These Detroit Rotograte Stokers work great at continuously discharging ash from the burning of coal. These stokers at the Great Western’s Longmont refinery were part of a much larger system of boilers that fed steam power for the entire factory (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

Editor’s Note: This is the final section of the series, “Sugar Refineries in Colorado.” See part 1 here and part 2 here. It’s recommended that you read part 1 and part 2 before beginning with this section.

Sugar refineries in Colorado were powered by steam. The most popular steam boiler of choice for these factories were the Babcock and Wilcox water-tube boilers — revolutionary and efficient steam creators for their time. The power house of the factories featured a monumental array of ten massive boilers — all of which required incredibly coordinated logistical fueling using a continuous supply of coal. This was not done by manpower– everything was mechanized. Railroad cars delivered the coal, it was crushed into one-inch chunks, brought in by conveyence to mechanical stokers, burned, discarded through flumes, and finally exited as ash.

Men stand near the cossette slicing machine at Eaton, Colorado ca. 1910 (courtesy Denver Public Library).

This incredible steam power was utilized throughout the factories’ multiple rooms and corridors through a complex system of drive-shafts. workers could engage or disengage shafts through a series of levers and belt-transfer guides. Despite its incredible, 3,000 horsepower system of steam strength, these factories still employed 300-500 workers of various tasks — even their own chemistry and assay departments to measure the sugar content of incoming beets.

This box shaped contraption at the Longmont sugar refinery perplexed me, but I could only assume that it was pressurized, as indicated by the rivets and portholes (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

Corporate Consolidation of Sugar: A Massive Industry

Indeed, sugar in the eastern foothills of the Rockies was far from a small-town cottage industry. William May, who wrote The Great Western Sugarlands, claims that Colorado’s sugar industry produced more revenue than mining in the state. Combine the rich sugar content of Colorado’s beets with government-provided bounty for domestic producers of sugar — add the lynchpin of it all, the Dingley Act of 1897 (which levied a heavy tax on foreign sugar) — and you’ve got the perfect storm for a boom in beet production.

The factory at Eaton, CO. Notice the effluence coming from the smokestack. This is the lime kiln. The boiler house is outside of view from the image (photo courtesy Denver Public Library).

It was a perfect storm that was ripe for H.O. Havemeyer’s picking. Havemeyer did this as tactfully as any robber-baron could: through an extremely complicated system of acquisitions and alliances using his American Sugar Company Trust. As Eric Twitty in Silver Wedge so aply puts it, the trust “converted the Colorado sugar industry into a coordinated sugar-manufacturing machine, which it loosely balanced with its sugar sources elsewhere in the United States,” among which included half of Spreckels stake in sugar from Hawaii and California.

Eventually, however, even corporate consolidation and efficiencies couldn’t mean the continued survival of an outdated commodity source. One by one, the factories across Colorado closed down. Corporate neglect may have partly been the reason, but it ultimately became simple geography. Once artificial sweeteners, sugarcane, and corn syrup took their stranglehold on the American sweetening industry sugar beets became a thing of the past. By 1985, all but one of Colorado’s grand sugar refineries had shuttered.

The workshop at Eaton Refinery. If you want esoterica, look no further than this workshop at Eaton’s sugar refinery. Here, were a number of whos-its and whats-its galore. One could only wonder what the worker in this workshop did in a typical day. No doubt there are plenty of opportunities for idle tinkering (Photo copyright Jon Haeber).

Further Reading on the Sugar Factories of Colorado

Silver Wedge: The Sugar Beet Industry in Fort Collins
http://www.ci.fort-collins.co.us/historicpreservation/pdf/sugar-beet-industry-doc.pdf

Historic Markers of Colorado — History of Sugar Beets in the State
http://www.coloradohistory.org/ripsigns/show_markertext.asp?id=825

Suspicious Monopolistic Agreement Between Great Western and H.O. Hevemeyer
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9507EED9153CE633A25757C0A9609C946396D6CF

This is the historic Longmont Refinery today. Captured from the ground floor, this large format image shows exactly how many pipes, catwalks, and tanks occupy a typical refinery. Walking through a sugar refinery fills your mind with conjecture, shock, amazement, and curiosity — all at once (photo copyright Jon Haeber)

Editor’s Note: From the founding of the Greeley Colony after the Homestead Act, rough and determined Coloradans were in a desperate search for the perfect cash crop. By 1900, their savior had come in the form of sugar beets. Before they transformed this sweet crop into a cornucopia of cash, however, they needed investment. In Part I, we saw how Colorado was the perfect geographical location for sugar beets. Now we’ll see why factories required massive up-front capital investment. In part III, you’ll see how steam power transformed the typical sugar refinery; you’ll find out how corporate consolidation led Colorado agriculture into its days of glory; and you’ll find out why only two remaining refineries out of dozens are still active in Colorado.

Inside these factories are massive machines — their own steel and brick monuments to a once-burgeoning industry. In order to understand the vastness of these factories, one must first understand the complicated process of sugar refining. For beets, this process multifarious and extremely energy-intensive. It required the importation of exorbitant amounts of coal and lime.

A map of the Longmont Sugar Refinery. Note the Steffens House (where MSG would later be made from beets), the incredibly large coal pits (this will be described more in Part III), and the extremely efficient train track layout.

Beet Washing and Flume Transport

First beets were both washed and transported through a series of flumes, but in order for them to be processed they needed to be brought to the top floor of the factory through a series of hoppers. Time was of the essence. As soon as the beets came in contact with water, they’d begin to diffuse their sugar.

Sugar beets needed to be carried to the top floor for the first step in processing. This required the use of an elaborate system of belts and flumes. Pictured above is an inclined conveyer that likely brought the beets up to a higher level. This conveyer is located at Eaton, Colorado (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

Cutting into Cossettes, Sublimation, and Lime Injection

Once on top, the beets went through a series of cutting machines, which sliced the beets into thin v-shaped pieces known as cossettes. The cossettes were fed into vast diffusion chambers, which were held under pressure, fed with boiling water, and allowed to steep for some time in order to sublimate the sugar from the cossettes. The spent cossettes were discarded, the steeped water was further brought into a soup of lime in order to purify the liquid-like sugar substance; then through a series of framed kelly filters; after which the filtered liquid was sent to a set of heat exchangers to keep it liquefied.

When one is in a sugar refinery, the sensory overload becomes overwhelming. These machines, like many in the refinery, perplexed me. However, I could reasonably deduce that — since they were on a lower story of the building, they were not the cutting (or cossette) cylinders. My educated guess says they are cylinders for griding lime rock. The pipe maze protruding from the cylinders probably sent the liquefied slurry of lime to be mixed with the sublimated sugar (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

Carbonation for Precipitation, Filtration, and Sulfur Station

Even after this process, the liquid, though containing no solids, remained a base due to the lime process. In order to solve this problem, the liquid was sent through carbonation tanks, where carbonic acid bubbled up through the juice, balancing the pH level and removing the lime. From there, it was sent to another set of filters, more heat exchangers, and on to the sulfur station.

These are the filter presses used to further purify the liquid sugar. In addition to filtering, the liquid had to go through both a lime and carbonation process before it became what is known as “standard liquor.”

It was at the sulfur station that the pH was further balanced and the sugar’s color was bleached white. Filtered one last time, it had finally became what the industry termed as “standard liquor,” containing a sugar content of 50-60%, but still in liquid form.

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Workers stand in front of the famed lime kiln at the Eaton Refinery. Lime was an essential aspect of the refining process; it was useful in precipitating impurities in the beets.

Evaporation and Centrifuge Drying

In order to crystalize the liquid, the super-saturated liquid was sent through a series of evaporators, then to some centrifuges, and finally off to the market.

Drums of chemicals and grease are, not surprisingly, common in any sugar refinery. A typical refinery often leaves an indelible ecological footprint on the landscape (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

And that’s the simplified version! For the complete step-by-step process, visit this PDF document on Fort Collins sugar beet history.

Editor’s Addendum for Part II:As you see, a sugar factory was not only a multfarious process, it was also capital intensive. The Coloradans had a bounty, surely, but without the help of big money and intensive politicial lobbying, these factories would have never arisen from the Great Western Plains. In our third and final installment we’ll look at how the steam engine transformed the refineries in Colorado, along with corporate consolidation by Big Sugar headed by H.O. Havemeyer.

I am a child of Southern California. Though I feel more out of place there than anywhere else in the world, it is the place of my birth. As a child I remember the falling ashes and the smoke-engulfed sky. I remember the floods and the Rodney King riots, and the Northridge earthquake.

This past weekend, I was down in Ventura visiting family. It was a bright, clear day. We went into the theater to catch Across the Universe, the new movie inspired by the music of the Beatles. As we exited the corridors of the theater everything seemed darker and more orange in hue.

I walked outside and ashes were falling like snowflakes. Tiny bits of burnt mesquite and tumbleweed floated through the sky. It never snows in Ventura, so the experience was all the more surreal.

It was only after listening to the radio for a few minutes that I realized the gravity of the situation. I could guess how severe the problem would be. I knew the fires would burn and continue burning; the previous night the news had announced the arrival of the Santa Ana winds, whose zephyrs of hell blow Westward, defying all logic about the proverbial “ocean breeze.” Raymond Chandler in “Red Wind” describes the winds eloquently:

Those hot dry winds that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.

The Santa Ana’s hot, spine-tingling breeze comes from the East due to high pressure systems in the deserts. It’s a common misconception that these winds are heated by the desert, but the majority of the warmth is a result of adiabatic heating — the effect of air dumping from high altitudes into low altitudes; the subsequent compression of air causes it to warm up and expel any humidity.By the time these winds reach the California lowland coast, they’re bone-dry and they make you feel as if you’re walking on the face of Mars. They’re also the ideal winds for fires — and as they reached record levels above 75 mph last weekend, one could only guess what would follow.

A 2002 satellite image showing wind patterns. The red markers indicate Santa Ana patterns (courtesy NASA).

As of now, two have died, 1,200 homes and business are destroyed, a historic castle is in ruins, and 300,000 acres look like a mercurial firescape at this moment.

It is a uniquely geographic weather anomaly with devastating results. Why do people live in these places? Why are the most desirable home sites often the most disastrous? I only mean to pose the question. I have no answers.

Further Reading:

BBC News: California Santa Ana Fires
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7058809.stm

Wikipedia on Santa Ana Winds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_ana_winds

Editor’s Note: Yes readers! Once again, I’m bringing you a special series. This one’s about the sugar industry in Eastern Colorado. There are three parts. This is part one. Click on these links to find part 2 and part 3.

In Colorado there is a linear north-south collection of abandoned skeletons following the railroads outside of Denver. These brick edifices are decaying reminders of Colorado’s agricultural renaissance. Bricks collapse from four-story parapets and railroads are buried in weeds and detritus, but behind the decay and overgrowth is the history of the greatest sugar magnate in American history: The Great Western Sugar Company.

This is a ledger book from the Great Western Sugar Co. Eaton factory. Eaton is named after the tenth governor of Colorado, Benjamin Eaton, who was instrumental in getting the irrigation infrastructure set up that would later serve the beet industry well (photo copyright Jon Haeber).

These massive brick buildings are like nothing I’ve seen in my life. Early in Colorado’s history, the vast expanse of barren land was considered a desert. Famous New York Times Editor, Horace Greeley, described the Colorado plains as a “land of starvation.” This didn’t stop Greeley from endeavoring to establish a utopian colony there. His plan funded the beginnings of place of high moral standards and temperance. Never one to shy away from self-promotion, the utopian colony was named “Greeley.” After the Land Grant Act of 1862, thousands of families flocked to the Colorado plains in search of land worth subduing (in a biblical sense).

At first, wheat was the cash crop, but disaster stuck in the 1890s when the price of wheat plummeted and this bread basket of America needed a new boon basket — beets would be Colorado’s salvation. By 1900, there were brick buildings arising to process the growing influx of beet from the fields. The citadels of these towns had become tall, brick smokestacks spewing steam and spitting out refined sugar.

The Ecology of Growing Sugar Beets

There are only a few places in the world perfectly suited for the sugar beet horticulture. Sugar beets require a specific balance of light, minerals, and water in order to produce a minimum of 12% sugar content by mass — and this balance must follow a specific seasonal schedule. The plains along the Front Range of Colorado had this balance unlike anywhere else in the world. In fact, the balance was so perfect that some areas featured an alarming 17% sugar content by mass.

A young man sits near a truck bed stacked with sugar beets from Northern Colorado, ca. 1915 (courtesy Denver Public Library)

All the Front Range needed was water. That’s where Benjamin Eaton had come in. As a massive landowner, he served as one of Greeley’s first officers of the utopian Greeley colony. Eventually, though, the utopian vision was thrown out the window and dollar signs began appearing in the eyes of the capitalists.

The American Sugar Refining Company headed by robber baron H.O. Havemeyer had incorporated in 1891. Local growers of the utopian proclivity began to accept the capitalist emergence. So says the Jan 15, 1903 New York Times: “It is believed in Colorado that the American Sugar Refining Company has acquired such a large interest in the beet sugar business, either directly or indirectly, that it controls it.”

By 1903, the capitalists had thoroughly gained their ground, and thus the vast amount of money necessary to build the factories flowed in. The factory in Longmont was designed and built by the Kilby Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The bricks for it were provided by contractors Edward Seerie and Frank Hill of Hill & Seerie — who also provided the bricks for Denver’s Sough High School. Longmont Sugar cost one million dollars to construct — an astronomical sum for any project in the early 1900s.

Construction of the Longmont Sugar Refinery, ca. 1910 (courtesy Denver Public Library)

Only two years after construction, the newly formed Great Western Sugar Company had taken over the Longmont factory. In a few years time, the company had retained control of 15 factories along the Front Range. By 1920, Sugar was Colorado’s mainstay — the value of its harvest had multiplied to 20 times its 1900 level.

Please continue following Bearings, or subscribe to its RSS in order to continue following the incredible story of sugar in Colorado. Find parts two and three here (part 2) and here (part 3).

In the most simple historical distillation, San Francisco is a microcosm of our country. It was in the right place during the industrial revolution to support a military buildup unseen in history (and which remains decaying in the wake), ripe for academics, kooks (like me), and history buffs (to interpret to a pulp). Now, as a fusion of geography, politics, history, post-industrial technology, and artistic, bohemian heritage I find this place the perfect hotbed for great ideas and great art.

Bearings has been fortunate to know some savants of this landscape, and this entry is meant to provide you with a general, albeit condensed, overview of my favorite local landscape photographers and interpreters.

Steve Walsh

Photo copyright Steve Walsh

Steve is a Berkeley-based photographer, who has focused primarily on moonlit landscapes. He’s also incredibly adept at light painting, a somewhat improvised, but calculated way of illuminating a frame. Another thing, which gives Steve’s work a special place in the heart of Bearings’ editor, is his love of concrete blocks (mosaic above). His personal love of these little-noticed aspects of landscape makes him top-rate in our book (blog)!

Joe Reifer

Photo copyright Joe Reifer

Berkeley is home to many incredible photographers. Mr. Joe Reifer is known for his well-received blog, Words, in which he discusses the latest news on photography, web 2.0, art, and music. He’s also a regular user of alternative film techniques, including pinhole, holga, modded, black and white, and medium/large format work.

Troy Paiva

Photo copyright Troy Paiva

He’s often referred to as “that Lost America” guy — and for good reason. His book, Lost America, has become somewhat of a cult classic, especially amongst urban landscape aficionados. Troy’s work pops — really pops — and he often (but not always) utilizes colored gels to add a little pizazz to his shots. One need only browse any night photography group on Flickr to get a sense of how Troy’s style has influenced an entire generation of night photographers.

Todd Lappin

Photo copyright Todd Lappin

What started as an urban camouflage experiment turned into a online phenomenon. Telstar Logistics was originally a method of getting into all of those really nifty spots that we landscape historians love to see but often get arrested for visiting. The corporate motto of Telstar Logistics is “Land, Air, Sea, Space.” Bearings loves to blog about this kind of schtuff; in fact, our opiate of choice are these elements of the environment — the masses can have their “religion,” we’ll just stick with our daily RSS of Telstar’s employee news weblog.

Scott Haefner

Photo copyright Scott Haefner

Scott Haefner is a kite aerial photographer — and if there’s anything that urban landscape historians love, it has to be bird’s eye views of our favorite built environments. We swoon over these things. Recently, however, Scott has focused much of his work on the ground, which is equally as intriguing. With an incredible eye for light and composition, Scott has been able to convey not only the stories, but also the art inherent in the built environment.

Andy Frazer

Photo copyright Andy Frazer

Andy is, first and foremost, an adept night photographer, but he also follows the entire world of night photography and keeps his barometer attuned to the latest and greatest photographic artists of our time through his Night Photography Blog.

Basim Jaber

Photo copyright Basim Jaber

What would the Bay Area be without the South Bay — this oft-overlooked region of our unique landscape demands its own entry in Bearings. Suffice to say, Basim Jaber has been able to capture the ghostly artifacts of South Bay history. He has an avid devotion to researching the history behind the locations he photographs. His study of Almaden Air Force Station and his survey of inundated settlements in the South Bay are unparalleled. Please keep an eye out in future Bearings entries for more on the flooded towns and Basim’s documentation of these places as the water dips to record levels at the lakes.

The interior of the Kahuku Marconi Wireless building remains very much like it was during its 1914 inauguration, except now — instead of high-power transformers, wireless transmission keys, and antennae apparatus — you have above-ground pool-like structures containing shrimp krill.

Editors Note: This is part 3 in a three-part series on Marconi Wireless and government takeover over vital communications networks during times of war. I highly suggest taking a look at Part I here and Part II here before continuing. I hope you enjoy the narrative! There will be more special series’ arriving in the future!

What came from the war was a vast network of powerful communication hubs. During the war, these hubs were under the control of governments like never before. Unique to the U.S., when compared with other allies, was its insistence on holding on to influence over these radio holdings. Wireless had gone from a “mere adjunct to visual signaling” to a vital factor upon which armies, navies, and air forces had relied (Baker 177).

And government reliance had come at a cost so long as Marconi retained control of the patents. As General Electric was about to ship off a huge order of strategically important high-frequency alternators to British Marconi, Admiral Bullard and Captain Hooper, at the behest of President Wilson, stepped in and offered a lucrative government contract to GE. In exchange, GE would purchase American Marconi outright. In October 1919, the sale was completed and spawned the Radio Corporation of America (Harbord 60).

Guided into being by the President’s top Navy advisors, RCA provided integral services to the U.S. military – free from foreign investments or patent disputes. It also provided another outlet that was yet to be realized, but would soon have an indelible effect on American perception and ideology. In 1926, the giants of GE, Westinghouse, and RCA took their boldest step of all: they joined forces to form NBC — the first major broadcasting network.

Government and Corporate Alphabet Soups Blend (1926-1943)
As a private enterprise, NBC had some rather undeniable statist roots — after all, its parent company was GE (who most recently filed the largest tax return in history). It took over nearly a decade after FCC assumed oversight over radio corporations before it begin investigating the network’s practices. By that time, NBC had split into its “red” and “blue” holdings. Congressional hearings in 1941 only led to a perceived slackening of the anti-trust rules against NBC.

If it weren’t for the Department of Justice, NBC would have likely retained its control of the Blue Network. As it turns out, in 1943, it was forced to divest from its Blue holdings (selling them to the entrepreneur behind Life Savers and former commerce underscretary, Edward J. Noble). Still, though the ties between Blue and Red remained. Noble took the networks he had acquired from NBC and formed ABC.

At the cusp of the television revolution, the Second World War had begun, but not before three corporations — ABC, NBC, and CBS had claimed the lion’s share of communications in the country. In these three networks the ties to government were undeniable. And at the outbreak of World War II, this would prove invaluable. From CBS, CEO William S. Paley served as a colonel in the psychological warfare branch in the Office of War Information; from NBC, came the stalwart ties from its past inception as a Navy-formed corporation; and at CBS, a former undersecretary of commerce and confidante of NBC at the helm.

Administration Building of the original Marconi Building (later RCA)

These three corporations began the new era of television with a new type of psychological control over ideas and thoughts — and one more more potent than even radio had been during Marconi’s time.

Editor’s Note: This is the final part of a three part entry on wireless radio from the Imperial Age to World War II. It was inspired by my visit to an abandoned radio station in Hawaii, but the station itself is an illustration of a much larger effort by government and corporations to form ties and to sow the seeds of the military-industrial complex.

Further Note: After the publication of this piece, it came to the attention of the writer: the newspaper that reported the opening of the wireless station at Kahuku (with much fanfare, suffice to say [quoted in part II]) was owned by conservative sugar magnate Claus Spreckels. Spreckels was widely regarded extremely conservative and colonial in his political proclivities, so the stance of the article carries its own eerie bow of recognition to the theories postulated within this series.

Please find Part I here and Part II here.

Further Research

Coe, Douglas. Marconi: Pioneer of Radio. New York: Julian Messner, Inc. 1943.

Baker, W.J. A History of the Marconi Company. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 1971.

Harbord, J.G. “The Commercial Uses of Radio.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. 142, Supplement: Radio. Mar., 1929. pp. 57-63.

Headrick, Daniel R. The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics 1851-1945. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.

Headrick, Daniel R. and Pascal Griset. “Submarine Telegraph Cables: Business and Politics, 1838-1939.” The Business History Review. Vol. 75, No. 3. 2001. pp. 543-578.

“Marconi Wireless is Formally Opened by Governor Pinkham.” Pacific Commercial Advertiser. 25 Sep. 1914. pp A1, A9

“Patents. Infringement. Use by Government.” Harvard Law Review. Vol. 29, No. 3. Jan. 1916. p. 339.

Reich, Leonard S. “Research, Patents, and the Struggle to Control Radio.” The Business History Review. Vol. 51, No. 2. 1977. pp. 208-235.

This is the Marconi station today (compare with historic unveiling image below). The first engineer hailed from my alma mater. Go Bears!

Editor’s Note: This is part 2 of a three-part entry on wireless radio telegraphy during World War I. In part 1, we saw the British dominance in wireless prior to World War I and the early ties between government and business. This week, we’ll follow the outbreak of the war, how it affected the Marconi wireless telegraph stations, and how General Electric cemented a permanent place as a corporation cozy with the the Defense industry.

While the shot was heard ’round the world, the British Marconi Company was touring the German radio station at Nauen. Right up until the very declaration of war, British Marconi and German-owend Telefunken were on friendly terms, but the “halcyon days,” as W.J. Baker calls them came to an end (Baker W.J., 158).

At the time, Germany’s Nauen was the largest station in the world, carrying signals as far away as the South Pacific. For Germany, a country that depended on telegraph cables in the English Channel (susceptible to British sabotage) — nothing was more important than wireless communication. On July 29, moments after the British Marconi scientists left Nauen, the German military took over the gigantic 300,000 watt, 750-foot transmitter (Coe 214-215). Only days later, the British followed suit, ending all wireless messages and sequestering stations across the British Empire (Baker W.J., 158). Then, came the moment that allowed wireless to shine. The Brits cut Germany’s only land-line connection to the outside world. Without Nauen’s wireless towers, Germany would have lacked communication.

Nauen’s radio tower served as a vital hub for communication. Without the behemoth towers of Nauen, German would have had to depend on telegraph cables, which were often sabotaged by allied forces.

What World War I allowed the U.S. to do (whether intentional or not) was to build up a telecom infrastructure that would surpass even Britain’s. Despite the fact that it was corporate-owned, it was still government-influenced. As far back as the earliest days of the war, the spectre of military representatives were regularly described as presiding over groundbreaking ceremonies for major wireless stations. Hawaii’s Kahuku station was fast-tracked to be completed just months after the war broke out in Europe. Honolulu’s Pacific Commercial Advertiser quotes an official from Kahuku’s transpacific wireless unveiling on September 25, 1914:

“We celebrate today opening Marconi radio plant of O’ahu. The radius of action is upwards of 5,000 miles, and insures communication in time of war, regardless of any cutting of the cable.”

The quote was from Major-General Carter who, along with Rear Admiral Moore, Brigadier General Edwards, and “other prominent members of the Navy” were present at the unveiling.

The Honolulu Advertiser (then known as the Pacific Commercial Advertiser) reported on the fast-track inauguration of the Kahuku Wireless station. Kahuku was originally planned to be completed much later, but a war in Europe meant government interventionism.

Despite Wilson’s non-interventionism, the U.S. took a strong stance on building up its military infrastructure. United States’ apparent neutrality in the war was challenged when Germany’s station in Sayville New York was taken over by the government in 1914. Tensions were growing. War-hawks were squawking. On the other hand, Daniel R. Headrick in The Invisible Weapon says that “nationalistic officers of the U.S. Navy perceived American Marconi as a foreign firm, and an agent of British imperialism, and thus an enemy” (126).

The Navy, along with General Electric, was on a corporate war path to take out British Marconi. They signed contracts with American corporations to illegally produce patented Marconi apparatus. When Marconi took the case to the court in the case of Marconi Wireless v. Somin it was summarily decided that the U.S. government acted lawfully and only owed Marconi “just compensation” on the basis of “an exercise of the power of eminent domain” (“Patents”, 339). Soon, the U.S. had joined the war in 1917 — and like Germany and Britain in 1914, the military had come in to administer all wireless communications.

Please see part three to find out what happened to wireless telegraphy after the Great War, and to see how the Military-Industrial Complex also found its niche in the dominance of the country’s greatest media corporations.

And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they’re spoken.
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And will be buried at the bottom of the ocean.

Dylan’s verse from “When the Ship Comes In” personifies the climate of 1914. The world’s seas were chained together by a vast network of underwater cables. The cables connected colonial satellites like never before. Telegraphy had been a boon to Britain. In concert with land-grab, colonial powers were grabbing communication rights, even if it wasn’t on their own shores. Dylan’s fourth verse, though, speaks for a more covert hostile takeover and the first of its kind: Imperialism in the airwaves.

Map of the world’s telegraph cables prior to the rise of wireless and World War I

No longer did physical lines — susceptible to sabotage or destruction by foreign enemies — have to be laid on the bottom of the ocean. The “chains of the sea” were broken. Ships could openly communicate with each other. Because radio waves could be intercepted by any enemy, cryptography (”to get the ship confused”) soon followed and Marconi’s invention of radio telegraphy had turned into a weapon of war.

As soon as government had recognized this power, even free-market and democratic governments abandoned their laissez-faire tenets in place of eminent domain and national security. Wireless telegraphy was the origin of the military-industrial complex, and the most salient case example was in the formation of RCA, which sprouted from Marconi’s invention.

Colonial Growth of Cable (1898-1914)

In the early 1900s, Britain had a virtual monopoly over cross-continental telecommunications. More importantly, a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi had approached Britain with his new invention: wireless radio. The War Office of Britain was amused by Marconi’s contraption and fortuitously just in time for their Second Boers War. Britain’s imperial prowess in distant colonies was soon trumped by its prowess of the airwaves and land-line telegraphy. Their two-pronged system of submarine cables and transatlantic wireless communication was unparalleled, and extremely powerful in the years preceding World War I.

Despite the fact that the U.S. was far behind Britain in its adoption of Marconi’s invention, it still saw the power inherent in wireless. A victory in the Spanish-American War meant that the U.S. had to communicate with their newly acquired “protectorate” in the Phillipines. The U.S. was irked at the fact that all communiqué between Washington and the Phillipines had to go through a foreign cable (Britain’s), across the Atlantic, in a circuitous route through the Mediterranean and around Asia. In 1903, Commercial Pacific Cable established a direct line from San Francisco to Manila (Headrick and Griset 566).

Then, in 1904, President Roosevelt appointed a board to discuss wireless telegraphy. Already, British-owned Marconi had constructed stations across U.S. coasts. The board recommended that the Navy operate all coastal stations. Perhaps to quell any public opposition, it proposed “free commercial ship-to-shore service.” If the recommendation had gone through, the U.S. would have had a state-owned wireless monopoly. As it turned out, the press caught wind of the proposal for government-operated airwaves, and it was widely considered a “blatant attack on private enterprise” (Headrick, 125).

The engraving for the Marconi company’s stock certificate in 1913

Corporate Wireless Property Grab

The corporations, however, took the place of government in snatching up as many stations as it could. United Fruit Company (the progenitor of Chiquita) had their Tropical Radio subsidiary for their fruit shipments from the banana republics and had captured much of the South American market. Western Union set up a wireless shop to try to capture the lucrative transatlantic market. In time, the U.S. corporations, vast and disparate, would form stations across the world, from Hawaii to China, the Dutch East Indes, Liberia, Cuba, Brazil, and far beyond – it was a type of corporate empire unseen in history and the largest ever. The government idly stood by, often ineffectually using wireless technology in Naval operations until the 1910s, yet encouraging private enterprise to build up the infrastructure.

Next week, we’ll see how the outbreak of World War I affected the United States, its tenuous ties with both the Britons and the Germans, and the beginnings of the formation of RCA, which marked the true beginnings of the military-industrial complex. Most importantly, we’ll find out what set in motion a government-controlled media enterprise unprecedented in history.

Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of a three-part entry on Wireless Telegraphy during World War I. Here is part two, which contains more information on the significance of the Kahuku Marconi Wireless Station (the link contains a site overview).

Long ago, before my grandfather was born, a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi developed a process of communicating without the aid of land-line telegraph cables. The birth of wireless telegraphy was embraced by the British during their Second Boeur War, but the promise of communication across vast oceans between families and friends, businesses and diplomatic bureaus was where wireless truly shined.

I recently traveled to Hawaii to visit a friend (ostensibly), but also to explore the island’s many historical locations (I have my ulterior motives). Earlier, I had spoken of the abandoned sugar refinery on the North Shore and its incredible ties with bird guano (believe me, there’s a connection). In the future, I will talk about Battery Harlow in Diamond Head, a World War I-era array of guns designed to defend the new U.S. territory.

Most important, though, is this station on the North Shore (The Kahuku Marconi Station). In the details of this station, one can parse out a history and trace the root & origins of the Military-Industrial Complex. Today, parts of the station are occupied by a krill farm. The old powerhouse, which supplied the 300 kW towers with their much-needed electricity, is now full of temporary above-ground pools of growing shrimp (and large bull frogs, as well). The old “Hotel” as it was known (which often housed unmarried Marconi workers or visiting dignitaries including Jack London himself) is a crumbling and empty bone.

Image courtesy Library of Congress
If there is any place in Hawaii that desperately needs National Register status, it is this place. When World War II broke out, the Marconi wireless towers were no longer needed (long-wave radio transmission was a thing of the past), but the original line of towers was replaced by an airstrip that sent out cargo planes to their destinations across the Pacific Rim.

Photo copyright Jon Haeber
I visited the Kahuku Station during the day. The krill farm, though active, was eerily vacant of people. A gentle breeze — like any Hawaiian breeze, warm and humid — came in from the North. The palms danced to the cadence of the wind, which wound its way through the broken window frames of the Hotel. Krill pumps hummed, and I imagined how similar they sounded to the original transformers for the wireless towers.

Photo courtesy Library of Congress
The humidity has a different sort of effect on the plaster and paint of abandoned buildings. Living in California, it was a rare sort of sight for me to see. Each layer of paint peeled away to reveal an older, more colorul version of the wall. And the arched doorways and stairwells gave me an idea of its once grand design — despite the hotel’s utilitarian purpose.

I think the Kahuku Station and its related history deserve so much attention that — in the coming days — I will post a three-part entry on Wireless Telelgraphy during World War I. I hope you enjoy the history as much as I did. This is meant only as an introduction to a fascinating story about government, communication, corporations, and war.