The Developing of Communication 



tated the erection of costly lines which at best could reach 

 only a portion of the population of the earth and because 

 of physical barriers some portions of the earth could not be 

 reached at all. Millions of people had no access to either 

 telegraph or telephone lines, but experiments with the tele- 

 graph and telephone had revealed the fact that there were 

 many hidden secrets yet to be discovered in connection with 

 the electrical method of transmitting sound. The searchers 

 were not satisfied and they continued in their work. 



Professor Morse, who perfected the telegraph, was one 

 of these searchers, and in 1842 he made experiments that 

 proved that electric telegraphy could be had between sta- 

 tions not connected by wire, but for what distance he did not 

 know. It had been discovered as early as 1838 that the 

 ground could be used as a conductor in completing the cir- 

 cuit in ordinary wire telegraphy. Hundreds of patient toil- 

 ers continued to experiment and traded to each other the 

 results of their observations, but it remained for Guglielmo 

 Marconi, an Italian, to perfect the first device for sending 

 signals based on the radiation and reception of grounded or 

 guided electromagnetic waves. This was in the year 1896, 

 and it was a combination of all that had been learned in this 

 connection together with the addition of new ideas put 

 into use. 



At first messages were sent for comparatively short dis- 

 tances and the Morse code was used. Like all other discov- 

 eries, the basic idea was improved upon, obstacles were 

 overcome and new ideas added. Only seven years after this 

 new invention came out, or in 1903, a message was trans- 

 mitted across the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 2,300 miles, 



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