Word: signal
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Nobody knows whether or not there is animal life on the planet Mars; nobody knows whether or not it is possible to reach Mars with a radio signal. In 1924 a group of radio engineers trying to tune in Mars heard signals which they claimed they could not identify with an Earthly source. Last week, with Mars closer to the Earth than at any time since 1924, another group of radio engineers tried a more daring experiment: sending a signal Marsward in the hope that it would be reflected back, picked up again on Earth. They thought they might succeed...
...headquarters of Press Wireless, surrounded by the barren salt marshes off Baldwin, Long Island, gathered engineers of Newark's publicity-wise Station WOR, good-natured Curator Clyde Fisher of Manhattan's Hayden Planetarium, newshawks, photographers, announcers standing by to tell all. Before sending their signal, the engineers spent forty-five minutes twirling the knobs of 40 short-wave receivers, trying to catch a signal from Mars, where the highest form of life is generally believed to be some low form of vegetation, possibly resembling moss. Result: a potpourri of short-wave noises, most of them promptly identified...
Still hopeful, the engineers proceeded to the main experiment: a signal sent by remote control from a 100,000-watt transmitter 10 miles away at Hicksville, L. I., the antenna of which pointed toward Mars at an angle of 30°. By common consent, the "message" was a meaningless succession of dots and dashes. Astronomer Fisher and associates figured that if the signal traveled 36,030,000 miles and back at 186,000 mi. a second, the round trip would take 6 min. 28 sec. The key was tapped. For 6 min. 28 sec. everyone waited. Nothing happened. After...
...left the Chronicle for the Post-Dispatch, left the Post-Dispatch to return to the Star-Chronicle, which, as the Star-Times, now pays him his salary. Sitting in the press room at headquarters one day in 1898, Reporter Bellairs heard four bombs go off, the Chronicle's signal to the city that the Spanish-American War had started. Said he jokingly: "In a few minutes the phone will ring and it'll be Tarbell telling me that I'm to cover the war." In a few minutes the phone did ring and Managing Editor David Tarbell...
...would draw the Americans into the war within a week. . . . It is true that you have the Italians as allies. We had them last time and we know all about them. . . . It is your Führer, and not my old Prime Minister, who will give the signal to attack. . . . Perhaps you will recognize in time the abyss toward which you are being led. . . . Until next week, with best regards...