AtDTDA 107.11 Tesla Device

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

             Their only instructions were to steer southwest and 
          await course correction from a station unnamed, at 
          a distance indeterminate, which would be calling 
          in via the airship's new Tesla device, which had 
          remained siloent since the day it was installed, 
          though kept ever electrified and flawlessly calibrated.

             The voices which arrived over the next ferw days 
          were difficult to credit with any origin in the material 
          sphere. Even the unimaginative Lindsay Noseworth 
          reported feeling a fine sustained chill across his 
          shoulders whenever the instrument began its hoarse 
          whispering. AtD 107

The "Tesla Device" is of course a radio, one of the very first.
This website---Tesla: Life and Legacy---has loads of fine,
relevant material on Tesla. I'd point in particular to this
little excerpt from the longer article below:
 
             But Tesla's calm confidence was shattered in 1904, 
          when the U.S. Patent Office suddenly and surprisingly 
          reversed its previous decisions and gave Marconi a 
          patent for the invention of radio. The reasons for this 
          have never been fully explained, but the powerful 
          financial backing for Marconi in the United States 
          suggests one possible explanation.

All of the following "connects":

             With his newly created Tesla coils, the inventor soon 
          discovered that he could transmit and receive powerful 
          radio signals when they were tuned to resonate at the 
          same frequency. When a coil is tuned to a signal of a 
          particular frequency, it literally magnifies the incoming 
          electrical energy through resonant action. By early 
          1895, Tesla was ready to transmit a signal 50 miles to 
          West Point, New York... But in that same year, disaster 
          struck. A building fire consumed Tesla's lab, destroying 
          his work.

          The timing could not have been worse. In England, a 
          young Italian experimenter named Guglielmo Marconi 
          had been hard at work building a device for wireless 
          telegraphy. The young Marconi had taken out the first 
          wireless telegraphy patent in England in 1896. His device 
          had only a two-circuit system, which some said could not 
          transmit "across a pond." Later Marconi set up 
          long-distance demonstrations, using a Tesla oscillator to 
          transmit the signals across the English Channel.

          Tesla filed his own basic radio patent applications in 1897. 
          They were granted in 1900. Marconi's first patent application 
          in America, filed on November 10, 1900, was turned down. 
          Marconi's revised applications over the next three years were 
          repeatedly rejected because of the priority of Tesla and 
          other inventors.

          The Patent Office made the following comment in 1903:

          Many of the claims are not patentable over Tesla patent 
          numbers 645,576 and 649,621, of record, the amendment 
          to overcome said references as well as Marconi's 
          pretended ignorance of the nature of a "Tesla oscillator" 
          being little short of absurd... the term "Tesla oscillator" 
          has become a household word on both continents [Europe 
          and North America].

          But no patent is truly safe, as Tesla's career demonstrates. 
          In 1900, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd. 
          began thriving in the stock markets—due primarily to 
          Marconi's family connections with English aristocracy. 
          British Marconi stock soared from $3 to $22 per share 
          and the glamorous young Italian nobleman was 
          internationally acclaimed. Both Edison and Andrew 
          Carnegie invested in Marconi and Edison became a 
          consulting engineer of American Marconi. Then, on 
          December 12, 1901, Marconi for the first time transmitted 
          and received signals across the Atlantic Ocean.

          Otis Pond, an engineer then working for Tesla, said, 
          "Looks as if Marconi got the jump on you." Tesla replied, 
          "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using 
          seventeen of my patents."

          But Tesla's calm confidence was shattered in 1904, 
          when the U.S. Patent Office suddenly and surprisingly 
          reversed its previous decisions and gave Marconi a 
          patent for the invention of radio. The reasons for this 
          have never been fully explained, but the powerful 
          financial backing for Marconi in the United States 
          suggests one possible explanation.

          Tesla was embroiled in other problems at the time, 
          but when Marconi won the Nobel Prize in 1911, 
          Tesla was furious. He sued the Marconi Company 
          for infringement in 1915, but was in no financial 
          condition to litigate a case against a major corporation. 
          It wasn't until 1943—a few months after Tesla's 
          death— that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla's 
          radio patent number 645,576. The Court had a selfish 
          reason for doing so. The Marconi Company was suing 
          the United States Government for use of its patents in 
          World War I. The Court simply avoided the action by 
          restoring the priority of Tesla's patent over Marconi.

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_whoradio.html