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Prepare for Contact, Letters of Note
"Here's a 1924 telegram from then Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Edward W. Eberle, instructing all Naval stations to monitor the airwaves for any unusual transmissions due to anticipated contact from Martians. August 22nd of that year was witness to the closest Mars opposition since 1804 (a mere 55,777,566 km), and as such provided desirable conditions in which to receive radio signals from the Red Planet. The man tasked with clearing the airwaves - a Professor David Todd - somehow managed to persuade both the Army and Navy to report any findings for a three day period, but failed to silence the country's private radio broadcasters for even two days. Needless to say, the three day exercise produced nothing but static."
Actually, "National Radio Silence Day" was successful in garnering the support of several major radio broadcasters around the world on the night of August 21-22, 1924.
Here's an excerpt about the experiment from GOING TO MARS, by Brian Muirhead and Judy & Gar Reeves-Stevens:
NATIONAL RADIO SILENCE DAY
Listening for Mars in 1924
In August, 1924, Mars made its closest approach to Earth in the 20th century. This time, not only were astronomers looking at Mars with every telescope at their disposal, a new breed of scientist was listening to Mars with the technological marvel of the age – radio.
At the time, the majority consensus of the scientific community was that though Mars probably was home to some form of vegetation or other simple lifeforms, it likely did not harbor a civilization of intelligent beings. However, even the slim possibility that it might have martians was enough for the world to cooperate in a fascinating, if little-known, experiment.
The experiment was organized by Dr. David Todd, professor emeritus of astronomy at Amherst College. With the cooperation of the U.S. Army and Navy, the Department of Commerce, radio giant RCA, and the embassies of Italy, Cuba, and Argentina, Todd was able to have almost every major radio transmitter around the world – including public radio stations – stop broadcasting for five minutes at the top of every hour during Mars’ closest approach. The idea was to eliminate as much radio interference as possible so that any signal sent by the martians would be more easily detected. To that end, under official orders from the Chief of Naval Operations and the War Department, all U.S. Navy and Army radio stations around the world were instructed to “listen-in” for possible signals from Mars, on the night of August 21-22, from midnight to 8AM local time.
In reporting the story of Dr. Todd’s request, the New York Times noted, “Although officials were strongly skeptical as to success, they seemed to take the attitude that there could be no objection to giving communication with Mars a fair trial under the best possible circumstances.”
Interestingly, that skepticism wasn’t necessarily based in the belief that we wouldn’t hear from Martians because they didn’t exist. Radio was still in its infancy, and the Times also reported that the Chief of the Radio Laboratory of the Bureau of Standards stated that no radio signals from Mars would reach the Earth because those signals could not penetrate the “heavy atmospheric shield surrounding the Earth.”
In other words, it wasn’t the idea of Martians that was impossible, it was the idea that radio signals could actually travel between Mars and Earth that was in question.
Disappointingly, despite many claims to the contrary from around the world, none of the mysterious dots and dashes heard during that opposition turned out to have come from Mars.
However, as an example of how some things never change, a clever device built by Francis Jenkins and operated by the U.S. Naval Observatory, turned those mysterious radio signals into flashes of light which were then recorded on a long roll of photographic paper. When the roll was developed – all thirty feet of it – the signals appeared as what the Times called, “a fairly regular arrangement of dots and dashes along one side.”
However, the story goes on to say that along the other side of the six-inch wide roll, “at almost evenly spaced intervals are curiously jumbled groups each taking the form of a crudely drawn face.”
A face on Mars? In the words of inventor Jenkins, “It’s a freak we can’t explain.”
Just like Percival Lowell in 1908, and those convinced there’s another face up there today, people looked to Mars in 1924, and once again saw exactly what they hoped to see.