In the winter of 1917, a group of Lewiston teenagers formed the Twin City Radio Wireless Club, an organization ahead of its time. Communicating without wires was a new concept, and like teenagers at the beginning of the computer age, this group embraced the new technology much faster than their parent’s generation.

Most of the club members were techno pioneers who already owned their own wireless equipment. They spent their free time in front of their receivers, sending messages to each other and listening for distress signals. The technology had not yet advanced to voice transmission; instead, the participants used continental code, similar to the Morse system. Operators who practiced regularly could transmit upwards to ten words in a minute.

Electrical class teacher Frederick Pierce was a wireless enthusiast himself and had obtained for his class a state-of-the-art unit.

“Our high school radio apparatus is the best in the city,” he said in a newspaper interview. “We have picked up messages as far away as Key West, Florida.”

By the time club was formed, military and government personnel were beginning to find practical uses for wireless advancements in communication. Lewiston High School student Richard Anthony explained that, “It is the only system that can be used on ships at sea, and already some of our boys have picked up the dread S.O.S., or signal of distress.”

As the young men in Maine experimented with this new technology, Europe was already in the throes of the Great War. The British were beginning to use radio telegraph operations to warn the troops of gas attacks. The Germans experimented with radio transmissions to help airships navigate to their bombing run targets.

“The great value of this system,” said Pierce, “lies in the fact that there are no wires that can be cut by an enemy.”

In March of 1917, Americans like Pierce were already speculating that their country would soon be entering the Great War. “If our government should suddenly want a large number of wireless operators,” said Pierce, “such clubs as ours would be a reservoir from which to draw.”

Only a few weeks after Pierce and Anthony made their observations, the United States declared war on Germany, and the government, led by the Navy, took over control of all radio communications. The activities of the Twin City Radio Wireless Club came to an abrupt halt on April 7, 1917. For the duration of the war it became illegal for private U.S. citizens to even possess an operational radio transmitter or receiver.

It was the end of an era for amateur radio operators such as the wireless group in Lewiston. They were, however, on the forefront of a new technology that has led to innovations such as the commercial radio stations and cell phones we take for granted today.

“The art is yet in its infancy,” said Anthony in March of 1917. “We cannot now foresee where it will end.”

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past nine years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington. Additional research for this column by University of Maine at Farmington student David Farady.

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