I was watching an episode of I Love Lucy where the gang was on their way to Europe on a ship. They mentioned that their room on the ship had a telephone which they could use to call the main land. I was wondering how the signal was routed. I know that international calls at the time were routed through undersea cables but how do you call a boat in the middle of the ocean in 1956. Sputnik was not launched until 1957 (even so I doubt the Russians were worried about routing personal calls for American tourists). Any ideas?
Ever hear of Marconi? Radio? Ship-to-shore radio?
it was AM radio at frequencies that could bounce to cover long distances. shortwave radio broadcasters and ham radio use these frequencies and AM for world distance communication. ham radio and other two way communications may also use a variation called ‘single side band’ which was used in that time period.
International aircraft flights still use HF. The VHF radios used domestically won’t normally reach but a short distance beyond the horizon. (which can be several hundred miles from high altitude) There are anomalous propagation conditions that can allow long range VHF communication, but these are rare and unreliable.
In the OP’s example, the phone would have connected to the ship’s radio room. The ship’s radio operator and a land based operator would “patch” the radio equipment to the phone lines. This would be a half duplex connection…conversation only one direction at a time, no spontaneous interrupting, and the radio operators would have to listen to the conversation, and manually switch the direction as required. The conversants would request the direction changes by saying “over”. I would not be surprised if the Lucy show exploited this for humor…Either working the “over” into jokes, forgetting to say it, or complaining about having to say it.
In 1966, my father had to travel to St Helena [S. Atlantic] on business and he called us on Christmas Day like this from on board the Capetown Castle. It sounded very far away (though from his end it didn’t).
I called home once from a ship off of South America with this setup, except that the patch was run over a MARS station. Same general idea.
fact added
MARS is Military Auxiliary Radio System which military and ham radio operators participate in.