A hundred years ago today, August 4, 1914, England joined the war with its declaration of war against Germany.
August 3, 1914: Germany Takes Control of Wireless
Base of one of the towers at the Telefunken Nauen station. Google Books.
The New York Sun, August 3, 1914, reports that the Kaiser has taken control of the two great wireless stations in the German Empire, and that commercial traffic to North America from those stations has now ceased. The station at Nauen, near Potsdam, was the flagship station of the Telefunken system, and had previously been in communication with the Telefunken station at Sayville, Long Island. The station near Hanover was the biggest station of the Goldschmidt System and had communicated with the station at Tuckerton, N.J.
The newspaper noted that if Britain entered the war, which was expected, that the last link with Europe would be cut. Howevver, the Marconi company was rushing to completion work on the station at Stavengar, Norway, which would keep North America linked to Europe.
The First Casualties of World War 1
Jules Andre Peugeot by French Army – Original publication: 1914, France. Immediate source: David O’Mara. Via Wikipedia
Jules Andre Peugeot was born at Etupes, France, on June 11, 1893. He was the son of Jules Albert Peugot and Francien Marie Frederique Pechin. He was a teacher, appointed to the school at Pissoux. He was regarded as a kindly man and well liked by his students. In 1913, he was conscripted into the French army.
Albert Otto Walter Mayer was born on April 24, 1892, in Magdeburg, Germany. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to the Alsace region. He became a Lieutenant in the German army.
On August 2, 1914, the day before Germany officially declared war on France, Lt. Mayer was assigned to a reconnaissance squadron to sueveil French positions. At 10:00 AM, he approached the village of Joncherey.
Corporal Peugot had been having breakfast at the house of one Monsieur Doucourt, where he had been billeted. M. Doucourt’s daughter, Nicolet, came in and alerted the soldiers that a German patrol had entered the town. The soldiers ran out, and Peugot yelled at Mayer to stop. Mayer pulled out his pistol and shot Peugot. Peugot returned the shot but missed. The other French soldiers returned fire, however, killing Mayer. Peugot died a few minutes later on the steps of the house. The two bodies were placed side by side in the straw in a barn.
Mayer and Peugot were the first German and French casualties of the Great War.
Leutnant Albert Mayer Grabstein 01 09 par Хрюша — Travail personnel. Sous licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
In 2008, on the occasion of the death of the last French veteran of the war, French President Sarkozy remembered the two men:
The Frenchman was 21 years old. He was a teacher. His name was Jules-André Peugeot. The German is Alsatian, a native of the region of Mulhouse. He was just 20 years old. His name was (Albert) Camille Mayer.
They loved life as we love it in 20 years. They had no vengeance, they had no hate to satisfy.
They were 20 years old, the same dreams of love, the same ardor, the same courage.
They were 20 years old and felt that the world was theirs.
They were 20 years old; they believed in happiness.
They had barely left childhood and did not want to die. They both died on a beautiful summer morning, one with a bullet in the shoulder, the other shot in the stomach. They were the first unconscious actors in the same tragedy whose blind fate and folly had long secretly woven a sinister plot that would take its son in a sacrifice of heroic youth.
Both died at 20 years and did not see the terrible result of what they began: These millions of deaths, mowed down by machine guns embedded in the mud of the trenches, torn by shells. Nor did they see the huge crowd of millions of wounded, crippled, disfigured, gassed, who lived with the nightmare of war etched into their flesh.
They did not see their parents crying, widows mourning their husbands, children crying for their fathers. They did not experience the suffering of a soldier who smokes a cigarette to overcome the smell of dead abandoned by those who did not even had time to throw them a few clods of earth, so that do not see them rot. ”
These two young men of twenty years did not experience nights of rain, the winter in the trenches, “silent and shivering waiting long minutes like hours.” They did not cross columns returning fire “with their wounds, their blood, their mask of suffering” and their eyes seemed to say to those over, “Do not go there!” They did not fight tirelessly against mud, against rats, against lice, against the night, against the cold, against fear.
They did not have to live for years with the memory of so much pain, with the thought of so many lives Blasted next to them and the need to step over the body to mount an assault.
References
Rene Puaux, The Lie of the 3rd of August, 1914 (1917)
Jules-André Peugeot at Wikipedia
Jules-André Peugeot at French Wikipedia
Albert Mayer at French Wikipedia
The First to Fall: Peugot and Mayer
Skirmish at Joncherey at Wikipedia
Declaration of President Sarkozy (French)
August 1, 1914: Germany Declares War
As reported here in the New York Evening World, August 1, 1914, Germany declared war against Russia. The paper also reports that France is in the process of mobilizing.
July 31, 1914: Russia Mobilizes
As seen on the front page of the Harrisburg Telegraph of July 31, 1914, war in Europe is now certain. Russia is putting its army on a war footing, and in both Berlin and London, war is believed to be inevitable.
July 30, 1914: War is Near for Most of Europe
A hundred years ago today, July 30, 1914, Germany, Russia, and the other powers had yet to join the war, and there was some hope that they would not. But as this front-page cartoon in the Harrisburg Telegraph makes clear, that hope was quickly fading.
Forest Service Radio, 1921
This 1921 photo shows U.S. Forest Service radio operator F.K. Teeter, Jr., at his post monitoring for forest fires. The Forest Service had aircraft equipped with a 1.8 kw spark transmitter, with a trailing wire with a lead weight at the end. The entire transmitter was encased in a torpedo-shaped shell mounted on the running gear. Only the key and ammeter were inside the plane. The aircraft was not equipped with a receiver, and the ground stations were not equipped with a transmitter. Instead, the aircraft transmitted in the blind, using a code indicating the type of fire and location by township, section, and range.
The system was reported to give very satisfactory results.
Read More at Amazon:
World War 1 Begins
According to Wikipedia, and most other sources, World War 1 began a hundred years ago today, July 28, 1914. But as I showed two days ago, the Washington afternoon newspaper for July 26 reports that Austria declared war on Serbia on that day.
Portable Radio in 1923
This illustration from the August 1923 issue of Wireless Age shows Joan Jarvis listening to a portable receiver in her canoe. The accompanying article points out that the phonograph record industry should not be alarmed by Miss Jarvis’ entertainment options, since she is likely to purchase phonograph records of the songs she hears over the radio.
Portable Radio 75 Years Ago
If you wanted a portable radio 75 years ago, you could have one. It would weigh a mere 14 pounds, and would only set you back a dollar a week. This set was available for $19.95, or one dollar a week. It is shown here in this ad from the Milwaukee Sentinel for July 27, 1939.
I haven’t been able to find any information on the particular portable in the ad, but it looks very similar to the RCA model shown here. The RCA weighed in at 14 pounds, had four tubes, and operated on a 1.4 volt A battery and 90 volt B battery. The B battery was stated to last 250 hours, and sold for $3.50.