Next July We Collude with Mars

You look like you could use a break from the frightening news and sheltering in place and social distancing, so this installment of Sottiseback Saturday turns the calendar back 100 years to that time when Guglielmo Marconi picked up radio signals from Mars.

"Folks Who Listen Are Always Likely to Hear Something" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, February, 1920

Dateline London, January 29, 1920: William Marconi informs The Daily Mail that investigations are in progress regarding the origin of mysterious signals which he recently described as being received on his wireless instruments. He hopes to make a statement on the subject at an early date. Marconi insists that "nobody can yet say definitely whether they originate on the earth or in other worlds."

"Hearing Things" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, February, 1920

Marconi's caveat didn't stop cartoonists from having some fun with the idea of radio messages from the Red Planet.

"Vamping Her" by Dennis McCarthy in New Orleans Times Picayune, February, 1920

The French scientist Édouard Branly questioned how Martians came to learn Morse code. "If we attribute them to interplanetary sources (admitting that planets are inhabited) we must then admit that their people have reached a degree of development comparable to ours and that their science has led them to construct instruments similar to ours. This would be a succession of coincidences that I would call improbable."

"A Little Louder Please" by Neal McCall in Portland (OR) Telegram, ca. February, 1920

You might, however, dismiss M. Branly's skepticism as sour grapes; as Director of the Paris Observatory and founding president of the International Astronomical Union Édouard Benjamin Baillaud sniffed, "Frankly, I am in ignorance of this supernatural correspondence. It would seem that if New York and London received these messages, we should have received them at the Eiffel Tower."

"Somebody's Trying to Get Us" by Gaar Williams in Indianapolis News, February, 1920

As with all technological advancements that have richly benefited mankind, it turns out that Nikola Tesla was first. In the March, 1901 edition of Collier's Weekly, Tesla wrote about his experiments using a magnifying transmitter — his Teslascope, as it were — at his Colorado Springs laboratory two years earlier:

“I can never forget the first sensations I experienced when it dawned upon me that I had observed something possibly of incalculable consequences to mankind.My first observations positively terrified me, as there was present in them something mysterious, not to say supernatural, and I was alone in my laboratory at night; but at that time the idea of these disturbances being intelligently controlled signal did not yet present itself to me. ...
Although I could not decipher their meaning, it was impossible for me to think of them as having been entirely accidental.
The feeling is constantly growing in me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another. A purpose was behind these electrical signals!”

"The Red Peril as Seen From Mars" by Elmer Bushnell for Central Press Association, February, 1920

Tune in next week, when we offer proof that Nikola Tesla invented the telephone, discovered the basic laws of thermodynamics, and wrote the plays of Shakespeare.