210 Mr. G. Marconi on Electric S;pace Telegraphy. [June 13, 



The day is rapidly approacliing when ships will be able to be in 

 touch and communication with the shore across all oceans, and the 

 quiet and isolation from the outside world which it is still possible 

 to enjoy on board ship will, I fear, soon be things of the past. How^- 

 ever great may be the importance of wireless telegraphy to ships and 

 shipping, I believe it will be of even greater importance to the world 

 if found workable and applicable over such great distances as those 

 which divide Great Britain from her colonies and from America. 

 Any of those w^ho have lived in the colonies will easily appreciate 

 what a hardship it is to have to wait, perhaps, four or five weeks 

 before receiving an answer to a letter sent home. The cable rates 

 are at present prohibitive to a vast majority of people. May it not, 

 perhaps, be for wireless telegraphy to supply the want ? 



I apologise for having kept you so long, but I cannot help reading 

 you, in conclusion, a short extract from a leading article in the 

 London Times of Saturday, December 21, 1901, published at the 

 time of the Newfoundland experiments. And I do so because it 

 expresses in language of admirable clearness the sentiments with 

 which I myself regard this subject : — "It would probably be difficult 

 to exaggerate the good eifect of wireless telegraphy if, as Mr. Marconi 

 and Mr. Edison evidently believe, and as the Anglo-American Com- 

 pany evidently fear, it can at no distant time be developed into a 

 commercial success. The expense of telegraphy to distant countries 

 is at present prohibitory to vast numbers of people, and even those 

 who use it do so only in respect of matters of great urgency, or in 

 which large money interests are at stake. The reason of the high 

 charges must be sought, of course, in the enormous costliness of the 

 plant, both in its original construction and in its maintenance and 

 repair. A system of aerial telegraphy which would not require an 

 expensive plant, and through which, therefore, messages might be 

 sent at moderate rates, would soon become a potent agent in cement- 

 ing those ties between Great Britain and the Colonies which other 

 recent events have done so much to strengthen and even to create. 

 A system of comparatively cheap telegraphs would do for the British 

 Empire very much what was done by the penny post for the United 

 Kingdom. The pathetic story of Eowland Hill, whose efibrts to 

 establish cheap postage originated in the sympathy he felt for a poor 

 girl in a Cumberland villa<i;e, who was unable to pay the sum 

 demanded for a letter from her brother in a distant county, relates an 

 event which m principle may be repeated to-day in many parts of the 

 world. A cheap telegraph service would unite families, however 

 scattered, would keep the dispersed members in close and constant 

 touch with tlie old home, and would cement friendships between our 

 own people and the Colonial nations, besides forging another link in 

 the ties which bind this country to the United States." 



[G. M.] 



