[Illustration: Guglielmo Marconi, Inventor of wireless telegraphy.]
The Man Who Invented Wireless Telegraphy.
Communication without wires for thousands of miles across oceans, from
continent to continent, is a far cry from sending a wireless impulse
the length of a kitchen table. That is the development of twenty years.
To properly trace the development of wireless telegraphy, however, it
is necessary to go back eighty-three years to when, in 1831, Michael
Faraday discovered electro-magnetic induction between two entirely
separate circuits. Steinheil, of Munich, too, in 1838, suggested
that the metallic portion of a grounded electrical circuit might be
dispensed with and a system of wireless telegraphy established. Then,
in 1859, Bowman Lindsay demonstrated to the British Association his
method of transmitting messages by means of magnetism through and
across the water without submerged wires. In 1867 James Clerk Maxwell
laid down the theory of electro-magnetism and predicted the existence
of the electric waves that are now used in wireless telegraphy.
Dolbear, of Tufts College, in 1836, patented a plan for establishing
wireless communication by means of two insulated elevated plates, but
there is no evidence that the method proposed by him effected the
transmission of signals between stations separated by any distance.
A year later Heinrich Rudolph Hertz discovered the progressive
propagation of electro-magnetic action through space and accomplished
the most valuable work in this period of speculation and experiment.
Just twenty years ago, at his father’s country home in Bologna,
Guglielmo Marconi, then a lad just out of his ’teens, read of the
experiments of Hertz and conceived the first wireless telegraph
apparatus. This was completed some months later and a message in the
Morse Code was transmitted a distance of three or four feet, the length
of the table on which the apparatus rested.
Satisfied that he had laid the foundation of an epoch-making discovery
young Marconi pursued his experiments and filed the first patent on the
subject on June 2, 1896. Further experiments were carried on in London
during that year and at the request of Sir William H. Preece, of the
British Post Office, official tests were made, first over a distance of
about 100 yards and later for one and three-quarter miles.
During the year following Mr. Marconi gave several demonstrations to
the officials of the various European governments and communication
was established up to 34 miles. In July of this year, 1897, the first
commercial wireless telegraph company was incorporated in England and
the first Marconi station was erected at the Needles, Isle of Wight.
On June 3, 1898, Lord Kelvin visited this station and sent the first
paid Marconigram. A month later the events of the Kingstown Regatta in
Dublin were reported by wireless telegraphy for a local newspaper from
the steamer “Flying Huntress.” In August of that year the royal yacht
“Osborn” was equipped with a wireless set, in order that Queen Victoria
might communicate with the Prince of Wales, who was at Ladywood Cottage
and suffering from the results of an accident to his knee. For sixteen
days, constant and uninterrupted communication was maintained. Then on
Christmas Eve was inaugurated the first lightship wireless service,
messages being sent from the East Goodwin lightship to the lighthouse
at South Foreland.
[Illustration: PREPARING TO SEND MESSAGES ACROSS THE OCEAN
This photograph shows how wireless messages are prepared for direct
transmission across the ocean. The dots and dashes of the telegraphic
code are punched on tapes by skilled operators, thus insuring accuracy
and a permanent record of each message. Five or six operators, and
sometimes more, are steadily preparing these tapes, which are pasted
together and run through a machine which operates the key at each
perforation. A speed of 100 words a minute is thus obtained.]
Three months later the first marine rescue was effected through this
installation. The steamship “R. F. Matthews” ran into the lightship
and lifeboats from the South Foreland station promptly responded to
the wireless appeal for aid. The most important wireless event abroad
during the year 1899 was the establishing of communication across the
English Channel, a distance of thirty miles.
The American public next learned something of Marconi’s invention, for
in September and October of that year wireless telegraphy was employed
in reporting the International yacht races between the “Shamrock” and
the “Columbia” for a New York newspaper. At the conclusions of the
races, the naval authorities requested a series of trials, during which
wireless messages were exchanged between the cruiser “New York” and
the battleship “Massachusetts” up to a distance of about 36 miles. On
leaving America, Marconi fitted the liner “St. Paul” with his apparatus
and when 36 miles from the Needles Station, secured wireless reports
of the war in South Africa. These were printed aboard the vessel in a
leaflet called “The Transatlantic Times,” the first of the chain of
wireless newspapers now published daily on practically all passenger
steamships. Six field wireless sets were dispatched to South Africa
about this time and were later of considerable service in the Boer War.
[Illustration: In the foreground of this picture is seen the automatic
transmitter with the message perforated tape running through. This is
one of the smaller wireless equipments; much larger ones are used at
the new Marconi stations.]
The year 1900 brought the first commercial wireless contracts. By
agreement with the Norddeutscher Lloyd, Marconi apparatus was installed
on a lightship, a lighthouse and aboard the liner “Kaiser Wilhelm der
Grosse.” On July 4th the British Admiralty entered into a contract
for the installation of Marconi apparatus on thirty-two warships and
shore stations and the erection of the high power station at Poldhu was
commenced.
~WORLD WIDE USE OF THE WIRELESS~
Work on similar station at Cape Cod was begun early in 1901 and on
August 12th the famous Nantucket Island and Nantucket lightship
stations opened to report incoming vessels by wireless. Heavy gales
in September and November wrecked the masts at both Poldhu and
Cape Cod stations and these were replaced by four wooden towers,
210 feet high. Important experimental work was then shifted to St.
John’s, Newfoundland, and on December 12th and 13th, signals were
received across the Atlantic from Poldhu. This to Marconi was a great
achievement and the forerunner of the present day trans-atlantic
service. But with the announcement that the long dreamt of feat had
been accomplished a flood of vituperation from scientific men was let
loose. It was nonsense; it was deliberate deception; the reading was
in error, were among the comments. Another prank of the “young man
with a box,” one scientist termed it. It is amusing now to recall this
extraordinary treatment, but it was hardly so amusing to the young
inventor, then in his twenty-seventh year.
But in spite of the skepticism, developments followed rapidly from then
on and in 1902, the year in which the American Marconi Company was
established, full recognition to wireless telegraphy was given by the
various governments.
The wonderful growth of the Marconi system within the last twelve years
is well known to all and does not require detailing. But in view of its
youth as an industry and its inauspicious beginning, a glimpse into
what the present day Marconi system comprises may be interesting.
More than 1800 ships are equipped with Marconi wireless and its shore
stations are landmarks in practically every country on the globe.
Press and commercial messages are transmitted daily from continent to
continent direct.
Shore to ship and ship to shore business each year runs into millions
of words.
Marconi wireless within seventeen years, has become an absolute
necessity in the maritime field, an invaluable aid in others. Regular
communication has been established with icebound settlements and desert
communities, and official running orders transmitted to moving railway
trains. Its service is dependable under all conditions and embraces
activities and locations inaccessible to any other telegraph system.
Continuous service is maintained and wireless messages for all parts of
the world at greatly reduced rates are received at any Western Union
Office.
The direction finder and wireless compass are recent Marconi inventions.
A wide variety of types of Marconi equipment are designed for the
merchant marine, warships, submarines, pleasure craft, motor cars
and railroad trains; also portable signal corps sets, apparatus for
aircraft, cavalry sets, knapsack sets and high-power installations for
trans-ocean communication.
How Does a Fly Walk Upside Down?
There is a little sucker on the end of each of the fly’s feet which
makes his foot stick to the ceiling or any other place he walks, and
which he can control at will. It is made very much like the sucker
you have seen with which a boy can pick up a flat stone--a circular
piece of rubber or leather with a string in the middle and more or
less bell shaped underneath. A boy can pick up a flat stone with this
kind of a sucker by pressing the rubber or leather part down flat on
the stone and then pulling gently on it by the string. When he does
this he simply expels the air which is between the leather part of
the sucker and the stone, which creates a vacuum and the pressure of
the air on the outside part of the leather enables him to pick it up.
The fly has little suckers like these on each of his feet, and they
act automatically when he puts his foot down. Of course the sticking
power of each foot is adjusted to the weight of the fly, just as the
sticking or lifting power of the boy’s sucker is regulated by the
weight of the stone or other object he tries to pick up. If the weight
of the object is sufficient to overcome the sticking power which the
vacuum creates, the stone cannot be lifted.
What Is Money?
It is quite difficult to give a broad definition of money that will be
understood by all, for in different ages and lands many things have
been used as money besides the coins and bills which we think of only
when we think at all what money is. Anything that passes freely from
hand to hand in a community in the payment of debts and for goods
purchased, accepted freely by the person who offers it without any
reference to the person who offers it, and which can be in turn used
by the person accepting it to give to some one else in payment of debt
or for the purchase of goods, is money. This is rather a long sentence
and perhaps difficult to understand, and so we will try to analyze
what this means. If some one offered you a pretty stone as money in
payment of a debt, it would be as good as any kind of money if you in
turn could pass it on to any other person to whom you owed a debt or in
payment of something you bought. The stone might appear to you to be
valuable but it would not be good money unless you could count on every
one else in the community accepting it at the same value. If everybody
accepts it at the same value, it is as good as any kind of money. So
that anything which is acceptable to the people in any community as a
unit of value to pay debts, is good money, provided everybody thinks so
and accepts it that way. In this case, then any kind of substance might
become money provided it was used and accepted by everyone.
Why Do We Need Money?
We need money for the sake of the convenience which it provides in
making the exchange of one kind of wealth for another and as a standard
of value. When a community has adopted something or anything which
is regarded by all of the people as a standard of value, all of the
difficulties of trading disappear.
Who Originated Money?
The earliest tribes of savages did not need money because no individual
in the tribe owned anything personally. All the property of the tribe
belonged to the tribe as a whole and not to any particular person.
Later on, when different groups of savages came into contact with each
other, there arose the custom of bartering or exchanging things which
one tribe possessed and which the other tribe wanted. In that way arose
the business of trading or of what we call doing business, and soon the
need of something by which to measure the values of different things
arose. Some of the old Australian tribes had a tough green stone which
was valuable for making hatchets. Members of another tribe would see
some of this stone and notice what good hatchets could be made from
it--better hatchets than they had been able to make. Naturally they
wanted it so much that it became very valuable in their eyes and so
they came wanting to buy green stones. But they had nothing like what
we could call money today. They had, however, a good deal of red ochre
in their lands which they used to paint their bodies. They got this
red ochre out of the ground on their own lands just as the other tribe
got green stones out of its ground, and those who owned the green
stones which were good for making hatchets, wanted some red ochre very
much, and so they traded green stones for red ochre. The green stones
then took on a value in themselves for making exchanges for various
commodities, and before long became a kind of money inside and outside
the community so that when they wanted to obtain anything, the price
was put by the merchant as so many green stones and he accepted these
in payment for goods given in exchange. He was willing to do this
because he knew he could use them in making trades for almost anything
he might want, provided he had enough of the green stones. So you see
these green stones of the Australian tribe became a rudimentary kind of
money, just because a desire had arisen to possess them; and the red
ochre was actual money in the same sense, for when this tribe found
that other tribes would value this red ochre, they began getting the
things they wanted and paying for them in red ochre. But the “unit of
value” had to be developed to make a currency that was elastic. It
required something that could be carried about easily--in fact it had
to be something small enough so a number of units of value could be
carried about without too much trouble. The Indians of British Columbia
solved this difficulty of making an elastic currency by adopting as a
unit of value a haiqua shell which they wore in strings as ornamental
borders of their dresses--and one string of these shells was worth
one beaver’s skin. These shells then were real money and one of the
earliest forms of it.
The skins of animals were long used by savage tribes as money. The
skins were valuable in trading and a man’s fortune was reckoned by the
number of skins he owned. As soon as the animals became domesticated,
however, the whole animal replaced the skin as the unit of value. This
change undoubtedly came because a whole animal is more valuable than
only its skin. The first skins obtainable however were worn by wild
animals--the kind that the people could not deliver to someone else
alive and whole. But when the animals became domesticated, which meant
that man tamed them and kept them where he could control them at will,
the skin and the wild animal ceased to be a unit of value because it
was an uncertain kind of money. Among domestic animals, oxen and sheep
were the earliest forms of money--an ox was considered worth ten sheep.
This idea of using cattle as money was used by many tribes in many
lands. We find traces of it in the laws of Iceland. The Latin word
pecunia (pecus) shows that the earliest Roman money was composed of
cattle. The English word fee indicates this also. The Irish law records
show the same evidence of the use of cattle as money and within recent
years the cattle still form the basis of the currency of the Zulus and
Kaffirs.
When slavery became prominent many lands adopted the slaves as the unit
of value. A man’s wealth was reckoned by the number of slaves he owned.
Then, when the practice of agriculture became more common, people
used the products of the soil as money--maize, olive oil, cocoanuts,
tea and corn--the latter is said to pass current as actual money in
certain parts of Norway now. They used these products of the soil for
money even in our own country. Our ancestors in Maryland and Virginia
before the Revolutionary War, and even after, used tobacco as money.
They passed laws making tobacco money and paid the salaries of the
government officials and collected all taxes in tobacco.
Other early forms of money were ornaments and these serve the purpose
of money among all uncivilized tribes. In India they used cowrie
shells--a small yellowish-white shell with a fine gloss. The Fiji
Islanders used whales’ teeth; some of the South Sea Island tribes used
red feathers; other nations used mineral products as money--such as
salt in Abyssinia and Mexico.
Up to this point we have talked about the things used as money from
the standpoint of primitive forms of money. Today the metals have
practically driven all these other crude forms of money out.
Metallic Forms of Money.
~WHY WE USE METALS FOR COINING~
The use of metals as money goes far back in the history of civilization
but it has never been possible to trace the historical order of the
adoption of the various metals for the purposes. Iron according to the
statement of Aristotle was at one time extensively used as money.
Copper, in conjunction with iron, was used in early times as money in
China; and until comparatively a short time ago was used for the coins
of smaller value in Japan. Iron spikes were used in Central Africa
and nails in Scotland; lead money is now used in Burmah. Copper has
long been used as money. The early coins of England were made of tin.
Finally, however, came silver and silver was the principal form of
money up to a few years ago. It was the basis of Greek coins introduced
at Rome in 269 B. C. Most of the money of Medieval times was composed
of silver.
The earliest traces of gold used as money is seen in pictures of
ancient Egyptians “weighing in scales heaps of gold and silver rings.”
Why Do We Use Gold and Silver as Money Principally?
There are a good many reasons why gold and silver have become almost
universal materials for use as money. Perhaps this will be better
understood if these reasons are set down in order.
1st. It is necessary that the material out of which money is made
should be valuable, but nothing was ever used as money that had not
first become desirable and, therefore, valuable as money. This is only
one of the incidental reasons for taking gold and silver for coining
money.
2nd. To serve its purpose best, money should be easy to carry
around--in other words, its value should be high in proportion to its
weight.
The absence of this quality made the early forms of money such as
skins, corn, tobacco, etc., undesirable. It was difficult to carry very
much money about. Imagine the skin of a sheep worth a dollar, say,
and having to carry ten of them down to pay the grocer. To a certain
extent this difficulty occurred with iron and copper money and in times
when they used live cattle it was a pretty expensive job to pay your
debts because, while the cattle could move, it was still expensive to
drive them from place to place. A man who accepted a thousand cattle
in payment had to go to some expense in getting them home. Then it was
expensive to have money when live cattle were used because the cattle,
of course, had to be fed and from that point of view the poor man who
had no money was better off than the rich man who had money. When
cattle were used as money it cost a lot to keep it. Our kind of money
doesn’t eat anything; in fact, if you put it in a savings bank, it will
earn interest money for you. But when cattle were used as money it cost
a great deal to keep them and so it was worse than not earning any
interest.
3rd. Another quality that money should possess is divisibility without
damage and also the quality of being united again. This quality is
possessed by the metals in every sense because they can be fused, while
skins and precious stones suffer in value greatly when they are divided.
4th. The material out of which money is made should be the same
throughout in quality and weight so that one unit of money should be
worth as much as any other unit. This could never be true of skins or
cattle as the difference in the size of skins is very great sometimes,
and a small skin from the same animal could not be worth as much as a
large one, or a skin of an animal of inferior quality so valuable as a
very fine one.
5th. Another quality which money should possess is durability. This
requirement made it necessary to use something else besides animals or
vegetable substances. Animals die and vegetables will not keep and so
lose their value. Even iron is apt to rust and through that process
lose more or less of its value.
6th. The materials out of which money is made should be easy to
distinguish and their value easy to determine. For this reason such
things as precious stones are not good to use as money because it
takes an expert to determine their value and even they are not always
certain to be correct.
7th. Then a very important quality that the material out of which money
is made is that its value should be steady. The value of cattle varies
very greatly and, in fact, most of the materials out of which the first
currencies were made were subject to quick change in value in a short
time. The value of gold and silver does not change excepting at long
intervals. Gold and silver are both durable and easily recognizable.
They can be melted, divided and united. The same is true of other
metallic substances, but iron as stated is subject to rust and its
value is low; lead is too soft. Tin will break, and both of them and
copper also are of low value. Gold and silver change only slowly in
value when the change at all; they do not lose any of their value by
age, rust or other cause; they are hard metals and do not, therefore,
wear. Their value in proportion to the bulk of the pieces used for
money is so large that the money made from them can be carried without
discomfort and it is almost impossible to imitate them.
Who Made the First Cent?
Vermont was the first state to issue copper cents. In June, 1785, she
granted the authority to Ruben Harmon, Jr., to make money for the state
for two years. In October of the same year, Connecticut granted the
right to coin 10,000 pounds in copper cents, known as the Connecticut
cent of 1785. Massachusetts, in 1786, established a mint and coined
$60,000 in cents and half cents. In the same year, New Jersey granted
the right to coin $10,000 at 15 coppers to the shilling. In 1781 the
Continental Congress directed Robert Morris to investigate the matter
of governmental coinage. He proposed a standard based on the Spanish
dollar, consisting of 100 units, each unit to be called a cent. His
plan was rejected. In 1784, Jefferson proposed to Congress, that the
smallest coin should be of copper, and that 200 of them should pass for
one dollar. The plan was adopted, but in 1786, 100 was substituted. In
1792 the coinage of copper cents, containing 264 grains, and half cents
in proportion, was authorized; their weight was subsequently reduced.
In 1853 the nickel cent was substituted and the half cent discontinued,
and in 1864 the bronze cent was introduced, weighing 48 grains and
consisting of 95 per cent. of copper, and the remainder of tin and zinc.
How Did the Name Uncle Sam Originate?
The name Uncle Sam is a jocular name long in use for the Government of
the United States.
Shortly after the war of 1812 was declared, Elbert Anderson of New
York State, who was a contractor for the army, went to Troy, New York,
to purchase a quantity of provisions. At that place the provisions
were inspected, the official inspectors being two brothers named
Wilson--Ebenezer and Samuel. The latter was very popular among the men
and was known as “Uncle Sam Wilson” and everybody called him that.
The boxes in which the provisions were packed were stamped with four
letters, E. A. for Elbert Anderson, and U. S. for United States. One of
the men engaged in making the inspection asked another of the workmen
who happened to be a jocular fellow, what the letters E. A. U. S. on
the boxes stood for. He said in reply that he did not know but thought
they probably meant Elbert Anderson and Uncle Sam Wilson, and that they
had left off the W which would stand for Wilson. The suggestion caught
on quickly and as such things often do, the joke spread rapidly so that
everybody soon thought of the name “Uncle Sam” whenever they saw the
letters U. S. on anything or in any place.
The suit of striped trousers and long tailed coat and beaver hat
in which Uncle Sam is now always represented in pictures, was the
inspiration of the famous cartoonist.
[Illustration: THE WORLD’S BREAD LOAVES
Egypt
2500 B.C.
Unleavened Bread
2000 B.C.
Pompeii
50 A.D.