Wireless Priest: Archibald Shaw and the Maritime Wireless Telegraph Company

Around 1910 a forward thinking Catholic priest, Archibald Shaw, was experimenting with spark-gap wireless about a decade before broadcast radio took-off. He founded an engineering factory in the Sydney suburb of Randwick. Shaw was a missionary priest and his intention was to use the wireless sets he manufactured to keep in touch with distant missionaries throughout New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. He hoped that profits from his factory might bring his order's missionary accounts out of d...