Jerome Green's wireless — the message from the Basilica spire

1899

The experiment, as its own week recorded it: Jerome J. Green, head of the electrical department at Notre Dame, began experimenting with wireless telegraphy in his Science Hall laboratory in April 1899, weeks after Marconi's March 1899 transmission across the English Channel — then the longest on record at 32 miles. Green and his student assistants built their instruments themselves. The trials climbed the campus: from the physics laboratory to other rooms in Science Hall, then to Sorin Hall, then from the flagpole to the Novitiate. On 19 April 1899 came the long trial: a transmitting wire of 150 feet hung from the 218-foot spire of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and the signal was received at Saint Mary's Academy — today Saint Mary's College — more than a mile away across St. Mary's Lake, where Sister M. Antonine (Farmer), C.S.C., a teacher of English and physics who led the study of science for the women of the academy, was part of the receiving end. The instruments, the Holy Cross Courier recorded in November 1937, were made by Green and his students, except the induction coil, which belonged to Saint Mary's Science Hall and had come with its X-ray apparatus. The Chicago Daily News of 18 April 1899 headlined its account "Words Fly Through Air: Test of Wireless Telegraphy at South Bend, Indiana, Proves a Complete Success." What letter was sent is not certainly recorded; the university's modern account reports the belief, held by its electrical engineering faculty, that it was the letter "O" in Morse code, and prints it as a belief.

The claim, at the size of its record: The Notre Dame Scholastic of 22 April 1899 wrote that the Saint Mary's message was "the farthest distance a message has been sent in this country as far as we know." The university's formulations since have strengthened in the telling: its news service in 2010 called Green's the "first successful wireless transmission in the United States," and its Wireless Institute and the National Science Foundation's SpectrumX center now print the narrower "first known long-range" and "first known long-distance" wireless transmission in the United States. Those later forms are the ones that stand: the documented event — homemade apparatus, a mile-plus path, a dated and witnessed success reported in the press of that week — is whole, and the priority is the university's claim, printed here as its claim in its current, hedged form. Green was invited to Chicago to demonstrate the system, and the Chicago Sunday Times Herald of 23 April 1899 recorded that after six hours of trial between the Tribune and Marquette buildings he was "able... to prove the Marconi system practical." In April 2024, 125 years on, the two schools re-enacted the transmission between the Basilica and Saint Mary's Bertrand Hall, the modern event documented by the university and by SpectrumX, the research center this experiment's institutional line now leads — told in the Wireless Institute entry below.

Sources:

1. Notre Dame Scholastic, 22 April 1899, as quoted in the University of Notre Dame Archives' history pages — the trials' progression across campus; "the farthest distance a message has been sent in this country as far as we know."
2. Holy Cross Courier, November 1937, as quoted at wireless.nd.edu ("125 Years of Wireless Innovation") — the 19 April 1899 test of the Marconi system between Notre Dame and Saint Mary's; instruments made by Green and his students except the induction coil, Saint Mary's own.
3. University of Notre Dame, "Words Fly Through Air" (go.nd.edu), the university's modern account — the April 1899 building of the equipment; the Chicago Daily News headline of 18 April 1899; the 150 feet of wire at the 218-foot spire; Sister M. Antonine (Farmer); the letter "O" printed as the faculty's belief, the exact record being lost.
4. University of Notre Dame News, 25 February 2010 (the Wireless Institute announcement) — the "first successful wireless transmission in the United States" formulation.
5. SpectrumX / University of Notre Dame News, 18–19 April 2024 — the "one of the first long-range wireless transmissions conducted in the United States" formulation; the 19 April 1899 date; the 125th-anniversary re-enactment.