Ill 



WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY 



ON Thursday, December 12, 1901, at 12.30 

 P.M. Guglielmo Marconi at a station in St. 

 Johns, Newfoundland, received a communica- 

 tion of the letter S three dots of the Morse code sent 

 through the air from the wireless telegraphy station at 

 Poldhu in England. This was the first wireless commu- 

 nication ever sent across the Atlantic Ocean. The news 

 of this event created enthusiasm all over the world, and 

 excitement in certain commercial centers, but it can 

 hardly be said to have created any astonishment: the 

 present generation has become too accustomed to mar- 

 velous manifestations of electricity. 



The success of Marconi and several other prominent 

 scientists in the development of wireless telegraphy is 

 the outcome of a long series of experiments dating back 

 almost to the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

 Most of these early experiments, however, were attempts 

 at sending wireless messages through the earth or 

 through water rather than through the air, the fact that 

 dry air is a poor conductor of electricity for many years 

 preventing experiments in telegraphing through this 

 medium without some mechanical means of conduction. 

 In the middle of the eighteenth century Watson dis- 

 covered that water could be made to take the place of 



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