296 WIKELESS TELEGRAPHY. 



latcl}' arranged to .supply small balloons to ni}' assistants for portable 

 installations on service wagons. 



While I admire the determination of Mr. Bullocke and our assistants 

 in their endeavor to do the very best they could with most imperfect 

 local means, I think it only right to say that if I had been on the spot 

 myself I should have refused to open any station until the officers had 

 provided the means for elevating the wire, which, as you know, is 

 essential to success. 



Mr. Bullocke and another of our assistants in South Africa have been 

 transferred, with some of the apparatus, to Natal to join General Bul- 

 ler's forces, and it is likely that before the campaign is ended wireless 

 telegraph}^ will have proved its utility in actual warfare. Two of our 

 assistants bravely volunteered to take an installation through the Boer 

 lines into Kimberley; but the militar}^ authority did not think tit to 

 grant them permission, as it probably involved too great a risk. 



What the bearing on the campaign would have been if working 

 installations had been established in Lad3\smith, Kimberle}^ and 

 Mafeking before they were besieged, I leave militar}' strategists to 

 state. 1 am sure you will agree with me that it is much to be regretted 

 that the S3^stem could not be got into these towns prior to the com- 

 mencement of hostilities. 



I find it hard to believe that the Boers possess any workable instru- 

 ments. Some instruments intended for them were seized ))}' the 

 authorities at Cape Town. These instruments turned out to have been 

 manufactured in Germany. Our assistants, however, found that these 

 instruments were not workable. I need hardl}^ add that as no appa- 

 ratus has been supplied by us to anyone, the Boers can not possibly 

 have obtained any of our instruments. 



I have spoken at great length about the things which have })cen 

 accomplished. 1 do not like to dwell upon what may or will be done 

 in the immediate or more distant future, but there is one thing of 

 which I am confident, viz, that the progress made this year will 

 greatly surpass what has been accomplished during the last twelve 

 months; and, speaking what I ])elieve to be sober sense, 1 say that b}^ 

 means of the wireless telegraph, telegrams will be as common and as 

 much in daily use on the sea as at present on land. 



[Mr. Marconi's experiments in trans- Atlantic telegraphing were thus 

 described in the New York Herald of Sunday, December 15, and 

 Tuesday, December 17, 1901: 



[Extract frimi New York Herald, December 15, 1901.] 



St. Johns, Newfoundland, Saturday^ December lip. 

 Mr. Marconi announced to-day that he has successfully received by 

 wireless telegraphy, at the station on Signal Hill, messages from the 



