A series of high and low pitches, sent by the mayors of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre 120 years ago, helped change the way the world communicated.
The Rev. Joseph Murgas developed the wireless tone system in the basement rectory of Sacred Heart Church in Wilkes-Barre. He proved there could be communication over great land distances, as his experiments gave the impetus to all land transmissions by radio that followed.
The work of the priest, artist, botanist and scientist will be remembered — and celebrated — on Saturday, as the cities’ current mayors share the same messages their predecessors sent via Morse code in 1905.
“Today we take it for granted talking to Wilkes-Barre over your cell phone or over a radio. But back then, people didn't know that you could actually use radio signals to talk long distances over land,” said Nathaniel Frissell, associate professor of physics and engineering at the University of Scranton and member of the Murgas Amateur Radio Club. “It's just a really neat piece of history that we have right here in Northeast Pennsylvania that maybe many people don't know about.”
Saturday’s joint event with the Murgas Amateur Radio Club, King's College and the University of Scranton is scheduled from 1-4 p.m. at both campuses. The reenactment is scheduled for 1 p.m.
Working in the rectory basement
Murgas was born in Slovakia in 1864. At 18 he entered seminary, where he enjoyed the subjects of electricity, astronomy and advanced physics. As a priest, he attended art school and then the Electrical College of Vienna, Austria.
An accomplished artist, he was asked to look at a painting hung in the Hungarian House of Parliament, which portrayed the Hungarians conquering the Slavs in a battle in the year 907. Murgas, born in Slovakia, called the painting a “pathetic fallacy.” Hungarian leaders criticized him, and he sought to flee the country.
He joined a Slovak friend who was a priest in Wilkes-Barre, and soon became pastor of his own church, Sacred Heart at 601 N. Main St.
As he cared for the parish, he used the basement of the church rectory as his workshop. He conducted electrical experiments, using parts that he made himself. After four years of experimenting, he thought he had perfected a system for wireless transmission for both electrical impulses and voice modulation, according to a history compiled by the radio club.
Guglielmo Marconi, known as the father of the radio, demonstrated the first successful long-distance wireless telegraph system and broadcast the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901. But Marconi had conducted his experiments over water. Murgas knew he could transmit messages over land.
Murgas received a patent for a system of wireless communication known as the “tone method,” with the energy emitting tones of various pitches. The system could be used with Morse code, with high pitches representing dots, and low pitches representing dashes. The New York Herald published an article about Murgas perfecting a wireless telegraph system he believed was superior to the Marconi method. He found he could send messages 70 miles on land and 700 miles over sea.
Murgas got to work to prove it. The Universal Aether Telegraph Company helped fund the work, erecting 200-foot high, wood-construction antennas and stations in both Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. In April 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt asked to see Murgas and his experiments. Roosevelt said “he never saw such a phenomenon,” according to the club.
A groundbreaking test
On Nov. 23, 1905, Murgas assembled the mayors of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, representatives of the Universal Aether Telegraph Company, newspaper reporters and others for a public demonstration. The mayors sent messages to each other.
To Alexander Connell, mayor of Scranton:
“Wilkes-Barre and Father Murgas send their best wishes to you and to our healthy daughter, Miss Scranton. Since the last election, the wires of the Machine have been cut and we are now sending you this message without them. Fred C. Kirkendall Mayor of Wilkes-Barre”
Moments later, Connell replied to Kirkendall.
“Scranton sends hearty congratulations to Father Murgas our mother city’s foremost inventor. May he live long enough to derive all the benefits he is rightly entitled to. Alex T. Connell, Mayor of Scranton”
Other messages included one to Bishop Michael John Hoban of the Diocese of Scranton and communications in Latin and Slovak.
A story in the next day’s Scranton Republican newspaper called the test a “day of triumph" for Murgas and the “marvelous wireless telegraph system of which he is the inventor.”
The public tests worked with the tone method, proving there could be communication over great land distances, which had not been achieved prior to the public demonstrations.
“I think it was a big stepping stone in the advancement of wireless communications. And, you know, people like President Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Edison took note of this, and so did some of the other major radio experimenters and companies at the time,” Frissell said.
Life after radio transmission
A few months after the November test, a heavy storm knocked down the antenna tower in Scranton and destroyed the station. The storm also destroyed one of the towers in Wilkes-Barre.
The company backing Murgas could not afford to rebuild the towers. New companies and developers soon entered the field, and Murgas did have the money to compete.
Though he stayed interested in electricity and communications, he focused on other hobbies in his later years. He collected butterflies, later given to King’s College. He loved to fish at Lake Silkworth or Harveys Lake and received a patent for a fishing reel. During World War I, he helped raise $1 million to aid in Slovakia’s freedom.
Murgas died of an apparent heart attack in May 1929. Thousands of people attended his cemetery at Sacred Heart, with an overflow crowd spilling out on the sidewalk, according to coverage in The Wilkes-Barre Record. Twenty-two trolley cars, multiple buses and “scores of automobiles” carried the mourners to Sacred Heart Slovak Cemetery in Dallas, his final resting place.
Resending the message
Saturday’s event also marks the 50th anniversary of the Murgas Amateur Radio Club, which meets monthly — and communicates regularly over ham radio. The flooding from Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and Hurricane Eloise in 1975 made the local amateur radio community want to create a formal group to provide emergency communications in times of crisis.
“We're very honored to use his name as the name of our club, and we're happy to honor him for his many accomplishments, and to remind people of the valley of the importance of his work to the development of radio communications and all the other things that have ensued,” said Richard Abramowitz, the club’s vice president.
King’s College and the University of Scranton will hold simultaneous celebrations from 1-4 p.m. that are free and open to the public. At 1 p.m. Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti will recreate the transmission, with King’s College president Rev. Thomas P. Looney, C.S.C.,and University of Scranton president Rev. Joseph G. Marina, S.J.
King’s will transmit from the Richard Abbas Alley Center for Health Sciences on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre. Guests can also enjoy refreshments while they visit the Alley Center’s Rev. Joseph Murgas Room, which showcases his paintings, butterfly collection, wireless broadcasting work and his priestly vestments.
Meanwhile, the University of Scranton will transmit from its W3USR amateur radio station with a public showing of the event in the PNC Auditorium inside the Loyola Science Center. After the reenactment, attendees will be invited upstairs to the W3USR station to operate the radios and enjoy refreshments. An exhibit is also currently on display — covering Father Murgas, the Murgas Amateur Radio Club, W3USR, and HamSCI — in the Loyola Science Center’s second-floor display cases.
In Scranton’s amateur radio station, which opened last year, Frissell this week discussed the technology used there, and how it compares to what Murgas created 120 years ago.
“It is similar in that it still uses electromagnetic waves to communicate, and they use somewhat similar frequencies for certain things, but it's also very different. Today we have much more refined techniques for modulating and demodulating the information. We can use many different frequencies, but certainly this was a forerunner to what we use today,” Frissell said. “We can continue to grow and build on these things that have happened before us.”
