Over the last century,
the world has become a much smaller place...
people and ideas have travelled from continent to continent
at ever greater speeds.
Two days have accelerated this revolution in mobility more than any other...
The sending of the first wireless message across the Atlantic...
and Concorde's first transatlantic flight to New York.
This is a dramatisation of events as they happened on those two days.
It is 1901.
On the Isle of Wight,
Queen Victoria dies at the age of 81.
In Nice, Gottlieb Daimler builds his first Mercedes automobile.
Rioters set St petersburg alight during a protest against tsarist rule.
And in St John's, Newfoundland,
the world is about to wake up to the power of wireless.
December 1901.
The world lives in almost total radio silence.
With electromagnetic waves virtually unknown to science,
radio, television and mobile phones haven't even been dreamt of.
The preferred method of long distance mobile communication is by carrier pigeon.
But one of the greatest amateur inventors of all time is set on changing all that.
Guigliemo Marconi is obsessed by one goal...
Something that no-one else believe will ever be possible...
...to send a wireless message one hundred and fifty times further
than anyone else in history...
Eighteen hundred miles across the Atlantic Ocean.
Poldhu, Cornwall.
Home to what's been dubbed 'The Thunder Factory'.
Inside is experimental electrical equipment
designed by Marconi for his grand enterprise.
It's one hundred times more powerful than anything ever built.
Today this equipment will be pressed into service for a unique experiment.
Chief engineer William Entwhistle has received
a telegram from his boss, Marconi.
'Riviera' is a secret codeword.
It's the instruction for poldhu to start transmitting
electromagnetic signals from three p.m.
Entwhistle has exactly four and a half hours
to make sure all the machinery is ready.
When the transmission begins,
twenty thousand volts of electricity will leap
between the two brass spheres of the spark gap.
At this exact moment 1800 miles across the Atlantic,
Newfinland is waking up.
In the luxurious Cochrane Hotel,
one of the guests is hoping to change history...
by being the first to harness the power of this mysterious new medium...
known as electromagnetic radio waves.
They were discovered in 1886 by the German physicist Heinrich Hertz.
Since then the race has been on to profit from them commercially.
In France, Eugene Ducretet has sent a wireless message over two miles
from the Eiffel Tower to the roof of the pantheon.
In Germany,
professor Slaby has sent a signal over thirteen miles...
Marconi is desperate not to be overtaken by his rivals.
But he makes an unlikely challenger
to the luminaries of the scientific establishment...
The son of an Irish mother and an Italian father,
he has almost no formal education...
But he's been obsessed with wireless since he was eight.
Yes?
Morning, Mr Marconi.
I thought you might want to read this.
Thank you Mr Kemp.
George Kemp is what Marconi has called his
'first assistant and valued collaborator and friend.'
Just two days ago,
the first ever Nobel prize has been awarded for brilliance in physics...
Marconi knows that the hours ahead could also bring him fame and fortune.
Or they may lead to scientific ridicule and financial ruin.
The mere memory of it makes me shudder.
To me, there is a question of the life and death of my future...
Marconi's already in the public eye.
He's been nicknamed by the press 'the wonderful wizard of wireless'.
"Any indication about the weather?"
His experiments have been funded through family connections.
His mother belongs to the Jameson family, makers of Irish whiskey...
Their friends have backed Marconi heavily.
...in the coming days heavy storms expected occasioning bad shipping...
it would appear the weather is against us...
From Marconi's hotel on the Newfoundland coast,
it's a short walk to the location he's chosen for his experiment.
High on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic is Signal Hill.
It was here that the first successful telegraph cable connecting
Britain with the American continent had been laid in 1866.
Thirty five years on,
Marconi's dream is to make long distance communication wireless.
Disregarding conventional opinion,
Marconi is convinced that radio waves can somehow travel beyond the horizon...
Unlike his contemporaries,
he has an instinctive grasp of their practical potential.
"These waves might furnish mankind with a new and powerful means of communication,
utilisable not only across continents and seas,
but also on board ships,
bringing with it a vast diminution of the dangers of navigation..."
Eighteen hundred miles across the Atlantic,
it's less than two hours before the transmission begins.
Blasting an electromagnetic signal such a distance will require enormous power.
To achieve this,
an oil engine has been connected to an industrial alternator...
capable of generating twenty five kilowatts of electricity.
Marconi hopes this will be enough to make the wireless signals leap
across the Atlantic to where he and Kemp are waiting in Newfoundland.
Marconi has set up his receiving station in an abandoned barracks on Signal Hill.
Over in Cornwall,
transmitting the wireless signals may require
twenty thousand volts of electricity...
But here in Newfinland,
Marconi's attempt to receive those signals will rely on just 12 volts of batteries.
Marconi has brought across with him state-of-the art
Edwardian equipment.
Marconi's assistant Kemp is also a wireless expert.
Before joining Marconi in 1896,
he'd been in the Navy as an electrical and torpedo instructor.
While serving in the North Atlantic he also learned
how to keep out the winter chills.
Marconi's desktop equipment is now prepared
to receive signals Later this morning
but his obsessive preparations for the day have been going on for months.
Three months earlier,
Marconi is on the other side of the Atlantic in Cornwall...
The outcome of the experiment will depend on one thing above all else:
His design for the transmitting aerial.
He's arrived at it's dimentions by trial and error.
I cannot understand why the scientists do not see this thing as I do.
It is perfectly simple and depends merely on the height of wire used.
We found several years ago that if we doubled the height of our aerial wire,
we quadrupled the effect."
But the scale of his ambition is completely unprecedented
- he's determined to send a signal ninety times further
than anyone else before him...
To stand any chance of success,
an aerial of appropriate proportions will be needed.
His design for a ring of masts is nearing completion... 200 feet up,
riggers are lashing the remaining masts into place.
Marconi has been warned that his masts are structurally unsound.
But he's pressing on regardless.
Any delay could result in being overtaken by one of his rivals.
But in his haste,
Marconi has overlooked one unavoidable feature of Cornish life...
the Atlantic weather.
Just hours after his inspection,
a violent storm brews over the Atlantic.
Marconi has ignored warnings
that the aerial has insufficient guy ropes securing it.
And he's about to discover if these warnings have been justified.
Marconi's ambitions lie in ruins.
For some days I had visions of my experiment having to be postponed
for several months or longer.
And then I decided that it might be possible to make a similar trial
with a simpler aerial.
To get this far has taken Marconi unwavering determination.
Hes not about to give up now.
He gives Kemp orders to salvage what he can from the wrecked masts.
Testing his engineering skills to the full,
Kemp sets to work on his boss' new design.
Within a week,
the salvaged aerial is ready.
Marconi can now finalise his travel plans to cross the Atlantic.
At the end of November,
Marconi finally sets sail from Liverpool to Newfinland.
He's still deeply uncertain of the outcome of his experiment...
so he's decided to keep it's true nature a closely guarded secret.
"A moment of your time, Mr Marconi, please..."
"yes, certainly"
"May I ask, is it true, as some have conjectured,
that you are intending to send radio waves across the Atlantic?"
"Not in the least.
I have never suggested such an idea and,
though the feat maybe accomplished some day,
it has yet hardly been thought here..."
"thank you sir"
A well-publicised failure would expose Marconi to ridicule
from the scientific establishment,
who scoff at his 'mad' wireless dreams.
The press doesn't quite know what to make of the young inventor.
"Though a purely Italian name,
there is nothing of the foreigner in Mr Marconi's appearance.
His speech is that of an educated scientific Englishman,
and his dress and general manner are those of a pleasant, young English gentleman."
To justify his trip to New Finland,
Marconi has fabricated a cover story.
Officially,
he'll merely be conducting short-range wireless tests from ship-to-shore.
His baggage raises no suspicions.
But it's contents are hardly those typical of a travelling Edwardian gentleman.
If word gets out about what's inside,
the young inventor fears he'll be written off by many as a crank...
But it's notjust Marconi's reputation that's at stake.
It's his finances too...
"My experiment involved risking at least 50,000 pounds,
to achieve a result which had been declared impossible
by some of the principle mathematicians of the time."
Almost nothing is known to science about how radio waves work.
They seem to have magical properties and have been shown to travel through air,
wood and even stone and metal.
Marconi is as baffled as everyone else as to how they do this.
One of Marconi's rivals,
a professor of electricity at Oxford University,
is even convinced that radio waves may be used to communicate with the dead.
The scientific establishment believes
that transmitting radio waves across the Atlantic is impossible.
But that's exactly what Marconi is intending to do.
Marconi has no idea whether radio waves actually travel through water
or skim across it's surface.
But he's not a scientist.
He's an inventor.
And he's got an overwhelming hunch that somehow his signals will make it across.
Sixteen days later,
Marconi has arrived in Newfinland.
It's the day of transmission
and he's still struggling to pick up a signal from Cornwall.
He's devised a unique way of raising his aerial hundreds of feet
into the air to improve reception...
he'll be using a kite.
The Levitor kite is the British Army's latest secret weapon.
It's the brainchild of Colonel Robert Baden-powell.
He claims that a stack of his kites can lift
a volunteer soldier hundreds of feet into the air.
This would give commanders a bird's eye view of the enemy's position in battle.
Rather than carrying human cargo,
Marconi is intending to trail his receiving aerial
made of copper wire 500 feet long.
At this precise moment with eleven minutes to go,
Entwhistle prepares his team for transmission.
One of the workers recalled:
"We all put cotton wool in our ears to lessen the force
of the electric concussion,
which was not unlike the successive explosion of the maxim gun."
The critical moment has come,
for which I have been preparing for six years...
In which I have faced numerous kinds of criticism,
and attempts to discourage me and turn me from my ultimate purpose.
In Cornwall,
Entwhistle's orders from Marconi are to transmit
the letter 'S' from exactly 3 o'clock.
In Morse Code, 'S' is made up of three dots.
"Circuits stable. Check"
Tapping out even this simplest of signals puts a huge strain on the power plant.
A worker at poldhu remarked:
"When the door of the enclosure was opened,
the roar of the discharge could be heard for miles along the coast.
This smashing discharge was noteworthy.
Every metal gutter, drainpipe or object on the site resonated freely."
"...that's another one gone... how many have we got left?"
"Two"
Thirty two minutes into the broadcast from Cornwall,
Marconi still hasn't heard anything.
Of his six kites, four have now been lost.
In Cornwall, dusk is already falling.
Another kite has been launched and is in the air.
But Marconi's Morse inker has still not been activated.
He is totally isolated and
has no way of contacting Cornwall to see whether anything's wrong at their end.
"Tell your man to keep the kite steady!
Tell your man to keep the kite steady!"
Marconi will have to rely on his hearing alone.
The receiver on the table before me was very crude.
I placed a single earphone on my ear and started listening.
Poldhu has been blasting out dots for an hour.
"Kemp... can you hear anything Mr Kemp?"
"Yes I think I can!"
"Three dots!"
For the first time in history,
a radio signal was bridging continents.
"The electric waves,
which were being sent out from poldhu,
had traversed the Atlantic,
serenely ignoring the curvature of the earth,
which so many doubters considered would be a fatal obstacle."
"Timecheck, Mr Kemp"
Twelve thirty exactly.
"In my earliest experiments I had always held the belief...
almost an intuition...
that radio signals would some day be sent across far greater distances.
I now knew that all my anticipations had been justified."
"We've done it!"
"Well done Kemps!"
Marconi's predictions were soon fulfilled.
His success in Newfoundland caught the world by surprise.
"May I propose a toast... to our great success!"
"Here here"
"success!"
Feted by the world's press,
Marconi became a household name overnight.
He was still just twenty seven years old.
"If I could ask you to capture the moment for us please?!"
The pioneering work of the man who described himself
as an 'ardent amateur' was recognised by the scientific establishment.
In 1909,
eight years after the Nobel prize was established,
Marconi was awarded the prize for physics.
The practical value of his equipment was dramatically proven three years later
when the Titanic sank just off Newfinland.
It's wireless distress signals were picked up by a nearby ship.
The press credited Marconi for the 712 lives that were saved.
Wireless had come of age.
As the 20th century continued,
the invisible web of wireless communication
that Marconi started weaving spread around the world... and beyond.
"...the London station of the British Broadcasting company calling..."
"I am speaking to you in the cabinet room at ten downing street..."
"the opening programme will now be repeated on on the Marconi EMI system..."
"it's one small step for man..."
"and good morning everyone and welcome to the exciting new sound of Radio one..."
"The vodafone you have called has not responded..."
"...one giant leap for mankind"
Marconi's mastery over radio waves triggered a revolution in communication.
Seventy six years later,
the world's first supersonic passenger plane beckoned a revolution in travel.
But it would be travel at a price...
It's 1977.
In Tenerife,
five hundred and seventy four people die as two Jumbo Jets collide
at Las palmas airport.
Elvis presley is found dead at his home in Memphis, Tennessee.
Egypt's president Sadat becomes the first Arab leader
to make a state visit to Israel.
And at Toulouse airport,
the world's fastest airliner is standing idle beside runway one-five.
The seventeenth of October, 1977:
The most controversial passenger plane ever built is in the dock...
The Supreme Court in Washington DC is deciding whether
this triumph of European technology can land at America's busiest airport...
France's leading test pilot,
Jean Franchi, is standing by for the most important flight of his career.
And British Airways pilot Brian Walpole is marking time
while Concorde's odds are weighed up in America.
If the Supreme Court says yes,
it could result in a hundred more Concorde's
flying commercially in the decades ahead.
If it says no,
the most expensive passenger plane ever built
will become a museum piece overnight...
Concorde has already proven it's supersonic credentials.
The world's most glamorous plane has flown to the most glamorous cities.
But none of them will ever make it any money.
Only one city has sufficient millionaires per square mile
to keep Concorde in the air.
It's the route Concorde's been designed for... New York...
Of all the world's flights,
three quarters use the transatlantic route.
And of these, almost half touch down in the Big Apple.
If it's to have any commercial future,
Concorde needs New York.
But New York doesn't want Concorde...
We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore...
Thousands living under the flight path to
New York's John F Kennedy airport are up in arms.
They're highly organised,
highly vocal middle class Americans.
And if they don't get their way,
they've got enough clout to bring the country's busiest airport to a standstill.
Spearheading the campaign to kill Concorde is Carol Berman,
a fifty two year old resident of Long Island.
As her campaign gains momentum,
Concorde gets dragged into the dock.
Official hearings assess the evidence for and against Concorde
- known in America as a supersonic transport or SST.
"The building shook... I held my ears..."
"The SST is charged with doing everything but causing ingrown toenails
and I'll be surprised if the mis-informers do not find a way to do that..."
"please... consider our fate carefully..."
Concorde's fate has been placed in an indefinite holding pattern.
After nineteen months caught up in the American legal system,
the Supreme Court makes it's decision...
Concorde can land at JFK.
They will fly a 'proving flight' into JFK
this coming Wednesday the day after tomorrow...
"Ok that's not gonna stop it"
Aerospatiale Headquarters in Toulouse,
is the French birthplace of Concorde.
Concorde Sierra Bravo can now be readied for it's
historic transatlantic flight to New York.
The evening before they are due to take off for New York,
the pilots are called to a room nearby
What do you say to the accusation
that Concorde is the noisiest commercial aircraft
that's ever been flown?
Well...
again I would come back to the fighter planes...
which are to be counted by the thousands over Vietnam...
pilots must train for six months to fly Concorde.
But something they're not prepared for is how to deal with the hostile press.
"Fuel burnt by Concorde could aversly affect the weather patterns,
the global weather patterns"
When they get to New York,
these pilots will be the human face of Concorde.
Their mission will notjust be to fly the plane,
but to win the hearts and minds of the public.
We have a few Concorde's flying...
Jean Franchi will command the first Concorde flight to New York.
During his 33 years as a test pilot,
he's had little time to spare for diplomatic niceties.
I can't really see the point of your questions...
"There are very clear procedures in place"
Brian Walpole started his flying career as
an ace in the Royal Air Force acrobatics team.
There are many other aircraft which create noise...
you can't fly an aircraft without creating noise
After British Airways bought five Concorde's in 1975,
it was not long before he was put in charge of the Concorde fleet.
"Youll admit there is a risk?"
"No"
"well, we've been told that the sonic boom for example on landing is going to...
"well you must realised that if we were to land at sonic speed
we would have a far greater problem than noise..."
Concorde seems to be polarising opinion like no other aircraft in history.
"Thank you gentleman"
"well done gents"
The grilling has not been conducted by a journalist
but by a pR man from the British Airways press office.
"And erm, sorry about the lights and everything,
we just wanted to make it as realistic as possible
now we think there'll be about five hundred of them,
baying for Concorde's blood tomorrow...
Tomorrow's Concorde flight to New York will culminate in a huge press conference.
Easy on the referencesf.
To Vietnam things like that we don't want to antagonise al though
I did like how you handled the red herring
and through in about the sonic boom on landing...
now we've got a selection here of the press coverage
we've been getting in advance...
erm 1500 cars disrupt traffic to protest at SST...
SST airplane of tomorrow breaks windows,
cracks walls, stampedes cattle and will hasten the end of the American wilderness...
To win over a sceptical New York public,
the pilots will need every bit of help they can get.
Oh Brian just a word before you go...
tomorrow night is the final of the world LA Baseball series the LA dodgers against
the new York Yankies...
you can use it to break the ice?
"Ah yes good idea!"
"All the best to you"
"Thank you, Bye"
4000 miles across the Atlantic,
protest leader Carol Berman is making preparations to meet Concorde...
"okay, so what do you reckon, Joe?
This assembly women rang me yesterday,
yeah, she had this idea,
we take a bunch of kites...
yeah, we fly them over the landing approaches at JFK?
Yeah well I know..."
Across the Atlantic in Toulouse,
it's now the night before Concorde's maiden flight to New York.
If Concorde's arrival is not met with approval,
the two billion pound project will be doomed.
Today's flight will be carrying no fare paying passengers.
It is a technical proving flight only.
The crew need to convince the NY authorities that
Concorde can be treated like any other commercial aircraft.
Concorde's flight deck is crammed with the latest microchip technology.
More than a hundred items need to be checked
and cross checked before the engines can be started.
"Engine starting.
Engines four and one Starting"
Carol Berman finally sets off to organise opposition to Concorde's landing.
"...Concorde Sierra Bravo... taxi..."
"Roger Sierra Bravo"
"three, two, one, now"
At take off,
Concorde's four Rolls Royce engines have the same power
as six thousand family cars.
In the first thousand feet of the climb alone,
a tonne of fuel is used.
Five minutes after take off,
Concorde leaves Toulouse air space.
At 28,000 feet,
the crew are ready to show why the claims that
Concorde is the future of air travel should be taken seriously.
Sub-sonic airliners reach their maximum speed at Mach point 8-0
- far short of the sound barrier.
But Concorde is still warming up at these sub-sonic speeds.
It's the world's only supersonic airliner.
To create enough power to punch through the sound barrier,
it's afterburners, known as reheats, are required.
Although they use up more fuel,
they increase the thrust by 25%.
By taking on the leadership of the anti-Concorde campaign,
Carol Berman has found the perfect outlet to channel her political energies.
"...make love not noise..."
She and her fellow protestors have come up with a novel way of turning their cars
into weapons of mass civil protest.
Carol's placard has been left over from an organised 'protest'
she took part in at JFK three days before.
A convoy of over 500 cars crawled around the approach roads at 5 miles an hour.
This was the latest in a series of 'drive-slows'
that has brought traffic using JFK to a virtual standstill.
But these drive slows have done nothing to block the plans being
made for Concorde's arrival.
Concorde crosses into American air space over the mid-Atlantic.
The air at fifty eight thousand feet is crystal clear.
Concorde's cruise altitude is four miles higher
than that of any other airliner.
From this vantage point over twice the height of Mount Everest,
the crew has a clear view of the earth's curve on the horizon 300 miles away.
"You know I was going over slogans...
"make love not noise"...
no it doesn't sound right to me.
"SSTs are not for me"...
As the leading voice against Concorde,
Carol knows that every news channel in America
will be lining up to interview her later this morning.
"What do you think, you think that's good. Oh shh this is it shh"
The plight of Carol and her neighbours has become the focus of world press attention.
"...you stand here long enough youre gonna hear a lot more than this...
now if that was the SST... forget about it...
our eardrums would pop."
To assess whether Concorde really will be as loud as it's critics claim,
JFK ground staff set up noise monitors around the perimeter fence.
The engines are pulled back as Flight Sierra Bravo
approaches New York for the first time in it's career.
The visor and nose are lowered to improve the pilot's visibility on the approach.
It's half an hour before Concorde is due to touch down at JFK.
In the corridor outside hangar seventeen,
security for the upcoming press conference is unprecedented.
With 100s of extra police drafted in for the day,
Carol Berman can't get any closer than the perimeter fence.
"Ok... we wanna lot of noise too..."
Dozens of helicopters have been hired by journalists to give them
a bird's eye view of Concorde's landing.
With Concorde just minutes away,
the noise monitors are activated.
If Sierra Bravo's decibel count registers too high,
it may be banned from all commercial operations to JFK.
"SSTs are not for me, SSTs are not for me..."
Concorde touches down at eight minutes past ten in the morning East Coast time.
By outpacing the rotation of the earth,
Concorde has, in effect,
arrived more than two hours before it took off from Toulouse.
"What did you think of the Concorde landing?
"It was like a, like a vulture, you know,
pouring down black acid smoke down on our communities.
Polluting the atmosphere. E
It was an awesome sight you know it was like a big bird swooping down..."
It has been a textbook flight,
but the fate of the most expensive aircraft
ever built still hangs in the balance
"New York does not need concorde JFK and it's residence do not need the concorde"
While Concorde is being checked over outside,
it's crew confront the press in hangar seventeen.
I'm told that the NY yankies wone the world series last night after all
they have been though and Concorde is here today,
after all w'vee have been through, and it has been a lot.
New York is the city on the western side of the atlantic
for which Concordet was designed
"it's gonna be devastating devastating.
This aircraft has flunked every hearing test it's had"
The opening salvo of questions does not bode well for Concorde.
Question is: Does John Franky feel that people living around
JF Kennedy have a right to be afraid and fear for the aeroplane?
"If they believe what they read about it,
they have a right to be afraid of it...
but what I question...
is what they read about it...
"it's gonna ruine our city, you know?
We do not need the concocrde.
JFK don't not need the concorde,
the people of new york don't need the concorde."
While the flight crew face a barrage of questions,
Concorde's pR team execute their master plan to let the plane
and it's media critics stand face to face.
With many journalists awestruck by their first real look at Concorde,
the odds of it getting a favourable press start to shift in the aeroplane's favour...
"this is just a ploy by the airlines while the press are still interested
and it's all gonna change..."
Now backed by Concorde,
the mood among the flight crew becomes more confident.
Well it's about the 600th landing I've done in an aircraft
and it looked like all the others...
and the runway looked like a runway to me...
and to be honest with you,
I didn't fly a special approach for new york.
I don't want to treat the people in New York any better
than I treat the people in Toulouse, my home town!
"This is proven to be one of the worlds noisiest aircrafts..."
Concorde and it's crew are holding up well under press scrutiny.
But Concorde still faces one crucial test that
Carol is sure will vindicate her campaign... it's take off.
"What do you think will happen take off tomorrow"
"I'm confident that tomorrow the noise monitors here will register very high..."
"The beat the meter business is not the object of the exercise,
it is to satisfy the communities that we are going to be a good neighbour..."
Critics accuse Concorde of having loudest take off
of any civilian aircraft in service.
If it registers higher than the legal limit of 112 decibels,
Concorde will be dragged through legal system for a second time.
But even when Concorde's afterburners are activated,
the noise monitors are not even triggered.
Concorde finally passes its New York hearing test,
silencing it's critics.
The anti-Concorde campaign may have stalled,
but with all the press exposure she's gained,
Carol Berman's political ambitions take off.
In 1979 she's elected to the U.S. Senate.
After paying it's way for twenty six years on the transatlantic route,
Concorde made it's final landing at London Heathrow in 2003.
With this revolutionary aircraft destined to become a museum exhibit,
all hopes of future supersonic civilian flight remain grounded...
for the time being.