Moreover, the Allied naval blockade from 1916 restricted German supplies of raw materials like copper to create telephone cables. The German defensive strategy on the western front made it easier to erect more permanent wireless stations in the trenches. The German military embraced the possibilities of wireless widely, supplying every army headquarters and cavalry division with wireless. The transmission range also varied wildly depending upon atmospheric conditions. Wireless sets were heavy and not particularly portable, and transmissions remained relatively unreliable. All armies searched for secure methods of communications wireless could be easily intercepted. In 1914, armies remained as skeptical about wireless as navies were enthusiastic. Wireless also became a critical element of battlefield tactics and strategy in Europe and north Africa. In east Africa, a British wireless installation at Mombasa intercepted German wireless from Lake Victoria until June 1915 or later. By October 1914, the British had destroyed German wireless stations on the strategically important island of Yap, and by early 1915 in southwest Africa. At the battle of Bitapaka on 11 September 1914, Australian forces attacked a German wireless station on the island of New Britain, conquering German New Guinea. When war broke out, these wireless-equipped areas became priorities for Allied forces. In the few years before 1914, Germans erected wireless towers in their colonies in Africa as well as in East Asia and the Pacific, including Qingdao, Nauru, and Samoa. More broadly, wireless telegraphy was a key technology that globalized conflict both militarily and through news.Īside from its naval purposes, wireless enabled governments to reach their colonies without using Britain’s “All Red Line” of submarine telegraph cables around the world. All ninety German warships were equipped with wireless in 1909 in 1912, the former first sea lord, Admiral Sir John Fisher (1841–1920), called wireless “the pith and marrow of war!” Germans focused more heavily than other countries on employing wireless in multiple arenas, though other combatants used wireless extensively by 1917–1918. Navies were generally the first to see potential in wireless, as the technology allowed them to coordinate their ships’ maneuvers. Initially, many felt that the dense telegraph system negated the need for wireless to communicate on land. Only in the 1920s did the transmission of speech through radiotelephony begin to replace wireless telegraphy. Wireless telegraphy emerged in the 1890s and transmitted Morse code through electromagnetic waves. By 1918, advances in wireless technology had laid the groundwork for communications strategies during World War II. It created new spaces for communications at sea and in the air as well as the ability to coordinate mobile units during battle. Wireless was one of myriad novel technologies employed during World War I.
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