WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 



Patent Office at Washington has been deluged with 

 new contrivances and new plans. 



Whence comes it, then, that hardly one in the 

 long list of those whose discoveries have made wire- 

 less telegraphy possible is known to the larger pub- 

 lic, while that of Signor Marconi must be familiar 

 from Siberia to the isles of the South Seas? Sim- 

 ply because he has done the practical things the 

 obvious and the dramatic things. 



Signor Marconi was probably the first to signal at 

 a distance of more than a mile, certainly the first to 

 reach across eight or nine miles. This was at the 

 time so incredible that his claims were doubted ridi- 

 culed even. But what did he care? He had plenty 

 of money ; nothing else interested him so much ; the 

 field of electricity had been his predilection from a 

 boy, and he stuck to his guns and went ahead. 



Signalling across the Isle of Wight to the main- 

 land below Bournemouth came next ; that was seven- 

 teen miles. Then across the English Channel from 

 Dover; that was twenty-one miles. Step by step 

 the distance lengthened. Finally, in the spring of 

 1901, he had sent a message from the Isle of Wight 

 to near Land's End ; that was over one hundred and 

 eighty miles. Then the tireless experimenter look- 

 ed out over waste seas, saw in fancy the foggy banks 

 of Newfoundland, and said, confidently, "That's 

 the next." 



