626 ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 



provided, however, that the insulation of overhead wires can be 

 maintained above a certain low limit. Investigations in this direc- 

 tion conducted by engineers of the American Telegraph and Tele- 

 phone Company, and by the engineers of Siemens and Halske of 

 Berlin, have yielded most satisfactory results, so that the ques- 

 tion whether we shall soon have telephonic communication with 

 San Francisco and other places on the Pacific slope, or between say 

 St. Petersburg and Madrid, is merely a question of a sufficiently 

 strong commercial demand. 



The Wireless Wave Transmission Problem 



The public is not yet on terms of familiarity with the wireless 

 transmission scheme. The public is not quite sure that it knows 

 who is the real representative of this new civilizing agent. Is it 

 Marconi? Is it Tesla, or is it some one of the many other dark lu- 

 minaries? Marconi used to be their wireless hero, but there have 

 sprung up lately so many champions of the cause of other invent- 

 ors --and the courts have not spoken yet --that the public is 

 somewhat puzzled. Under these conditions of uncertainty the 

 public is not quite sure that the time has yet arrived to decide 

 whether wireless transmission is essential to its present happiness. 

 Besides, the gods of the Army and Navy departments have de- 

 cided that wireless telegraphy is an essential element of their mili- 

 tary equipment and the public must step back. The public can no 

 more be allowed a free play with wireless telegraphy than they 

 can be allowed to keep dynamite in their back yards or to steam 

 about in torpedo boats. The war lords have spoken, and neither 

 the inventor, nor the disappointed stockholder, nor the patent 

 office dare open their mouths. When a United States general or 

 admiral announces with all official solemnity that the scientists 

 of the Army or Navy have devised a wireless method of their 

 own and the intelligent public observes that not only this military 

 wireless system but also that other alleged new wireless systems, 

 recognized and patronized by the Government, and known as the 

 Fessenden, De Forest, Slaby-Arco, Braun, and I do not know 

 what other kind of systems, look in every particular like the famil- 

 iar old Marconi system, they stand perplexed and ask, well, 

 who has invented what? For they must either all of them have 

 invented the same thing and do not know the remarkable coinci- 

 dence, or nobody has invented anything, or one man is the real 

 inventor and the rest are bold-faced fakirs. Each one of these 

 hypotheses seems equally improbable. This mixed-up state of affairs 

 has produced a marked depression of public interest in wireless 

 telegraphy, and consequently it has delayed quite seriously the 



