How High Do Wireless Masts Have to be?
The towering masts of the Marconi Trans-Oceanic stations are often
supposed to rise to their great height, so that an antennae will be
raised above the obstructions between. If this were necessary, two
wireless stations separated by the Atlantic would have to have masts
one hundred and twenty-five miles high to rise above the curvature
of the earth. The path of the wireless waves, however, is not in a
straight line, but follows the curvature of the earth. Scientists
explain this by saying the rarefied air above the earth’s surface acts
as a shell enclosing the globe.
The speed of wireless messages is placed at 186,000 miles per second. A
wireless message will thus cross the Atlantic in about one-nineteenth
of a second--a period of time too small for the human mind to grasp.
In other words, the wireless flash crosses in a fraction of a second a
distance that the earth requires five hours to turn on its axis and the
fastest ships take nearly a week to cross.
The longest distance over which a wireless message can be sent is not
definitely known; the present record was made in September, 1910, by
Marconi from Clifden, Ireland, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, a distance
of 6700 miles.
[Illustration: THE WIRELESS PREVENTS ACCIDENTS AND SAVES MANY LIVES
This photograph makes us appreciate what a wonderful aid is wireless to
navigators. On Easter Sunday, 1914, the U. S. Revenue Cutter “Seneca,”
patrolling the North Atlantic, found these two gigantic icebergs in
the regular steamer lanes and sent out wireless warnings to all nearby
steamships.]
[Illustration: HOW THE WIRELESS IS INSTALLED ON FAST TRAINS