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Cartagena, Columbia. The Sayville station would have been transmitting to it. The government continued to obscure the actual events that had led to the takeover of the station. For some unknown reason they tried to coverup the fact that an amateur wireless operator, Apgar, had assisted in the Sayville takeover. Under a specific statute of law all the records were impounded. Whether these records remained impounded or were destroyed is unknown, but Charles never received any of the original recordings that he had made. In the following days even more doubt was generated about who was responsible for the takeover. On July 19 in the New York Herald under Official War News, the government again insisted that the Apgar records played no part in the seizure of Sayville. Captain William H. Bullard the Navy officer administering supervision of the Sayville station denied that the Apgar recordings played no part whatever in the decision."He went on to say that when he was sent to take command of the Sayville station after the takeover that the records made by Apgar had not even been seen let alone compared with the original messages. Bullard gave all the credit for the takeover to the Naval radio station in Arlington, Virginia. The Bureau of Navigation and the Department of Commerce backed up Bullard's statement and went one step further saying that "they regarded the records as merely incidental to the mass of detail gathered by the regular government investigators," They also claimed that "the apparatus to record the messages is not new and is in general use throughout." This last statement epitomizes the invalidity of these claims as there were only two recorders in existence at that time and they belonged to Apgar. Whatever the reason for the smoke screens being thrown up about who was responsible for breaking the code, even Chief Flynn at that time refused to corroborate Apgar's contribution. When asked about the sequence of events leading up to the takeover, Flynn could not deny that Apgar was involved. Almost ten years later, Flynn, now the head of a detective agency, admitted in response to a letter from Apgar that he still had "the records you made but unfortunately time has made some of them useless." The records referred to were examples of wireless recordings not the Sayville recordings. At least this letter erased some of the doubt that had been clouding the issue of whether Apgar was instrumental in helping the government break the code and take over the Sayville station.Even though Charles received a huge amount of press coverage he never derived the financial rewards that should have come with such inventions. At one point during the Sayville affair Charles said that a patent was pending on the wireless recorder. He didn't receive a patent on it and never made any other reference to it except to say that it was pending. He never patented his paper cone |
speaker, either. It would appear that Charles was not into wireless for money or recognition, he was in it for the pure pleasure and satisfaction that he could be helpful to his country. In fact it almost seems as if there was a government conspiracy to suppress information that might prove useful in the coming war effort. As long as there was no patent on his wireless invention, the Germans would have difficulty using the device for their own purposes. The fact that it was such a new invention prevented many people from accepting the facts about the Sayville incident, but in the New York World, July 8, 1915 his actions were described as "the most valuable service ever rendered by an amateur radio operator to our country." In fact it would seem that helping out his country was his highest priority. Twenty-five years later, when Charles was 75, he sounded a "call to arms" to the 55,000 radio ham operators in this country. The second World War had started the year before, and once again the U.S. feared its neutrality was being threatened by the German spies. Apgar described the fifth column activities "a thousand times more perilous than they were in 1915 before the term was invented" and urged all ham operators to try to help "paralyze the most insidious weapon up to now available to enemies of our democracy."Why the government tried to cover up the fact that Apgar truly did help in the Sayville takeover has to remain a matter of conjecture. Maybe he did not get his patent because the government realized that the Germans would steal it. It is ironical that he never applied for patents on his other inventions and yet on the one he decided to patent, he never received it. The fact that sinkings of allied shipping decreased rapidly after his breakthrough in recording messages on wax cylinders was very satisfying to him. Although a slim example in American history this shows how the dedication of a single amateur scientist with limited resources could foil a part of Germany's espionage network. The publicity generated by this incident perhaps slightly accelerated the United States' entrance into World War I.
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