At some point while teaching my latest one-day Tech class, I happened to mention that I’m Slovak-American. That is to say that my great-grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from the region now known as Slovakia. They came to the U.S. early in the 20th century to work the mines in SE Ohio.
At the lunch break, one of the fellows attending the class came up to me, and with a definite Eastern European accent, introduced himself. Jozef, as it turns out, was born in Slovakia. He was already licensed (KD8SAH), but he was there with his teenage son, who was hoping to get his license. (He did.)
First, Jozef asked if I knew about Ss. Cyril & Methodius Slovak Catholic Church (I did). Then, he asked if I knew about Fr. Jozef Murgas, who, he said, was an inventor in the early days of radio. I had heard the name Murgas, but didn’t really know what he was famous for. Jozef promised to send me some links.
A couple of days later, I received an email from Jozef with a couple of links. Murgas’s story, as it turns out, is quite interesting. His big claim to fame is that he invented (and patented –U.S. Patent 759,826, “Method of Communicating Intelligence by Wireless Telegraphy,” May 10, 1904.), a method for sending multiple tones via spark-gap telegraphy. The theory was that sending multiple tones would be more efficient than conventional telegraphy. One tone would be a dit in conventional telegraphy, while the second tone would be a dah. But, because the second tone needed to last only as long as the dit, more information could be sent in a given time. It was also thought that it would be easier to distinguish between tones of different frequencies than to distinguish between a short tone and a long tone of the same frequency.
He was granted a U.S. patent because, at this point, he was living in the United States. He had emigrated to the U.S. in 1896, and was pastor of the Sacred Heart Slovak Church in Wilkes-Barre, PA. There, he found a couple of investors, and they formed the Universal Aether Telegraph Company. The company built several antenna towers and successfully demonstrated the system, but an unfortunate series of events, including the death of one of the investors, and a storm which destroyed one of the antenna towers, caused the company to fold.
All told, he was granted more than a dozen patents, including one for a unique way to build an antenna – U.S. Patent 860,051, “Constructing Antennas for Wireless Telegraphy,” July 16, 1907. He was also granted a patent for a fishing rod reel.
Murgas was much more than an inventor. In addition to his work as a priest, he was involved in the Slovak independence movement and collected butterflies. He amassed a collection of more than 9,000 butterflies before he died.
His memory lives on in the guise of the Murgas Amateur Radio Club, of Wilkes-Barre, PA. Their QSL card, shown below, contains a photograph of the towers constructed behind the church to support his radio experiments. (I guess there were no onerous homeowners association agreements back then.) They seem like a very active group.
Before leaving, Jozef invited me to the Slovak festival at Ss. Cyril and Methodius. It takes place on Friday, August 26, from 6 – 11 pm, Saturday, August 26, from 1 pm – 11 pm, and Sunday, August 27, from noon – 9 pm. I’ll also extend that invitation to you. If you go, let me know, and I’ll meet you there. We’ll drink some Slovak beer and eat some klobasa (sausage) and holubky (stuffed cabbage).