Guglielmo Marconi with one of his instruments, about 1896. 

Marconi's Sparks

In 1895, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in sending electric signals through the air from one end of his parents' garden to the other. Slowly he extended the range of the signals, and the Italian government was offered to buy the patent for his electric spark transmitter. The government declined, and Marconi moved to England where the interest in his invention and its possibilities was greater.

Chief engineer of the British postal service, William Preece, was also an eager radio amateur and with enthusiasm he joined the crowd that cherished Marconi's attempts to transmit across larger and larger distances. In 1898 he dreamt: "If any planets be populated with beings like ourselves, then if they could oscillate immense stores of electrical energy to and fro in telegraphic order, it would be possible for us to hold commune by telephone with the people of Mars."

Signals from Outer Space

The world press wrote about the sensational possibilities of global contact arising with the wireless. It was, however, primarily the contact between the different nations on earth that was given columnage: There were dreams of world peace and an end to loneliness when everybody could reach each other.

But then in 1919 Marconi reported that his radio stations had picked up some strong signals "seeming to come from beyond earth". This awoke Preece's and many other people's dreams about contact with outer space. Magazines and newspapers presented their readers with the fantastic prospect of intergalactic communication through wireless radio. Also in Denmark such speculations were given columnage. 

Illustration to the short story in Den Traadløse [The Wireless], October 1923. 

Mars here - Earth here

In October 1923 the magazine "Den Traadløse" [The Wireless] published a novel about wireless telegraphy from Earth to Mars and back occasioned by Maconi's reports: "...one day at noontime numerous special editions of the magazines fluttered around the whole world in all languages, informing the astonished mankind of the following sensational news: ‘Connection with Mars has just been obtained. Clear signals have been exchanged: Mars here - Earth here..."

In other places it was seriously discussed to try to establish contact to Mars in order to throw new light on civilization on earth. Contact with outer space was, however, as far as is generally known, never obtained.