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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Truly the miracle of the twentieth cen- 

 tury has been the discovery of radio 

 transmission ; it is the marvelous fulfill- 

 ment — a fulfillment which we could not 

 believe unless Ave had heard it with our 

 own ears — of the story of Michael Scott 

 waving his wand in Salamanca's Cave 

 and thereby ringing the chimes in the 

 cathedral spire. 



THE SPEED OE ELECTRICITY 



The human voice, projected by wire- 

 less telephony, can travel around the 

 earth about seven times in a second. One 

 can speak to a place half way around the 

 earth in one-fourteenth of a second. 



What a marvelous thing is the human 

 voice ! The Scripture itself declares to us 

 that the Almighty incarnated in the fore- 

 runner of the Christ, the human Voice ; so 

 that Ave are told that the strange prophet 

 of the Judean deserts, Avho Avore camel's 

 hair and whose food was the honeycomb 

 and the fruit of the Avild locust, Avas "the 

 Voice of one crying in the Avilderness." 



And iioav what a wonderful thought it 

 is, that the human A T oice, with all its 

 power, with all its influence, with all it 

 has meant to literature and life, has, 

 under the power of the wizard genius of 

 man, been made to OA r erleap continents 

 and oceans ! 



"a beaten track to his door" 



It is to American engineers that the 

 world owes the perfection of wireless 

 telephony. Pursuing his studies quietly 

 and unknown to the world for many 

 years, Carty has written his name on the 

 roll of honor of science. Emerson said : 



"If a man can write a better book, 

 preach a better sermon, or make a better 

 mouse-trap than his neighbors, though he 

 build his house in the woods, the world 

 will make a beaten track to his door." 



While the world is indebted to the en- 

 gineers and scientists for the invention, 

 it is due a further debt of gratitude to 

 Mr. Theodore N. Vail for its adaptation 

 to the needs of commerce and the organ- 

 ization and perfection of a system for 

 rendering it useful in this way. They 

 built upon the work of Marconi, and 

 Marconi built upon the work of Bell and 

 Watson. 



As Sherlock Holmes, the wonderful 

 detectiA'e genius, springing from the fer- 



tile brain of Conan Doyle, had his ubiq- 

 uitous and ever useful Dr. Watson, so did 

 Alexander Graham Bell, the Sherlock 

 Holmes of modern science, have his Wat- 

 son. In capturing the marvelous secrets 

 of nature Ave can hear Graham Bell give 

 the first message ever heard over the tele- 

 phone : "I want you, Watson ; come here." 

 Only last year scientists from the old 

 country came to Washington and, at the 

 Naval Observatory, studied and worked 

 with American scientists to determine the 

 difference in latitude. Wireless mes- 

 sages exchanged between Paris and 

 Washington, a distance of 3,000 miles, 

 demonstrated the perfection reached in 

 that Avonderful field of science. It seems 

 but yesterday that Ave were incredulous, 

 as the papers brought the uncanny sto- 

 ries that messages could be sent from 

 coast to coast without wires. 



perfecting the navy's wireless 



SYSTEM 



The Navy has been a pioneer in this 

 conquering of the AvaA^es of the air, and 

 its high-powered stations at Arlington, 

 San Diego, in Panama, in Honolulu, 

 Guam, Manila, Tutuila, Alaska, etc., will 

 shortly in very truth put a girdle around 

 the earth, fulfilling Puck's promise "to 

 put a girdle around the earth in forty 

 seconds." 



Working in cooperation with Mr. 

 Carty in his remarkable achievement, was 

 Capt. W. H. G. Bullard, U. S. N., now 

 superintendent of the Naval Radio Serv- 

 ice, Avho placed at Mr. Carty's disposal 

 the facilities of our stations at Arlington 

 and other places for perfecting his inven- 

 tion. To the Bureau of Steam Engineer- 

 ing of the Navy Department is due the 

 credit of the planning and equipment of 

 these stations in a manner which has 

 made the radio sen-ice of the American 

 Navy the greatest radio service in the 

 United States or the world today. 

 Among the officers who haA'e been con- 

 spicuous in bringing the serA'ice to its 

 present state of efficiency are Capt. S. S. 

 Robison, Lieut. Commander A. J. Hep- 

 burn, and Lieut. S. C. Hooper. To the 

 latter more than to any one else, under 

 the direction of Rear Admiral Robert S. 

 Griffin, is due the credit for the Navy's 

 present system of communication. The 

 Navy has opened 25 stations to commer- 



