As we all know, radio signals know no borders. Radio itself was developed through the efforts of scientists and inventors in several countries. A Princeton University professor, Joseph Henry, and a British physicist, Michael Faraday, experimented separately with electromagnetics in the early 1800’s. Each arrived at the theory that a current in one wire can produce a current in another wire, even at a distance (induction theory). James Clark Maxwell, another British physicist, suggested in 1864 that electrical impulses travel through space at the speed of light. Heinrich Hertz, a German physicist, proved Maxwell’s theory in the late 1880’s. In 1892, Edouard Branly, a French physicist, invented a device that could receive radio waves and ring an electric bell. In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi of Italy incorporated these earlier works in the development of the first wireless telegraph. In 1900, Reginald A. Fessenden, an American Physicist, demonstrated the first voice transmission over radio waves.
In April of 1912, Harold H. Beverage, a young boy from Maine, tuned in Morse code signals from the rescue ship S.S. Carpathia on his homemade wireless receiver as she went to the rescue of the Titanic. This event was the spark that was to begin an exciting career for Beverage as a radio engineer for General Electric Company, and later, Radio Corporation of America. Beverage is noted for his experimentation with long wire antennas and received a patent on the Wave Antenna on June 7, 1921 which is commonly referred to today as the Beverage antenna.
Another earlier experimenter and engineer, Paul Forman Godley, began work in the wireless field in 1908 when the first commercial wireless station was constructed in Chicago, Illinois. Godley rose quickly in the fledgling industry attending the University of Illinois in 1910, outlining a course of instruction at the Collegiate Institute in Port Arthur Texas, in 1912, and then on to the Amazon River in 1913 to construct a radio system for the Brazilian government. Godley became deeply involved in the early days or radio broadcasting and formed one of the first United States radio consulting engineering firms in 1935 with George H. Brown (Godley & Brown, Consulting Radio Engineers, Montclair, New Jersey). In 1937 Godley and Edmund A. Laport petitioned the U.S. Patent Office for a patent for radiating systems which look very much like today’s helical and fractal antennas. Godley continued in radio frequency consulting engineering and was later honored by his son, Paul Godley, Jr., taking over the practice.
In 1975 Paul Godley, Jr. was ready to retire. The Paul Godley Company was sold to three young engineers and became the firm of Sherman, Olkowski & Beverage located in Medford, New Jersey. In later years, the partners went their own ways with Clarence M. Beverage, Harold H. Beverage’s nephew, founding Communications Technologies, Inc. in 1985. In 2023 the firm name was changed to Communications Technologies