d idea but it is hard to settle on a date when wireless hardware first came into use. Arguably it could be the photophone that Alexander Graham Bell invented (referenced in Chapter 2) or before that early line-of-sight semaphore systems. The ancient Greeks invented the trumpet as a battlefield communications system and the Romans were fond of their beacons. In December 1907 Theodore Roosevelt dispatched the Great White Fleet, 16 battleships, six torpedo boat destroyers and 14 4000 sailors and marines on a 45 000-mile tour of the world, an overt demonstration of US military maritime power and technology. The fleet was equipped with ship-to-shore telegraphy (Marconi equipment) and Lee De Forest's arc transmitter radio telephony equipment. Although unreliable, this was probably the first serious use of radio telephony in maritime communication and was used for speech and music broadcasts from the fleet - an early attempt at propaganda facilitated by radio technology. In 1908 valves were the new 'enabling technology' ushering in a new 'era of smallness and power efficiency'. Marconi took these devices and produced tuned circuits - the birth of long-distance radio transmission. Contemporary events included the first Model T Ford and the issue of a patent to the Wright brothers for their aircraft design. Between 1908 and the outbreak of war six years later there was an unprecedented investment in military hardware in Britain, the US and Germany that continued through the war years and translated into the development of radio broadcast and receiver technologies in the 1920s. In the First World War portable Morse-code transceivers were used in battlefield com- munications and even in the occasional aircraft. Radio telegraphy was used in maritime communications including U boats in the German navy. These events established a close link between military hardware development and radio system development. This relationship has been ever present over the past 100 years. Examples include the use of FM VHF radio in the US army 