwood Avenue and Plainfield Streets. It is a four-sided marble base with a metal radio tower. When it was dedicated in 2001, a radio signal was actually transmitted at 94.7 megahertz on the FM band. The marble base was vandalized and a section with a replica of a transatlantic map stolen in 2005. A broken water main in 2011 silenced the transmitter, but the monument still stands. Walter Massie was a believer in spiritualism. One wonders, did Walter Massie's spirit haunt the memorial?
How did the Massie wireless station make its way from the shores of Rhode Island Sound to a rural field in East Greenwich? That's where NEWSM founder Bob Merriam and his dedicated band of volunteers enter the story.
When Station PJ was shut down, Massie removed all the equipment and furnishings. The building itself became a summer residence until the mid-twentieth century. Because Massie had used rough-hewn lumber and constructed an exceptionally strong and well-anchored building, it survived at least three major hurricanes. By the early 1980's, the government decreed that the building could no longer be occupied.
Recognizing its significance, Providence architectural historian Antoinette Downing led an effort to preserve the building. According to Robert Merriam, "When Antoinette spoke, people listened." And they responded. The owners of the building, Mrs. and Mrs. Al Cellemme of East Greenwich, cooperated with the government's demand that the building be removed and donated the structure to the NEWSM.
"In the spring of 1983, with a group of volunteers and some major construction and transport equipment generously provided by local businesses, we took the building apart in three sections," recalled Merriam. "A heavy crane from the Rhode Island Engine Company put each piece on flatbed trailers, loaned by Kingston Turf Farm. Under police escort, the old building was gently moved up Route 1 to our grounds in East Greenwich."
"Then," continued Merriam, "the real work began. Assisted by the US Navy Seabees and their heavy equipment, we built a cement foundation and reassembled the building." Merriam and his wife Nancy had been in touch with the Massie grandchildren who had located the interior contents of the old station at the Massie farm in Massachusetts.
"Unbelievably, the family gave us a treasure trove of period wireless equipment," said Merriam. "It was like a time capsule. Everything was there: Massie's hand-built transmitter and receiver, the glass capacitors in their case, his Reasonaphone signal receiver and coherer gear, some of his portable demonstration kits and more, even the wireless station's wall clock, furniture and land telegraph set-up. It was just waiting to be reassembled." After months of research and work, Merriam and his volunteers threw a switch and, amazingly, the equipment came to life for the first time in more than seven decades.
The Massie station operates at a frequency of 350 kilocycles, below the AM radio band. If allowed to transmit, it would have an output of about 200 watts. In the early days of wireless communication, wireless stations were not government regulated. "Of course, now, we would have to be licensed by the FCC," commented Merriam. "The FCC would no longer allow operating the station as it was designed and on the wavelength involved. Although, on one occasion, permission was granted to connect the transmitter to an antenna and the signal went out over the airwaves." We really wanted to see it if still worked, and it did," Merriam chucked with not a little (understandable) pride.
The building, now on the National Register of Historic Places, appears just as it existed over one hundred years ago with its weathered shingle exterior and the small windowed observation tower. Where the operator's living quarters would have been on the first floor, there are examples of period wireless gear and Merriam's own modern amateur radio station (call letters W1NTE).
At the time the station began operating, there was no electric service to Point Judith. The equipment was powered by dozens of 600-ampere hour capacity Edison LaLande wet cell batteries, several of which are on display. By 1909, power was supplied by a two-kilowatt gasoline generator. Eventually, an electric power line was run to the building.
A dark, narrow staircase takes visitors to the second floor radio room. In one corner is the heavy wooden table holding Massie's equipment, just as it appeared over a century ago. On top of the bulky condenser cabinet with its glass capacitor panels is a metal helix coil that generates the transmitter spark directly to the antenna.
A heavy "pump handle" style transmitter key sends an impressive loud and visible spark to the point where it would have travelled to an outside antenna. In the opposite corner of the room is the landline telegraph station. An oddity is the presence of empty tobacco cans on the apparatus. The operators used these as a primitive form of amplifier. For telegraph equipment located by railroad tracks, the cans also created a sound that was different from the "clickety-clack" of train wheels on the tracks, thereby enabling the telegraph operator to separate the incoming signal from outside noises.
Today we take our modern communications technologies for granted. But, a little more than a century ago, pioneers like Walter Massie had a vision: a nationwide, and even international, network that would link people together like never before. The New England Wireless and Steam Museum preserves their dedication and imagination.
Bob Merriam, in restoring the Massie wireless station and its equipment, has ensured that the Providence native's legacy will be remembered, along with that of other electronic pioneers. "We have examples of every major contributor to the evolution of radio and TV communications," said Merriam, tracing the development of wireless starting from the very beginning. A visit would be well worth the reader's time.
"The wireless collection is only part of the museum's historical mission," added Merriam recently. "Rhode Island is known as a pioneer in industrial development, much of which was powered by steam. Our collection of steam engines, which includes one manufactured by Providence's George H. Corliss, is regularly fired up to demonstrate how such engines energized the many diverse businesses that drove the Ocean State's economic growth." Thanks to Bob Merriam and his team of committed volunteers, these unique treasures will remain to educate and enthrall future generations.
Brian L. Wallin is a 1965 graduate of Stonehill College, and earned his master's degree in 1968 from American International College. He retired in 2009 as Vice President of Kent Hospital in Warwick, RI where he remains active on several hospital committees. He has held appointments in numerous civic and professional organizations. He is a past president of the New England Society for Healthcare Communications and of the North Kingstown (RI) Rotary Club. He has been a member of the Varnum Armory & Varnum House Museums since 2008 and was named a trustee in 2013. Married in 1968, he and his wife Gail have one son and two grandsons. Brian is an avid guitarist, model railroader and marine model builder. He continues to do free-lance commercial and documentary voice-over narrations.
Bibliography
Oral Interviews of Robert Merriam, Director, Wireless and Steam Museum, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, by Brian L. Wallin, January 10 and August 19, 2016
Dilks, John "Earl Abbot's Massie Cohere," QST Magazine (December 2013)
Walter Wentworth Massie began experimenting with radio before the turn of the century during the decades that produced a burst of creativity in engineering for transportation and communication, a period when the development of radio was dominated by individuals who were both technological innovators and also entrepreneurs.
In the 1890s my grandfather was experimenting at home with radio. He worked professionally doing land and construction survey work for the City of Providence. -
Walter W Massie, Grandson
Massie was born December 15th, 1874 (The same year as Marconi) in Providence, RI, the son of a banker and Councilman, John G Massie and Harriet E Massie. 18 According for the 1880 Census, Massie was the fourth of SIX children. 44 Another sister, Edith was born in 1882.
His experiments began in 1895. The existence of wireless effects had been known since 1877 when Thomas Edison discovered "etheric force." Edison's wireless work was widely reported, as was the work of other pioneers such as Dolbear, Lodge, Hertz, Tesla, Popoff, and after 1896 Marconi.
Massie attended Mowry and Goffs School in Providence 6 and studied engineering at Brown University and Tufts University. Before Tufts or as part of Tufts, in the beginning, we find Massie listed in the 1892 Tufts Catalogue as a student in the Bromfield-Pearson High School 45. The high school is described as meeting the wants of young men whose preparation for an Engineering course may be partially deficient in one or more of the required branches but whos practice and experience in the applies part of the Engineering may qualify them to pursue college work while making up the deiciencies. 46 So it seems that they saw in Massie the practical engineer but not the theoretical backing. 18
He is listed as a special student at Brown in 1895-1896 36, at that time Massie lived at t Brighton Street in Providence and is listed as a student and border. 47
He was married to Ethel E Farrington on October 18th 1899. They had two children, Wentworth and Gardner. 18
Just before this point in his life Massie is living with his parents on 7 Brighton St in Providence. 37
In 1896, Massie joined the Providence City Engineer's office. At his house on Public Street, he continued to carry out experiments with wireless communication. His interest and competence in wireless were locally known, and he often gave lectures and demonstrations. It was a lecture in 1903 that led to Massie's move into radio as an entrepreneur. In March, Massie held a public demonstration of radio communication-he received messages in a lecture hall from a wireless set installed in an automobile outside the hall. His partners in the demonstration were employees of Lee deForest of New York. On the basis of the demonstration, de Forest was engaged by the management of the Providence Journal to provide radio communication between mainland Rhode Island and Block Island, so that a summer edition of their newspaper could be printed with up-to-the-minute news and the latest shipping observations. DeForest set up stations at Point Judith in an existing house and on Block Island near South East Lighthouse, and in the summer of 1903 the Providence Journal published 49 issues of the Block Island Wireless, a small paper whose news was supplied via deForest's connection across Rhode Island Sound.
After a single season, however, the Journal was unhappy with deForest and abandoned the Block Island Wireless. Seeking to recover some of its investment, the Journal offered the management of the two stations to Massie. In the fall of 1903, Massie resigned from the City Engineer's office and began his career as a full-time "wireless man." Operating the Massie Wireless Company as a sole proprietor, he was now matched against other competing groups of stations, known as "systems," each headed by an entrepreneur who was often, like Massie, also an inventor and innovator, adapting and altering the stock of equipment necessary to send and receive messages. During the years between 1904 and 1912, Massie was a significant competitor. At that time Massie lived at 24 Mawney Street 48 and 657 Public Street where he was listed as a Civil Engineer at the City Hall49
The Providence News March 4, 1903
In April 1904 an experiment was made to control the Massie spark transmitter at Point Judith by telegrraph from Providence.
Massie intended the two Journal stations to be the first of a network of stations that would provide ship-to-shore communications for coastal vessels. By early 1904, he had signed up the Fall River Steamship Line as his first client-he equipped their steamship Plymouth with wireless in March 1904. His installation on the Plymouth was located in a specially insulated stateroom, the sending and receiving apparatus arranged along a double shelf on two sides of the room, and including a recently patented oscillaphone detector. Establishing a pattern which he followed for the life of his company, Massie leased rather than sold the ship-board installations and hired the wireless operators who operated the radios.6
I, Charles O Bennerr, Secretary of state, hereby certify that Walter W Massie, Edward W Everson, and John G Massie have filed in the office of the secretary of state, according to law, their agreemenr to from a corporation under the name of Massie Wireless Telegraph Company, for the purpose of engaging in the business of wireless telegraph and telephony, manufacturing and installing, and maintaining wireless telegraph and telephony instruments and all other articles necessary for the conduct of such businees, to build, construct, maintain, license, use, and work for hire, public and private telegraph, telephone, and other electric, non-electric, or magnetic instrumnets and apparatus for the transmission of articulate speech, mesages, sounds, tones, or signals; to buy, sell, own, and deal in any real or personal property necessary or convenient for the prosecution of said business, and generally to do all things incident to said businees and to the proper management thereof, and with the capital stock of one hundred thousand dollars, and have also filed the certificate of the general treasurer that they paid into the general treasury of the state the fee required by law. 15
The Providence News April 12, 1905
In 1905 one of the Wireless Operators at the Massie Station "PJ" was Thomas F Walsh. On the evening of May 21st he discovered a Greek Fisherman on the shore exhausted and in serious condition. He was brought back to the station , 100 yards awat, and helped.
Providence Journal May 22, 1905
Early Radio Wave Detector>BR>Vivian J Phillips July, 1978(1905)
Click to enlarge Boston Evening Transcript December 20, 1905
Telegraph and Telephone Age, January 1 1911
Massie was also into photography as seen in a 1905 house directory listing members of the Providence Camera Club 50.
In 1906 there were Forty commercial wireless stations operating on the West Coast; 81
In 1906 51, 1908 52, 1909 53, 1910 54, 1911 55, and 1912 56 we find the Massie Wireless Telegraph Company at 4 Market Sq. room 10.
Also in 1906 one of San Francisco's first station is established for Massie by Arthur A. Isbell with the call sign "IAA" taken from Isbell's initials. This station was right near the Cliff House.
81
June, 1907: The steamship SS President of the Pacific S.S. Company is the first
ocean liner to be fitted with wireless in the Pacific 82, using a 3KW Massie
system on 400 meters, callsign V-2. Again we find Arthur A. Isbell as the operator. 81
The first commercial wireless message ever sent from a vessel on the North Pacific Coast was dispatched by operator Arthur A. Isbell aboard the President 92, 300 miles at sea on her Nome voyage, June 7, 1907. The message was dispatched by Jafet Linderberg, prominent Nome mining man, to J. W. Kelly at Seattle, and was relayed via land stations at Carmanah and Tatoosh Island. A return message from Kelly was received by the President. 91
In 1907, The Steamer on her way around the Atlantic nearly won the distinction of breaking all records of all long distance wireless messages usingMassie Equipment. 97
In 1908 Massie, under the company, The Marine Tranmission company filed a claim for burnt equipment at the Point Judith Station. They ended up having to take the insurance company to court to get paid what they thought they were owed. They lost!
In 1909 the Navy has wireless stations on the following islands:
Tatoosh Island, WA (callsign SV)
Cape Blanco, OR (TA)
Table Bluff, CA (TD)
Point Arguello, CA (TK)
Point Loma, CA (TM)
using Massie, Telefunken, Shoemaker and DeForest gear. Some of
these stations are reported to have had two "humps" in their wavelengths,
indication simultaneous although probably not intentional operation on two
frequencies. 82
The San Francisco Examiner September 8, 1909
In 1910 we find Massie living at 24 Mawney Street in Providence with his wife Ethel and sons Wintrop, 4 and Gardner, 3 and he is listed as a resident manager in the telegraph industry.43
At the end of 1911 communication with Block Island was lost when the cable 86 between the island and the mainland was cut. The schooner Edward E Briry fouled the cable with it's anchor on December 29th, 1911. Massie took a team out to the island to set up a station to communicate with Massie's Point Judith station, PJ. The team left on a wednesday and expected to be up and running by Thursday, the 19th or Friday morning, the 20th.
The wireless link actually did not begin until January 17th due to storms holding up installation of the system and material delays.
In 1912 Massie is the state inspector of Stakes and Buoys.
Bristol Phoenix August 27, 1912
Bristol Phoenix November 15, 1912
In 1913 Massie is living in Cranston at 33 Windsor Road and listed as an inventor.57
!913 bring the reorganization of the Massie Wireless Telegraph Company and company emerges as the National Electric Signal Company. under it's President H(S) M Kintner of Pittsburg, John V L Hogan, General Manager and Chief Engineer, George E Cole, personnel, manager of operators, installation and maintenance, offices pier 14, North River.
He is found listed in the 1913 85, 1914 83 and 1915 84 Rhode Island State Auditor Report for a variety of payments for services rendered. These include labor and supplies setting triangulation stations, computations and calculations, stenographic work and supplies, sevices and expenses as a civil engineer, and use of boat. Massie is listed as a Consultant with an office in the Industrial Trust Building in Providence in 1914. 58
In 1920 Massie and his family are still living on Windsor Road in Cranston but has moved to 31 63. His business listing has also changed to being a civil engineer in room 301 at the State House 64.
1922 has Massie listed in both the Cranston directory as a Civil Engineer in the town hall 66 and the Providence Directory as a Civil Engineer in the State House 67. This is seen again in 1924 6869 and he is living at 33 Windsor Road 70.
Also in 1924, Massie builds a new home he designs himself at 16 Windsor Rd in Cranston. 28.
In 1925 7172, 1928 7374, 1930 7576, 1931 77, and 1933 7879 Massie is listed as both a Civil Engineer and a Consulting Engineer.
The Late 20's and early 30s
At this time, Massie's involvement in radio is reduced to sales, repair and consulting. Here are a series of ads in the Providence Journal atesting to this:
In 1935 Massie and his wife are living with his son Wentworth and wife Linda in Wrentham MA. Wentworth is listed as a farmer. This was the farm where the equipment for staion "PJ" was found and donated to the Wireless and Steam Museum. 80
Executive offices, 4 Market Square 30, 31, Providence, RI; incorporated 1905; capital $300,000, actual property, stock on hand, and office and shop equipment.
(Providence, R. I.) Please report on the Massie Wireless Telegraph Co. Providence, R. I., as to their financial, standing and management generally, and as to their stock as an investment. The Massie Wireless Telegraph Company was incorporated under the laws of Rhode Island, in 1905, with an authorized capital of $100,000 6 per cent cumulative stock. All of the common stock was issued to Walter W. Massie, who is the company's president and general manager, in return for patents, etc. All the preferred stock issued has been sold at par. Up to April 21, 1909. $28,800 of prepreferred stock, and $200,000 common preferred, had been sold, and was closely held by a number of prominent and influential Providence men. This preferred stock is entitled not only to 6 per cent in preference to the common stock, but to 4 per cent in addition to that, if sufficient is left out of the earnings after payment of 6 per cent on the common stock.
During the short time the company has been in business, it is reported to have completed contracts amounting to $60,624.30, on which it has realized $23.800.71. Since the "Republic" disaster, opportunities for business have considerably increased, and the company has desired to change its policy of being a close corporation, and make considerable extensions. As the present stockholders could not, unaided, furnish the necessary capital, the balance of the preferred stock is to be sold at par, and a bonus of 20 per cent of common stock is to be given by the president.
Bristol Phoenix January 26, 1909
The instruments of this company are installed on some of the best steamships of this country, including the boats of the Fall River, Providence, Boston and other lines of the New England Navigation Company. This company owns the land stations and apparatus, and furnishes operators. The steamship company pays a monthly rental, covering all costs and a neat profit as well. The officers of the company are well regarded in Providence. They are: Walter W. Massie, president and general manager; Frank H Cranston, vice-president; John G Massie, who is treasurer of the Peoples Savings Bank of Providence, secretary and treasurer: James S. Kenyon, who is vice-president of the Atlantic National Bank of Providence, director; and Richard S. Howland, who used to be bead of the "Providence Journal" Company, director.
We are informed, that as yet no dividends have been paid by the company, as they have desired to increase the value their property, but they have it surplus of over $10.000, while only $4,000 is necessary to pay all accrued dividends. They are reported to 'have prospective contracts for a large number of steam-ships and other stations, which would involve an expenditure of $132,000, resulting in exceptionally large earnings, and the stocks, therefore, may be regarded as having good investment possibilities.
Passengers on the Sound Line Steamers plying between New York City and local ports in conjunction with the N. Y., N. H. & Hartford R. R., have become familiar with a new wireless installation which appeals especially to enthusiasts on the subject because of its apparently practical nature. This system is known as the Massie system, being the invention of Walter W. Massie, of Providence, R. I.
Knowing that Amateurr Work readers are interested in wireless apparatus, a description of these instruments as viewed in operation by the writer is here given.
It would seem that the sending end, that is, the induction coil, is of the same type as those Used in other systems. The secondary discharge is figured as 50,000 volts. This voltage charges a set of glass plate condensers, which may be adjusted to any desired capacity, and with the disruption of the spark gap, a powerful oscillation is set up in the aerial wires, and such transmission is estimated suitable'for'250 miles.
In his coherer, the inventor has certainly accomplished more than his contemporaries, inasmuch as he has developed with simple materials a coherer that responds to feeble waves quickly and positively, and what is more, is subject to immediate decohering without undue tapping. The majority of coherers require blows of considerable force and beside the likelihood of cracking the glass, these violent knocks tend to injure the sensitivity.
This coherer consists of a small glass tube a few inches in length, having a metal cup or plug in the lower end and a brass collar and set screw at the top. A steel spring supported by one end on the baseboard is affixed to the bottom plug. The coherer contains a certain amount of fine silver fillings at the bottom, and on top of this a pinch of soft iron filings. It will be understood that the iron filings are subject to magnetic influence, and the silver ones are not.
Set into an adjustable collar at the top is a fine pointed steel needle, permanently magnetized, the point of which engages a few of the top layers of fillings in such a manner as to crowd them up from the other filings. Thus there is direct connection through the coherer of extremely high resistance. It might be said that the magnetic filings are cohered to the needle at aril times, the direct point of variation being where the two kinds of filings meet. When the oscillating current enters the coherer, the magnetic and non-magnetic filings cohere, greatly lessening the resistance of the circuit and operating a relay as in other systems of wireless receiving.
Decohering is brought about by a tapper which strikes gently against.the free end of the spring supporting the coherer. This style of coherer is adaptable to a signal bell outfit and also to a Morse register.
In regular receiving this system employs a detector of the microphone type, which consists of two knife-edge blocks of carbon on which rests a polished steel needle. The oscillating waves vary the resistance of contact so that dots and dashes sound as buzzes in a telephone receiver connected with battery across from carbon to carbon. This method is not new, but has been improved by the addition of a small steel magnet which rests on the baseboard near the steel needle in a position calculated to exert a certain magnetic force upon the needle and hold it upon the carbon blocks so that it can neither vibrate or roll or otherwise impair the efficiency of the dots and dash readings.
This magnet is very effective and the sensitivity of the instrument may be regulated by drawing the magnet nearer or further away from the needle in order to meet specific conditions of receiving.
It is said that the resistance normally of the oscilli-phone, as the detector is styled, is approximately 40,000 ohms, and after cohesion with the carbon blocks is established by the oscillating current, it dropsto about 700 ohms. It would seem, therefore, that this great variation should prove very effectual in long distance work, and the operator informs the writer that shore stations have found this device accurate for fully 150 miles and that it is in daily use between Block Island and Point Judith, and Nantucket Shoals light ship, and also from the railroad shore station at Wilson Point to the Sound steamers of the company.
It would seem, therefore, that these very workable instruments, all of which are covered by patents, would prove very profitable for wireless enthusiasts to study. A sketch of the oscillator, and also of the coherer, is shown, to more fully explain the text. In the oscillator, the two upright pegs behind the steel needle are placed there to keep the needle from rolling upon the magnet. They are short pieces of smooth rod inserted in the insulated block supporting the two carbons and not electrically connected with anything.
The Massie Wireless Telegraph System was the result of years of study and experiment by Mr. Massie, and had been in practical operation for over six years, accomplishing much in New England and along the Atlantic Coast. Two of the Massie land stations was located at Point Judith and Block Island, Rhode Island. The Massie Wireless Telegraph Station at Point Judith, with call letters: "PJ" is on the National Register of Historic Places. Formerly on the exposed beach at Point Judith, it had survived several hurricanes. When the state wanted to tear it down, the New England Wireless and Steam Museum mounted a campaign to save it. In 1993, with the help of many enthusiastic volunteers, the entire station was moved to its present site on the museum grounds in East Greenwich, RI. It is the oldest surviving wireless station in the world, and it is complete with its original straight gap, 400 watt battery (Edison LaLande glass jar batteries) operated and its Massie Resonaphone receiver. Even the operating table is original. When the Massie Wireless Telegraph Company closed down in 1910, all of the original equipment had luckily been saved in the loft of a barn in Wrentham, MA by the Massie family. The descendants of Walter Massie donated this priceless equipment to the museum and it has now been reinstalled to complete the exhibit.
On May 4, 1910, somewhere in the thick fog off Cape Cod, the steamship Santurce bound for New York from Boston Light, collided with the steamship Ligonier. Through the roaring of the immediate panic on board both steamships, the wireless operator sat calmly tapping out his CQD calls. Walter W Massie, at his home in Providence, five minutes later, was awakened by a call from the station at Point Judith, telling him the story of the collision, giving him the names of the two vessels and appealing urgently for help. Immediately, Massie communicated with the wrecking tug, Tasco, and President Scott of the Scott Wrecking Company of New London, and the work of rescue began at once. This was merely one of the hundreds of instances where wireless served as a life saver on boundary and inland waters. 2
Providence Journal May 4, 1910
The Record Argus May 4, 1910
Detroit Free Press May 4, 1910
St Joseph Daily Press May 4, 1910
The Daily Times May 5, 1910
Providence Journal October 19, 1910
Interestingly enough, Mr Massie was listed as the Engineer for the Commission of Shell Fisheries for the State of Rhode Island from 1913 to 1918. 16
Also in the 1913-1914 Brown University Alumni Monthly there is a notation that Massie was a consulting engineer at 707 Industrial Trust Building in Providence. 32
Other accomplishments of Mr Massie include, founded and headed the Bureau of Marine Intelligence and held a position on the board of the Peoples Savings Bank of Rhode Island. 18
Mr Massie's military service was Lieutenant USNRF entering service on May 25th, 1917 as a radio officer, 2nd Naval District where he had charge of the Radio School for operators having an average of 375 men under his command. 18
Massie was also assigned to installing wireless equipment in Navy auxilliary vessels. 90
The United States Navy asked my grandfather to become head of the wireless school at the Naval War College on Coasters Harbor Island, near Newport, R.I. They offered him any commissioned rank he chose to entice him. At his patriotic best he said, Lieutenant . My grandmother was very disappointed when she heard of the low rank he had requested..
In 1912 Massie sold the assets of his Massie Wireless Telegraph Company to Marconi after turning down a position with the company. 87
Woonsocket Call April 12, 1912
Olneyville Times August 9, 1912
Popular Electricity September 1912
The Massie Wireless Telegraph Company was ultimately doomed by a patent fight with the Marconi Company. According to my father: His father was told by his lawyers that there was a realistic chance that he could win from Marconi in the courts, but that my grandfather did not have the financial resources to carry on that fight long and far enough to achieve that.
According to my father, my grandfather claimed that when the Massie Wireless Telegraph Company was liquidated, it was worth a quarter of a million dollars. Of this, others got a million dollars and het got a quarter (25 cents).
.
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Walter W Massie, Grandson
In 1913, Massie became a noted yachtsman; he sailed a Rhode
Island-built cruiser named Maurence, a wood boat built by the Lemos Brother from Riverside, RI, running a 4cyl gas engine 23 He also served as commodore of the Rhode Island Yacht Club, as well as the admiral of all Narragansett Bay yacht clubs in 1913. D. 22
Providence Journal April 23, 1911
Providence Sunday Journal May 7 1911
He had a 52 foot motorboat, the Maurence, built. My grandfather made a half-model of the hull; there were apparently no drawings for this. I can remember Al Lemos, (who lived in retirement, when I met him with my father in about 1950) tell how proud he was as a young boat builder when he came home with the contract and half-model for one of the first larger boats that he built. (That half-model now hangs in my study at home.)
My grandfather had a hired captain, Don Mayer, on the Maurence. Don must have been quite young at the time; I remember him dropping in at our home in Wrentham when I was about 12. He was by then retired.
My grandfather used the Maurence whenever he went to New York City on business. I believe that he had a small office there as well as one in Providence. He was a member of the New York yacht club as well. My father told that they flew the Rhode Island yacht club flag on Narragansett Bay and the New York yacht club flag elsewhere.
My grandmother told that the Maurence was one to yachts in the armada that officially opened the Cape Cod Canal on 29 July, 1914.
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Walter W Massie, Grandson
1914 Postcard, Rhode Island Yacht Club with wirless Antenna Most likely set up by Massie
In 1919, Mr Massie accepted an appointment of City Engineer and Highway Surveyor for Cranston, RI 18 In the same year Massie had office 301 in the State House as a consultant. 38 Mr Massie was also was a charter Swatty member (Society of Wireless Telegraph Engineers p127, "the Swatties", formed in 1907 at MIT by John Stone.) and also a charter member of IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) which was formed in 1912 when the Swatties joined a New York city radio society. Some 50 years the IRE later merged with AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers) to form IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). 27
Walter W Massie of Providence has Equipped Sound Steamer With His System, and the Traveling Public is Greatly Benefited
Walter W Massie, a devotee of wireless telegraphy, has made it possible to communicate from the rapidly communicate from the rapidly moving sound steamers of the lines running from Fall River and Providence to New York.
Mr Massie is perfecting the invention each day and night, and he is assured that the experiment thas come to remain permanently as one of the attractive accommodations to the great traveling public while up on the water and out of sight of land.
The first equipment for the use of the wireless telegraphy was installed up on the steamer Plymouth of the Fall River line, which is now plying up and down the coast and Long Island sound each 24 hours with crowds of passengers, deeply interested in the invention and its practical application to the commercial uses' of the world.
The wireless upon the sound steamer had been in use only a day, under the direction of Mr Massie, when he felt impelled, through the persistent demands of a passenger of large business connections, to send the first commercial message from the swift moving sound liner to the wireless station located at the Point Judith lighthouse, on the very extreme end of the southeast Rhode Island coast.
It was a very foggy night and the bow watch of the big ship Plymouth was having a trying time in creeping along by the dangerous piece of sea shore. Mr Massie was endeavoring to get in to communication with the station on the shore himself, for the purpose of getting bearings, so that he might demonstrate to the officers of the Plymouth that his system was really what he had believed it to be when the steamship line management had discussed the proposition of installing the wireless upon the passenger boats.
When the Point Judith station was reached on the night in question, which was about two weeks ago, the operator on the shore was asked if he could hear the whistle of the Plymouth, and the reply came quickly back to the steamer that the tooting was very distinct, although the atmosphere around the land was thicker than mud.
Then Mr Massie asked the shore operator if he could hear the whistling buoy off the point, and how the vessel stood in relation to that.
"In about the same direction", answered the operator on the land. "and a life saver here says the Plymouth is right on the usual course."
"Thanks", ticked back Mr Massie over the ether wave, which he sent kiting out from the starboard stateroom in which the wireless kit is arranged for quick and active work at any and all times.
After this initial trial of using the wireless from a fast-moving steamer, the urgent passenger argued that if all that could be accomplished for the steamer a patron of the line ought to be assisted out of a dilemma a in which he had very suddenly found himself after leaving dry land.
It was then that Mr Massie called up the Point Judith stations again and said.
"I've got a customer with a message for Providence; can you take it? Try."
The business man wrote his message and laid it down with some misgivings.
Then in a few minutes Mr Massie said.
"Your telegram is now on the way to Providence, with instructions to-deliver tonight at all hazards."
"But it requires that there shall be an answer delivered to me tonight on this steamer. How about that?"
"All right, the shore says; we will get the answer if we can wake your friend up in Providence. The operator on shore says he is informed from Providence that there is a telephone in his house, and that the central is having some trouble in getting the people in that dwelling aroused."
About 30 minutes had elapsed from the time the first message left the steamer Plymouth, when the deeply anxious passenger was rewarded with a reply saying, "I will meet you in New York, and everything will be attended to at once."
During all of this time the Plymouth was speeding along the waters of Block Island sound and the Atlantic in the vicinity of Narragansett Bay. Mr Massie was keeping the shore station in constant communication, and the officers of the ship were being greatly aided by the information which they were frequently receiving from the source of the wireless.
Everyone having knowledge of the successful operation of the innovation and the invention of Mr Massie was elated, and quite a few of the passengers wanted to send greetings to their friends whom they had left at the dock of the Plymouth when she sailed hours before from Fall River and Newport.
During the run from the vicinity of Point Judith the operator at that place narrated some of the details of the delivery of the first commercial message to Hon Arthur Dennis, the well-known manufacturer of Providence, for that was the gentleman to receive the massage and make the reply.
It appears that the message from the Plymouth was dated "On board the Plymouth, in Block Island sound."
When this part was read off to Mr Dennis, who had just been awakened from a deep sleep, he shouted back, "What you giving us? Is the steamer ashore?"
The attempt to fully explain the matter to Mr Dennis is what consumed most of the 30 minutes, it is said, by the operators who worked the Providence end of the rush wireless message from the Plymouth.
When Mr Dennis said he understood the message he was asked for his reply, and while expressing his doubts all of the time that the message came from the steamer Plymouth, he dictated the answer, and the next morning, bright and early, Mr Dennis met the passenger who wired him from the latest sort of telegraph office on all the earth, and over which Mr Massie, the hustling Providence investigator in to the possibilities of modern electricity, presides.
Mr Massie says the position of a sound steamer can be ascertained with the greatest accuracy in thick weather and during heavy fogs, which have been abundant during the present spring nights, since the wireless system has been installed up on the steamer.
The vessel can be kept in communication by Mr Massie for more than 50 miles each way from the station at Point Judith, and each night there is a constant exchange of news, gossip and valuable information.
The stateroom assigned to Mr Massie for the apparatus is near the engine room shaft, and it has been made soundproof, the walls being coated with asbestos and a packing of hair an Inch or more thick. This is all coated with layers of shellac, and it is only when the door of the apartment is opened that the cracking sounds from the oscillator can be heard distinctly on the outside by the passengers of the boat.
Mr Massie has plenty of apparatus for use on the vessel and it is cushioned up very carefully on shelves to prevent its suffering or being dislocated by the vibration of the steamer during the heavy running hours of the trip. In connection with the invention Mr Massie has originated the oscillaphone, a sensitized needle rests upon delicate carbon and the movements of this needle, how ever slight, they may be are heard by the operator through a telephone receiver and the messages are thus worked out in the most scientific manner. The Morse alphabet is used for the purpose.
The oscillaphone is used to detect currents set upon the vertical wire by the impinging ether waves. The essential feature of the Massie invention, however, is the combined coherer and tapping device, an instrument so delicate that messages can be deciphered upon it when the microphone and its telephone attachment fails entirely.
The coherer contains metal filings and allows the current to flow through the relay, which sets up a heavier current. This heavier current starts the tapper, which by contact with a bridge upon which the coherer rests, jars the metal filings apart, so that the coherer is made susceptible to the next impulse or wave. In circuit with the relay is a bell signal which calls the operator and starts the whole thing in motion. Then the operator gets in his work, and one swiftest of the wireless men is William J Smith, who not so very long ago was a clerk in the Western Union office in Providence.
He is a valuable assistant to Mr Massie, and one of the operators upon the Plymouth; Mr Smith says 35 words a minute can be readily handled and that to talk over 33 miles of water is the very easiest thing on earth.
Mr Massie is a native of Providence, just 29 years old, he was a student in the mechanical and engineering departments at Tufts and Brown University, and his earlier education was in the public schools of Providence
He is the son of Councilman John G Massie a leading banker and public spirited citizen of Providence.
The author, whose portrait appears
at the left, is one of America's earliest
and best known radio pioneers. He
has never accepted the conventional
ether -wave theory of radio. In this
article he explains an alternative
theory -a theory which assumes that
radio is propagated along the magnetic
field of the earth.
"Wireless signals are a wave motion
in, or disturbance of, the magnetic
forces of the earth, and are propagated
through this magnetic field,
following the curvature of the earth,
just as a tidal wave would follow the
surface of the ocean. Practice indicates
that the nodal points of the
waves are at, or near, the earth's
surface."
The Massie Wireless Telegraph Company, which is one of the companies in the consolidation known as the Continental Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company, with offices at 36 Pine Street, New York, closed a deal with the management of the Narragansett Hotel, Providence. R. I., whereby a station will be erected on the roof of the hotel and messages can be received and sent by guests without cost. The innovation is likely to meet with popular approval. The Massie Company plans to make the Narragansett one of its chain of hotels in the East which will be equipped with the apparatus. Negotiations are under way at present to install a station at the Hotel Touraine in Boston and already deals have been completed with New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore hotels. Negotiations are pending with hotels in New Haven, Hartford, Worcester, Springfield and a number of other good-sized cities. The Massie Company has had wireless apparatus on Long Island Sound boats for the past six years. With numerous hotels throughout the East equipped with stations it will be possible for guests to make reservations from city to city with little trouble and no expense. Reservations can also be made from the boats on which the company has the apparatus whenever necessary. Work will begin at once on the station at the Narragansett. A 180-foot pole will be erected next week and it is expected that the station will be completed within two days. The station itself will be located on the top floor of the hotel. 17
The Massie Wireless Telegraph Company had recently completed the installation of a new high power wireless station at the Duval Hotel, Jacksonville, Fla. This station will be operated in conjunction with the coastwise steamers and will also be in communication with Washington, New Orleans, Tampa and other cities. 33
In 1909 The Electrical Review, Volume 54 listed the 9 companies that bid for the installation of 7 complete wireless outfits. It is interesting to note that 2 of the 9 were from Rhode Island. Namely Massie Wireless Telegraph Company and Prague Electric Company. Both from Providence
IRE Radio Pioneers 1909
The following is part of a transcription of a congressional hearing on H. J. RESOLUTION 95 A BILL TO REGULATE AND CONTROL THE USE OF WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY AND WIRELESS TELEPHONY 1910
The exchange is between the following individuals:
MR. GEORGE W. ALLEN, CHAIRMAN OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE UNITED WIRELESS COMPANY, NEW YORK.
MR. WALTER W. MASSLE, GENERAL MANAGER MASSIE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH COMPANY, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
Mr. Stewart. Mr. Chairman, I represent myself and three or four other experimenters living in the vicinity of Philadelphia who have tried to conduct our experiments along legitimate lines from the start. The fact that there is interference is well known to us. I am not down here to-day to oppose commission of some men being appointed. What we do think is that on any commission that is appointed the experimenters-the honest experimenters--should be recognized.
I am an operator myself of twenty-two years standing, and I know what the interference is. I can read everything that passes through the air, and I know in many cases even the United Wireless station as far south as Hatteras interferes with Manhattan Beach, and I think Mr. Allen knows that, and therefore they have to stand by for considerable periods. I think, also, the situation might be cleared up to some extent by cooperation at the present time on the part of the wireless companies themselves the United Wireless for one, who, I think, in my opinion, extend themselves to too great distances in trying to transmit and receive, for instance, sometimes to Chicago, sometimes to Tampa, sometimes to Charleston, S. C., and the time consumed in transmission is often very great on account of the inability of the operator, possibly through interference, possibly through his inability as an operator. The time consumed in the transmission of one message is very great, and in the meantime all the other stations have to stand by.
The Chairman. That of itself would be proper subject of regulation, in your opinion?
Mr. Stewart. Yes; I think so. And then I think that the United Wireless Company, as matter of fact, ought to regulate their own operators better than they do; that is, have supervising stations.
Mr. Allen. We will pay you a good salary if you will devise us scheme.
Mr. Stewart. It is very easy to recognize a spark at one of your stations. I can almost always recognize the spark.
Mr. Allen. Yes; if you could have somebody to see the sparks.
Mr. Stewart. You could easily have way to supervise.
Mr. Allen. Do not the operators stand in together themselves and refuse to report each other?
Mr. Stewart. Of course, if you cannot depend on your men, that is different proposition; but I think you can get man you can depend on who can cover pretty good range, and he need not have any single spot to supervise. The language they use sometimes is very profane. But I do not care whether they swear at me or not; they do not hurt me.
The Chairman. Let me ask about your work in your amateur station. Is it experimental or is it merely for pleasure?
Mr. Stewart. We have been conducting line of experiments three or four years in legitimate way. We hope to get some results.
The Chairman. You are seeking---------
Mr. Stewart. We are seeking, along with some of the other experimenters, to improve the art and think man who has had the experience I have had in telegraphy is perfectly competent to handle himself in the use of the apparatus, and therefore I feel I am entitled to some consideration in the formation of board of this kind.
The Chairman. Of course it is a fact that great many of the amateurs merely maintain these stations for toys, not for any practical purpose?
Mr. Stewart. I think myself a man ought to be an operator, at least. In the first place, the man should not be allowed, if there is any way to stop it; that is the question, if you can stop it; whether any legislation would prevent it.
The Chairman. They could come pretty near doing it by a license system.
Mr. Stewart. I think so. I think a man who cannot operate to any extent is really dangerous, because he cannot understand what is going on.
STATEMENT OF MR. WALTER W. MASSLE, GENERAL MANAGER MASSIE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH COMPANY, PROVIDENCE, R. I.
Mr. Massie. I would like to ask the last gentleman who spoke how long he has been experimenting, carrying on experiments?
Mr. Stewart. For about a year and a half.
Mr. Massie. And have either you or your friends got any patents on any improvements?
Mr. Stewart. I did not come here to be examined along lines of that kind.
Mr. Massie. I was just trying to find out whether the work of the amateurs was really benefit to the art or not; whether they had produced any improvements.
Mr. Allen. Mr. Massie. While you are on that point, do you know of any instance in wireless telegraphy or wire telegraphy where the amateurs have got out any devices that were of any benefit?
Mr. Massie. No, I do not.
Mr. Allen. Is it the experimenter who devotes time to it, or the man who is in actual work?
Mr. Massie. The man who is in actual research and, to the contrary of that statement, I have spent great deal of time investigating supposed inventions that amateurs have sent me, hoping there was something of value there, and I have found in each case it was waste of energy to experiment and try to get anything out of them. In general Mr. Chairman, I want to say I am in favor of this bill I have made notes here as the previous ones have talked, and I will go over them
I believe in the question of operation we are second in importance; that is, for number of ships and shore stations in actual operation on paying basis. General Allen spoke of having the telegraph companies represented I do net favor that point. If they were represented, why not the steamship companies? They are the ones who have to use the wireless, will use it more than anyone else, probably. That would make a rather large commission. Therefore I say it is better to leave it where it is, at the present number; also that the representatives of the company should be from the commercial rather than from the theoretical side of the wireless. That brings up the point as to the word "expert" as it might be used in the wording of the bill. In the wireless vernacular an "expert" is a research man, scientific man. This bill relates to the operation, the commercial side of wireless, not the theoretical side, while it might involve the theoretical side to certain extent I believe that the commercial men, of the two, are the ones that should be recommended. The Chairman. What suggestion would you make in place of the description of the seventh man; how would you word a bill to bring in the sort of man you desire?
Mr. Massie. There is one man --I have forgotten which gentleman spoke but there is one who objected to having the Government appoint that seventh, believing that that would give the Government the balance of power. To overcome that difficulty, why not let the six appoint the seventh? Then they would have an equal right there. Does your question refer to that or the word "expert"? The Chairman. The word "expert;" how would you describe that seventh man to pet the sort of man you want?
Mr. Massie. He could be an expert or otherwise was referring really to the three from the three companies, and that would be three representatives.
The Chairman. You could change that word ''expert" and say one representative each from the War, Navy, and Treasury departments, and three representing the commercial wireless companies," leaving out the word "expert" entirely.
Mr. Massie. Yes. The Chairman. And you would attain the same end, and undoubtedly the government departments would send their experts and the commercial companies would send their experts.
Mr. Massie. Yes. In regard to the amateurs, I do not think they should have any right to come on a commission or have any representation in this matter. To cite case of what could happen in another way: Here is an amateur who makes wire telephone. He taps in on one of the trunk lines of the telephone company. Do you think it would be right to consider that boy's play to come in here for legislation and have right to be heard when he is maliciously interfering with the lines and property of a company, particularly when that company has patents covering its system, and it has gone to great deal of expense to install its system? I do not think the Government would listen to that minute I do not favor the amateur being considered in this matter.
Mr. Stewart. Mr. Massie, there is one question want to ask you. Do you not consider that the air over my property is my own, and if you send out over my air, as legal proposition should have just the same right to send out over yours? You spoke about sending out over trunk lines think it is rather extending the thing to an imaginary situation.
Mr. Massie. As the chairman has said before, that brings up new question that has never been considered.
Mr. Stewart. It is question that has to enter into it to certain degree.
Mr. Massie. The smoke of the man next door blows over your property, but you cannot close up his factory.
Mr. Stewart. We have all to agree for that reason. That is the reason say we ought to be represented by somebody, at least.
Mr. Allen. They can regulate the kind of smoke he can send out by regulating the kind of coal he shall use.
Mr. Massie. Only by a city law.
The Chairman. That is an application of the law of nuisance. If no one else desires to be heard, I want to say in conclusion that so far as am personally concerned I shall be very glad of any suggestion that may occur to any of you along these lines, if you will forward it to me before action is taken, so it can be given consideration, if anything comes to you after you go away, as to what you have said or what you have heard; because my only purpose in introducing the legislation is to attempt to clarify what seems to me is very much be muddled condition in regard to the transmission of wireless communications I have had no intention whatever of pro viding any machinery to retard development of that art, or to go in on the purely technical side and attempt to regulate it. Possibly some of you gentlemen may have gotten the contrary impression from the wording of the bill, and it so I can only say that the bill was poorly worded to express the ideas I had in my own mind. And I wish to say to you also that personally I should very vigorously oppose any legislation, whether it emanated as result of this commission or came from any other source, that would seek to restrict or retard or hamper unduly the development of this wonderful art which, I think, everybody agrees is only in its infancy. And I want it understood that there is no thought in my mind to hamper the amateur and shut him off from any enjoyment he may get from this, providing he is not interfering with legitimate business. It has occurred to me there might be some way found to regulate the use of the atmosphere that would give to the amateur all he was entitled to, give to the commercial bodies all they were entitled to, and give to the Government all it was entitled to. That is the only purpose I have had, and that will be my only purpose in pushing the matter further. want to thank you gentlemen also on behalf of the committee for the interest you have shown and for the assistance many of you have been to me personally in furnishing me data and information, and also for your presence here to-day, and unless there is something more we will call the hearing ended. Before we conclude I will say the hearings will be in print, and undoubtedly if you desire to pursue the matter further you can get copies of them from the clerk of the committee later. There will be added to the hearings a great many instances of interferences, or alleged interferences, and instances that seem to me to call for legislation of some sort on the subject, which may be of interest to you gentlemen as matters of fact. (Thereupon, at 1.50 o'clock p. m., the subcommittee adjourned.)
To the Editors of Electrical World, March 21st, 1908:
SIRS :The public has probably little idea of the serious menace to the future of wireless telegraphy which is offered by the Hale bill to regulate wireless telegraphy, now before Congress. Strenuous efforts have been made by government officials to force the ratification of a proposed international agreement drawn up at the International Wireless Conference held in Berlin, Germany, during October and November of 1906. This agreement, which was to take effect June, 1908, necessitated action by the present Congress, and was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which Senator Cullom is chairman. The committee for a month or more had hearings at which various departments of the government and wireless companies were represented, and the matter was finally pigeon-holed. Not to be balked, however, the Navy Department fathered the bill now before Congress, which embodies all the evils contained in the Berlin agreement.
It would be interesting to know whether the various government officials are acting blindly or are knowingly attempting to force legislation that will have the immediate effect of arresting the development of a valuable art and deprive the public of a service that would in time give them trans-oceanic telegraphy at one-tenth the rates now paid for cable service.
The bill, which would give the government full control of the wireless field, deals with existing conditions without considering the fact that wireless is still in its infancy and is making enormous strides each year. Where would our tele graph service be to-day had the government taken control of it in the forties and said there could be only one wire between two places? It is true that there is a great deal of interference between wireless stations to-day, but is it to the best interests of all to have the government take control and say there shall be only one station in a given locality for the reason that another nearby station would cause interference? It would be far better to let the situation stand as it is and give inventors an opportunity to overcoming the present difficulties; and from my practical work in this field, I -know that-it will not be many months before this is accomplished.
Under the proposed act we would be compelled to go to the government for a license whenever we wished to build a station, in which case a permit would be granted if the station is to be in a locality distant from other stations. For instance, assume that we desire to establish an independent trans-Atlantic wireless service, and we apply to the government for a permit, the locality being, say, somewhere on the New England Coast. There are already numerous stations the entire length of the coast, and if we were fortunate enough to obtain a permit at all it would be with restrictions to hours during which none of the other stations cares to operate. Moreover, is it to be supposed that the telegraph and cable companies will, if the Hale bill is enacted, remain passive and allow us to establish trans-Atlantic service when a protest and a little influence used in Washington will prevent it?
The telegraph and cable companies have been very persistent in publicly ignoring wireless telegraphy as a competitor, but a recent circular issued to the managers of all its offices by the Western Union Telegraph Company indicates the real attitude. In this circular it is ordered that all messages offered by the Marconi Company for transmission to points on this side. must be treated as local messages, be dated at Glace Bay, N. B., and be charged for at the local rate. "Code messages cannot be accepted in such messages, which must be fully addressed in accordance with the rules governing the transmission of domestic messages. If the Marconi wishes to give any indi cation of other origin, they must do so in the body of the message. The message must be checked at full commercial rate, whether addressed to a newspaper, individual or firm. Messages addressed to parties on the other side routed via Marconi wireless or Glace Bay, cannot be accepted. We will, however, of course, accept messages addressed to the Marconi Company, or anyone else at Glace Bay, but no other direction or indication can appear in the address. Such messages should be checked at full commercial rates, and the tolls to Glace Bay only collected. We cannot under any circumstances accept the Marconi tolls or anything beyond Glace Bay on these messages, but must treat them solely and wholly as local messages between the point of origin and Glace Bay.
It is very easy to read between the lines of this circular and note that the telegraph companies are realizing their danger from competition; and with the government innocently (?) acting in their interest, the public would be deprived of all the benefits of legitimate competition.
As for the development of wireless telegraphy, we have only to compare the present conditions in Great Britain and this country. When the Marconi Company was first formed it obtained a to-year license or contract from the English government; as a result it is the only company to-day in England, and the English battle-ships have only such apparatus as the Marconi Company can give them. On the other hand, in the United States there are now seven or eight companies in vigor ous competition, which has resulted in improvement of apparatus and increase of efficiency to such an extent that our navy to-day stands first in wireless and holds the record for long-distance marine communication. Our merchant marine is also getting the advantage of competition and receiving wireless service at reasonable rates, while the English merchant marine is compelled to use the Marconi system or none, and at what-ever price demanded.
As to the grievance of the government with respect to in-terference, I may cite a case that happened on the Sound last fall. A government message was being sent from Washington to Newport via Fire Island (all land stations); complaint was made because Sound boats interfered with the transmission and it was asked that boat work should cease when government plants were sending. In time of peace, and when both the Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies are rendering efficient service between Washington and Newport, is it just to make such a demand and use wireless to the detriment of the service of boats which are dependent wholly to use the wireless.
It is lack of capital that is holding back the development wireless telegraphy, which lack is largely due to the uncertain status of the industry owing to threatened interference by the government: but, even with dearth of capital, I firmly believe that within five years, barring government interference, we will see it successfully competing with cables and trunk lines, and that trans-oceanic rates will be cut down to a fraction of what they are to-day. From my experience and observation, I am thoroughly convinced that within 10 years the laying of trans-oceanic cables will entirely cease, and while the use of the present cables will undoubtedly be continued, the wireless system will be installed and maintained at a cost less than what would be the interest on the cost of a new cable.
The art of wireless telegraphy is still young. Scarcely a decade has passed since its practical value was first demon-strated. Important improvements are constantly being made, and with increasing knowledge of etheric radiation inventors will still further perfect the art unless all incentive to do so is removed by governmental action such as the Hale bill authorizes.
The Point Loma site was selected in 1905 by CCMDR R. C. Gearing and George E.
Hanscom of the Mare Island Navy Yard. The birth of "Navy Radio San Diego" occurred on
the 12th of May 1906. The occasion was the commissioning of a ''Massie" type spark
transmitter in a neat little yellow cottage atop Point Lorna by Robert B. Stuart, then
a Chief Petty Officer in the U. S. Navy and a specialist in wireless installations. The
equipment was received and loaded into a horse-drawn wagon at the Santa Fe wharf in
San Diego. Nine hours later it reached the Point Loma site. In those early days,
Point Lorna was often isolated from San Diego when rain made the roads impassable.
The installation of the transmitter was completed not long afterwards at nine
o'clock in the evening and a naval precedent established when enlisted men commissioned
the station.
It was planned that the Point Loma station would serve as a relay link in
the Hare Island Farallon Islands Point Arguello San Diego circuit. However,
on the evening that the installation was completed, Chief Stuart gave Mare Island,
about 500 air miles distant, a hesitant call and was astounded by an immediate
answer. This contact set a new record for Navy wireless communication over land.
The previous record had been 110 miles.
The first petty officer in charge was R. W. Moore, Electrician 2nd Class. Of
course at that time there were no radiomen. It was customary to take telegraph
operators and instruct them in electrical fundamentals or to take Navy electricians
and train them as operators. The early operator was necessarily self sufficient.
He had no technicians to fall back on and had to know his installation from A to Z.
No excuses were accepted for not keeping his station on the air. This doctrine
developed a group of sailor communication experts whose pride in service was the
highest.
Navy ship-shore communications in 1906 were limited to short ranges because
of the crude equipment used and inadequate information regarding the theory of radio
wave propagation. Despite this limitation the radio station at Point Lorna handled
3,000 messages during its first year of operation. This may seem like an insignificant
amount of traffic, however when you realize that there were only 12 Navy
vessels in the Pacific at that time equipped with wireless, that number becomes
more meaningful.
The initial tasks assigned to the station at Point Lorna were the transmission
and reception of messages between Naval ships and shore, handling of commercial
messages with merchant ships and relaying messages between Naval shore stations
along the coast.
96Point Loma served as a means of communication with US nationals in Central
America during the era of dollar diplomacy, utilizing the USS California, an armored
cruiser stationed at Guaymas, in the Gulf of California (and other Naval vessels)
as wireless links. Point Loma communicated with radiomen employed by United States
interests at mines and sugar companies throughout Central America.
Massie Wireless Telegraph Co. v. Enterprise Transportation Co. 25
In 1910, the Massie Wireless Telegraph Co. sued the Enterprise Transportation Co., owner of the steamer Kennebec because they sold the ship and the wireless equipment leased from Massie was not paid for. The transcript of the trial can be read here.
One of San Francisco's first
coast stations, the Massie station,
operated with the call sign "IAA"
in 1907. It used two 200 foot tall
masts to support its antenna.
Pioneer wireless engineer Arthur A. (A A) Isbell established it for
the Massie company. He had just
earlier parted ways with Reginald
Fessenden's company. Isbell had
constructed and operated the station
in Scotland with which Fessenden
had communicated from
Brant Rock. Isbell had been a
classmate of Lee de Forest's at the
Mt. Hermon School in 1892-93 and
in 1902 had worked for de Forest
as one of the earliest wireless operators.
Isbell also chose his initials reversed
for the Massie stations call
letters. He set it up near the Cliff
House at Ocean Beach for maritime
work. After setting up the Massie
station, Isbell found a bullet hole
in his residence window, which he
attributed to a competitor.
Isbell had arrived in May 9, 1907
on the steamship SS President of
the Pacific Steamship Company,
coming around the Horn. This was
the first ocean liner to be fitted with
wireless in the Pacific. Isbell was
its operator. It used a three-kilowatt
Massie system on 400 meters,
callsign V-2. It set distance records
during its voyage.
On the west coast, the "Wireless" was reportedly the first ship-paper
to appear in the Pacific Ocean. The publication appeared in June 1907 on a vessel sailing from Seattle to the Bering Sea 93. Evidence suggests that the paper was a joint
operation between the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Massie Wireless Telegraphy
Company. A 1913 summary of ocean journalism mentions a noteworthy publication
called the Wireless Herald that was published on an Alaskan steamship; this may be a
reference to the aforementioned publication, or another similarly titled one 94.
WIRELESS IN NEW LONDON.
Pole 200 Feet High Being Erected at
Scott Wharf.
Work has been started on the construction and erection of the new
wireless telegraph pole at the wharf of
the T. A. Scott company on Pequot
avenue In New London, where the
land wireless station will be. This
pole will be 200 feet -high and will be
constructed of wood. It will be strongly braced. The pole rests on a con
crete base and heavy wire cables will
be used for guys, of which there will
be three sets, fastened every sixty feet
up the pole.
The Massie system will be used. It
Is expected that no trouble will be experienced in communicating with almost any of the wireless stations along
the coast. This system is used on all
of the New England Navigation company steamers, and there are wireless
stations equipped with this system all
along theNew England coast. 39
This is a Massie Wireless This is key found in the 1916 Sears Catalog listed as a "Commercial Wireless Key." The Massie Key and the Sears Commercial Wireless Key, made after Massie was absorbed by Marconi, were assumed to be identical-but it isn't so! It appears that the original Massie version can be distinguished from the version sold later by Sears. The knurling on the hardware is more plain and looks cheaper on the Sears model, which also lacks the base plates protecting the slate underneath the lever travel adjustment screw and the spring. The original spring on the Massie was conical; it was the same diameter up and down the spring on the Sears model. These differences can be made out (with difficulty) when comparing the Sears catalog with the picture on page 35 of Massie and Underhill's "Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony", published in 1908. The differences are much more apparent with the two models in front of you, and they match the differences seen between the catalog and the book. It is still unclear whether the Sears version was made by Massie or not, whether the design was bought by Sears and made by another contractor, or whether another manufacturer simply started making a copy of the key after the original ompany was no longer around to care. Courtesy of Russ Kleinman WA5Y
The United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places lists Walter W Massie as having 14 US Patents. This however seems to be incorrect. I have not been able to find Patent US769780 Wireless Telegraph System. When this patent number is searched in the US Patents it comes up as being a Fastener, unrelated to Massie. Another Patent listed as being Massie is US787780, Change Over Switch.
Comparing the two Patents
US769780 WIRELESS TELEGRAPHIC SYSTEM April, 1905 US787780 CHANGE OVER SWITCH April 18, 1905
We see they both end in 780. US769780 is listed as being patented April, 1905 and US787780 is listed ad being patented April 18, 1905. Also looking at US787780 WIRELESS TELEGRAPHIC SYSTEM, the major component is a switch. I believe they somehow got combined by whoever put the list together.
Walter W Massie of Providence, Expert on Ether Waves, Has Idea on Eternal, Mystery
By John Coggswell
The soul, where is it? Just what is this mysterious thing that gives us being and lives when our physical selves have long since mouldered to dust?
The questions have vexed mankind ever since the belief in a supreme being and a life everlasting became a part of human faith.
Now it may be that the matter is in a fair way to being settled. At least Walter W Massie, famous Providence scientist, known the world over for his experiments looking toward the detection of ether waves, especially those thrown off by the human body -thought waves and suchthat he is a little way on the road to a solution of the problem.
Here, in brief, are his findings:
Our souls are centered in our brains.
We make them or mar them by every thought that we have, every syllable that we read.
By our thoughts, our readings, our fallings and our risings, our transgressions and our good deeds, we construct our individual heavens and hells.
One soul goes shrieking through an endless misery, because in its earthly beings its thoughts were bad. Another leaves its physical house and goes out into the universe to everlasting bliss, because its thoughts and actions upon the earth were good.
This theory of Mr. Massie's unlike those of a great many scientists, is founded upon the rock of Christianity and the teachings of the Bible.
Mr. Massie has become famous as a deep thinker. His education In technical subjects has been thorough: as a wireless expert he has made a deep practical study of ether waves, the waves that carry wireless messages through the air. But he has gone further in the study of these waves than have most scientists. This delving into the mysteries of nature has brought to him his remarkable deductions on the soul and life everlasting.
The man speaking to you through this Interview is tall. As he expounds his view s his piercing brown eyes fairly burn into those of the person to whom he is speaking, and he presents his Ideas in a logical order.
How Inspiration Came
"As a prelude to my deductions regarding the soul and future life, I should tell you the events that led up to them," he told the Sunday Post reporter. "Back in 1911 I made up my mind that we had advanced as far in wireless telegraphy as would be possible until we knew more about ether." "Briefly, ether permeates the universe. it cannot be excluded from nor confined in a vessel, so it is necessary to find some other means of studying ether and ether waves. In searching the field, it occurred to me that if mind reading or mental telepathy was an established fact, such phenomena must be by actions of ether waves or some undiscovered medium." "Believing that this field of research would be fruitful, I spent considerable time reading all available books that had any reference to mind reading in particular and psychology in general. As a result of this reading I was thoroughly convinced that mind reading is a well-established fact. Accordingly I started in on research work in my laboratory to obtain further proofs."
Found Bodily Radiations
"I shortly found out that ether waves are radiated from the body and since that time have been making systematic research and performing experiments by which I eventually hope to construct an appliance by which we can handle ether waves scientifically that we are now controlling simply by brute force." "In our brains, nature has constructed a wonderful transmitting medium. An infinitesimal degree of force sends a thought wave in the ether from one end of the world to another; we succeed in sending wireless ether waves over .similar distances only by employing a force of hundreds of horsepower." "In carrying out this work and studying the either waves that radiate from our bodies and minds, it Is only natural that one should make deductions and form theories on the results of his work. Without going into detail or disclosures as to the experiments, I'll say that it can be proved that ether waves radiate from the body and that thought waves exist. As a result of all this work I have made deductions and formed the theories which I am expounding now."
You Have Personal Waves
"Everyone has a personal wave. Superimposed on these larger personal waves are the shorter waves of thought." "Before going further, let us consider the brain and its construction. As is well known, certain parts of the brain take care of certain thoughts. For instance, all thoughts on music are carried to one lobe of the brain; if this lobe is particularly well developed as a result of hereditary or other causes, the owner will be a musical genius. The same is true of other lobes which take care of other thoughts." "The brain is the most efficient filing cabinet that can be imagined, divided into various departments in which are recorded all occurrences in our everyday life. There's never a slip in the filing; a musical thought never gets into the department of mathematics nor a mathematical thought into the department of music."
Theory of Brains Work
"I would liken the normal brain at birth to a filing cabinet filled with an immense number of blank phonograph records, ready to record indelibly every thought that we may have. Each cell is a separate record. When a thought is received the nerves carry it to the brain, where it is recorded in a cell and becomes a permanent part of the receiver?s spiritual being or sub-conscious self. A little later on I shall explain the difference between the conscious and sub-conscious self." "This record in the brain cell is a small ether whirl, so to speak. Just what this whirl is we don't know. If we could find out exactly what they are and how these records are retained, we could solve the entire problem of the soul and the hereafter. In fact, the way would be open to solving the universe and the Almighty."
Knowledge Forbidden to Man?
"All of which, I believe, is not for man to know. Sometimes I think that there was once a race here on earth that came so near to solving the problems that they were destroyed."
"This whirl in the brain cell is vibrating at all times and sends its little message through its nerve to the conscious mind whenever called upon. This explains how a mind reader can state occurrences in one's life, although the subject at the time has not the thought in his conscious mind."
"It is well known that a person has two minds conscious and sub-conscious. The conscious mind is evident to everyone and is a part of the physical body. By this I mean that when death takes place the conscious mind passes with the body."
All Might Be Experts
"If we could let go of our conscious minds and work with the sub-conscious, we would all be experts. For the latter retains every thought that we have when we read a book, the sub-conscious mind records every syllable, every punctuation mark, but the conscious mind cannot accurately reproduce that." "So during life this conscious mind, which is controlled by the physical body, acts as a jailer for the sub-conscious mind. When the body ceases to function, the former is destroyed, thus allowing the latter to take flight to that undiscovered eternity."
How Soul Leaves Body
"The subconscious mind or being is made up of all the thought record of (he brain and at death Ihese records, or soul, as it is commonly known, leaves the body en masse. However, I have to state that I believe certain conditions are necessary to assure this future life." "In order to attain it we must all through life absolutely convince ourselves of and believe in a hereafter and that our spiritual being will continue to exist after death. This thought must be recorded in the sub-conscious mind sufficiently to make itself dominant. I believe that this is necessary to hold the spiritual self together in the next world."
Interprets Biblical Injunction
"You know how the Bible iterates and re iterates that to secure everlasting life we must have faith, we must believe or we will perish. If we do not have this belief our thoughts at death, having no dominating thought to hold them together will be scattered through the ether of the universe." "Let us now revert to the idea that our subconscious mind records everything that our eyes behold, that our ears hear, that our fingers feel, so that if we could bring our subconscious mind to the front at will we could repeat anything that we had read or heard, word for word."
"Thus you see that in the next world our spiritual being will have far more thoughts and details than our conscious mind can now bring to us, and as our evil thoughts are recorded with as much care as those which were good we shall have them with us." "The thoughts that we have recorded on the earth will make us our heaven or our hell. The man who has given his mind to evil thoughts will suffer through eternity: the one whose thoughts have been good will have the bliss promised to right livers in the future state"
My grandfather lost the use of one eye when he was 12. He stood too close behind a muzzle-loaded canon when it went off. One of his eyes was apparently irreparably damaged by the blow-back through the cannon s touch-hole.
My grandfather was a cigar smoker. The cigars came in small wooden boxes. The empty boxes were once used to make a primitive chest of small drawers. At the farm, this was on the opposite side of the machinery workbench and near the drill press.
According to my grandmother: My grandfather was going to buy some cigars. She asked him to bring something (unspecified) for her as well. He returned with a five dollar box of cigars and a five cent package of chewing gum for her. She blew up!
My grandfather was a sucker for buying books, and most traveling book salesmen knew this. (We had a variety of sets of books to thank for this: Encyclopedia Americana, a reprint of books with Mathew Brady s photographs of the Civil War, a set of books by Mark Twain, etc.)
At one point he promised his secretary that he would pay her 50 cents (a princely amount at the time) for every book salesman she prevented from seeing him.
My grandmother told of a visitor asking her younger son (my uncle) when he was a boy what he liked most about his father s radio business. The boy had a prompt answer: Payday!
At some point in his career I do not know when the General Electric Company offered my grandfather a position with them in Schenectady, New York. He was considering it, but my grandmother flatly refused to move so far away from all of her friends, etc. He did not accept the GE offer.
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The investigation of the, Continental Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company went further than that of Burr Brothers and the companies whose stock Burr Brothers had been selling. Owing to the large number of companies, wireless and otherwise, involved, eight Post Office Inspectors from districts other than New York were assigned to the case, and their investigations led them as far west as the Pacific Coast. They worked in con-junction with the New York Inspectors. The out-of-town Inspectors were Birds-eye of the Cincinnati Division, Enterman of the Philadelphia Division, Greenway of Chattanooga, Gregory of Atlanta, Keene of Washington, Robinson of Boston, Simmons of St. Paul, and Wayland Of Spokane.
Several of the Inspectors, accompanied by Headquarters detectives, arrived at the Pine Street offices of the Continental just before dusk. There they found Treasurer Vaughan. No other officials were in sight. The Inspectors learned that Vaughan was the only official, who had been there for several weeks, the main business of selling stock having been taken over by the Columbia Finance Corporation.
Forty mail sacks full of letters, books, and other documents were seized by the Inspectors, who also learned that 100,000 circulars had recently been sent out in one day's mail.
It was after dark when Vaughan and the inspectors reached Commissioner Shield's office. It was there learned that warrant had been issues on complaint of Walter N Altman of Topeka, Kan. It was charged that on June 4, 1910, Vaughan "devised a scheme or artifice to defraud" Altman and others "by falsely representing" that the Continental Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company was organized to operate, develop, and control various wireless concerns in this country and of having made statements concerning the earning capacity of these concerns which were considered false.
Vaughan was not represented by counsel. His bail was fixed at $10,000 and he was hustled away.
The Continental Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Company Is an Arizona concern, Incorporated in October, 1909, said Inspector Keene. It was practically dormant until about May of the present year, however. But in May last an ornate circular of eighty pages was sent out announcing that the Continental had arranged for the controlling interest in the Collins Wireless Telephone Company, the Pacific Wireless, the Clark Wireless, and the Massie Wireless Company. The Collins concern was organized in the District of Columbia and capitalized at $1.000,000. The Clark company was an authorized capital of $2,500,000 the Pacific Wireless is capitalized at $10,000,000, and the Massie Company at $300,000.
"The announced purpose of this consolidation." said Inspector Keene "was to give the Continental an immediate and wide field of operation and to give investors the opportunity to be associated with a 'conservatively capitalized concern.' The announcement was made that 'the public Is assured that the capitalization is most conservative and reasonable.'
"The Collins Company made its headquarters at 54 Clinton Street, Newark. There was a Frederick Collins, a wireless inventor, who had a small laboratory there. The chief selling agents of the Collins concern also made their headquarters there. The Clark Company was organized and controlled by Thomas E. Clark, an electrical engineer at Detroit. Mich. The Pacific company formerly had headquarters at Los Angeles, and the Massie Company was organized by Walter W. Massie of Providence. R. I., an electrician.
"One of the most enticing things in the announcement after the consolidation was that the Continental was to take the wireless stations of the amalgamated companies, and by organizing new stations at Pittsburg, St. Louis, Omaha, Denver. Salt Lake City, and Reno. Nev.. to establish a transcontinental service.
"After the first circular was sent out in May there came another very large one. It gave the officers of the Consolidated as F. T. Davis. President: Charles L. Vaughan. Vice President and Treasurer; Walter W. Massie, Vice President and Director of the Operating Department; C. B. Walter. Secretary; Thomas E. Clark. General Manager; A. Fred Collins, Technical Director and consulting engineer, and Samuel D. Bradford. Manager of the Pacific Coast Department. Others on the board were Frank Ford, a banker of Detroit: N. A. Hawkins. Business manager of the motor company of Detroit; A. C. Jessup, a steel and iron manufacturer, New York; A. J. Lauer, Secretary pf a brewing company of Auurn, N. Y.; Fredrick H. Shoemaker of Seattle, Wash.; Gen. Joseph L. Stoppebein of Atlanta; Max Loenthal, an electrical engineer of New York; Henry W. Lee, publisher of Chicago; George M, Davis of Wilmington, Del.; Isaac Gans of Washington, D. C.; Judge Edwin R. Cochran, Jr. of Wilmington, Del.
The first definite proposal to the investing public originated from the office of the Collins Company in Newark, where C. L. Vaughan, Assistant Treasurer of the company, arranged for the consolidation and explained its purposes and arranged for the exchange of stock of the Collins for the Continental. The basis of this exchange was that for every dollar spent by investors for the Collins stock just so much stock would be issued by the Continental Company. But the stock-holders were not to get possession of their new stock until the expiration of two years.
"The stockholder got a certificate saying that his stock would be held by two trustees for two years. This served the purpose of appeasing the Collins investors, who were restive about dividends. Their shock had been advanced from $1 to $10 a share and still no dividends had been declared. This consolidation tied up their stock so they could not flood the market with it. Repeated efforts were made to get the Collins stockholders to exchange their stock for the Continental certificates. The Continental also sent out circulars offering its stock to the public and pointing out great alleged earning powers.
"The Continental has sold $116,000 in shares in the last few months. The stock started out at $1 a share, and is now $1.25. In May last the Continental, the Collins, and the Columbia Finance Corporation all took offices at 56 Pine Street. The Columbia Finance Corporation is the fiscal agent for the Continental, and was organized by the same men who are identified with the Continental. There have been several changes In the Continental Company since its organization. F. T. Davis of Phoenixville, Penn., resigned as President recently, and S. D. Bradford was elected in his place. Max Loenthal also took Vaughan's place as Treasurer. Among the Directors who have resigned are A. J. Lauer. Mr. Shoemaker, Judge Cochran. and both Massie and Clark of the Massie and Clark companies.
"The Collins Company had an arrangement by which it contracted to let the fiscal agents have its stock at 20 cents a share. The fiscal agents raised the price of the stock at various times to $10, making a profit of $0.30 on each share sold. The Continental arranged with the selling agents to sell them their stock for 40 cents a share. But besides the stock sold by Exchanges the Consolidated has sold outright $100,000 of its capital stock, yet it has no bank account. The Columbia Finance Corporation says that the Continental owes it $40.000 in money advanced.
"The pretensions of the Continental Company, as contained in its circular, were so exaggerated that both Massie, and Clark have repudiated them. They have told the Inspectors that many of the claims of the Columbia were so impossible that they were obliged to with draw from the concern.
"In spite of the original announcement to investors that the Continental would issue no bonds, the company has recently made a bond Issue of $250,000, of which $10,000 has already been sold. These bonds are called convertible collateral 7 per cent trust bonds. They are to run two years. The only collateral to guarantee them is stock of the company."
Papers in the possession of the postal authorities show that the Columbia Finance Company was incorporated, on April 23, 1910, in this State, and that the incorporators were Charles L. Vaughan, George M. Davis of Wilmington. Del., and Arthur English, an attorney of this city.
Postmaster General Hitchcock said last night that he would be here most of to-day and will leave in the evening for Washington. Several other arrests are expected this morning.
