Appendix A

Extracts from the proceedings of the New Zealand Parliament on the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1903

The Hon. Mr Pitt - Sir, the object of this Bill is to provide protection to the Government in case the Marconi system should be introduced into New Zealand. The State has taken to itself protection in the matter of electric lines and telephones, and it is thought proper to be in time in securing for the State similar protection [for wireless telegraphy], and not to wait until some company or individual may have acquired vested interests in respect of it.

We know that the question of electricity is a very important one, and the Government are moving in the direction of conserving rights in reference to the motive power obtainable from the rivers of the colony, and there can be no question that the Government are doing well in asking for the protection which is embodied in the provisions of this Bill........

The whole principle of the Bill is that the Government intend to acquire a monopoly of the system, just in the same way as has been done in regard to telegraph-lines and telephones.

The opposition, however, made a case for allowing private use of the technology that did not threaten Government revenue:

The Hon. Mr A Lee Smith ... I would like to ask ... whether consideration has not been given also to development of scientific enterprise here ... I know of a young man of a scientific turn of mind who is making experiments in the direction of developing the Marconi system, and also another system, the technical name of which I forget, and he has so far succeeded that he can communicate with his family to a distance of about two miles..... Take a large station in the country, for instance, where there are two houses say 20 miles from each other.

What a great advantage it would be to the owner if he could by means of wireless telegraphy communicate from one place to another... This is just one of those things which shows the progressive spirit on the part of the British people with regard to new enterprises.

The debate then went on to focus on why the Government should have a monopoly on any telephone or telegraph system, whether or not it was wireless:

Sir W.R. Russell ... could not conceive any Department [Post and Telegraph] .... should be so guilty of the enormities which had been perpetrated in the matter of telephones. To run a private telephone the Government demanded the payment of two pounds....In [my] neighbourhood in Hawkes Bay you could see a trimmed totara tree with a single wire running upon it, and alongside there was a private telephone with a post not half the size of the post of the Government telephone, and the private telephone-post carried six wires... The Bill would prevent private persons from being able to take advantage of modern inventions and compel them to depend upon a Government Department....

The Right Hon. Mr Seddon ... If the British Government thought it necessary to send a communication .... to this colony... then our Government should do its duty to the Colony and to the Empire as well. [You] have been treating this question of wireless telegraphy just as though it were telephone lines... and if honourable members cannot discern the difference between a telephone line... and wireless telegraphy, with all its potentialities, then I am sorry for you!

The issue of interception of messages intended for someone else also came under scrutiny:

Hon Sir J G Ward ... If the honourable member would read up the records of the Marconi system he would find that Marconi himself admits that he has not yet solved the difficulty of preventing wireless messages from being intercepted by any other station before reaching their destination. If, therefore, private people in this colony were allowed to establish Marconi receivers, the contents of messages sent by this system could be intercepted, and the contents of them could be known to those for whom they were not intended, and that would destroy the value of the system.

There was also a less than perfect understanding of radio wave propagation but we must remember the embryonic nature of wireless technology which was almost beyond concept to most persons of the day:

The Right Hon. Mr Seddon ... Under the Marconi system one of the difficulties is that the messages cannot be transmitted in a direct line from station to station. They went in circles, and the circumference of the circles was not under special control, because it was subject to atmospheric conditions - winds and other things - so that if a Marconi message was going to any point in the Colony, or from the Colony, it would not go in a direct line but in a series of circles. It would therefore surely be seen that if private people were allowed to establish stations ... many of these Marconigrams would be intercepted and never reach their proper destination...

The colony of New Zealand owned the telegraph system and had installed it at a very heavy cost indeed. They were also interested in the Pacific cable, and in the event of the Marconi system becoming perfected so as to be brought into general use in the colony, the State, and the State alone, ought to control it for public purposes.