The First Ever Wireless Hack: Marconi vs Maskelyne

Tom Scott writes:

No, it wasn’t called “hacking” back then: it was called “scientific hooliganism”. Let’s talk about Marconi, Nevil Maskelyne, and a demonstration that didn’t go as planned:

I’m indebted to Sungook Hong’s wonderful book “Wireless”, which helped me track down some of the more obscure sources here — and to the British Library, whose incredible archives and microfilm tapes helped me find the original newspapers and journals you see in the video.

For those not familiar with Tom Scott, he’s a British geek comedian, YouTuber, programmer, and formerly the presenter of Gadget Geeks on Sky One. He lives in London and is originally from Nottinghamshire. Tom publishes some fantastic science related clips on YouTube, such as:

Bugs, Exploits and Computer Minutiae: Will YouTube Ever Run Out Of Video IDs?

In the URL of each YouTube video is the 11-character video ID, unique for each video. Can they ever run out? Just how many videos can YouTube handle? To work it out, we need to talk about counting systems, and about something called Base 64.

Amazing Places: Inside a Satellite Clean Room

Welcome to Innovative Space Logistics, in the Netherlands: they invited me inside their clean room to see an actual CubeSat satellite that’s going into space soon! (No, this isn’t a sponsored video: I paid my own way there!) Go look at their site: http://isilaunch.com – and if you need to send something into space, get in touch with them!