160 Master Minds of Modern Science 



But the saving of lives is only one of the many benefits 

 which wireless communication has conferred upon the 

 world. Wireless in the home has become such a common- 

 place that very young folk hardly realize that it is only a 

 short time since there was no such thing. Wireless is 

 invaluable in the work that it is doing for the education 

 and entertainment of young and old. Its social value 

 from another standpoint was proved in Britain during the 

 great strike of 1926, when there were no newspapers, and 

 when it served to tranquillize the public mind. 



Wireless is perhaps of greatest value in drawing the 

 various nations of the world closer together. An English 

 boy who can listen to a French orchestra playing or to a 

 German singing is brought close to the people of other 

 countries. Possibly he gets an idea of them quite different 

 from that which his father had when he was a boy twenty 

 or thirty years ago. He does not want to fight them. 

 Wireless is becoming the handmaid of the League of 

 Nations in the prevention of war. 



Wireless telephony is already so perfect that speech is 

 possible between any two points on our planet, however 

 far apart. Quite recently an aeroplane circling above the 

 everlasting ice of the Antarctic continent was in com- 

 munication with a station in the northern part of the 

 United States. Yet Marconi's own belief is that the 

 science is still in its infancy, and that it is by no means 

 impossible that through wireless we may eventually get 

 into touch with other worlds. Since 1920 wireless 

 operators have been puzzled by interruptions to their 

 signals. Operators have heard these signals simul- 

 taneously in London and New York, and Marconi himself 

 has said of them : 



We occasionally get very queer sounds and indications 

 which might have come from somewhere outside the earth. 

 We have also noticed that in these interruptions some letters 

 occur with much greater frequency than others. The letter S 



