MARCONI AND HIS GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS
_New Experiments in Wireless Telegraphy_
No invention of modern times, perhaps, comes so near to being what we
call a miracle as the new system of telegraphy without wires. The very
thought of communicating across the hundreds of miles of blue ocean
between Europe and America with no connection, no wires, nothing but
air, sunshine, space, is almost inconceivably wonderful. A few years
ago the mere suggestion of such a thing would have been set down as the
wildest flight of imagination, unbelievable, perfectly impossible. And
yet it has come to pass!
Think for a moment of sitting here on the shore of America and quietly
listening to words sent _through space_ across some 3,000 miles of ocean
from the edge of Europe! A cable, marvellous as it is, maintains a real
connection between speaker and hearer. We feel that it is a road
along which our speech can travel; we can grasp its meaning. But in
telegraphing without wires we have nothing but space, poles with pendent
wires on one side of the broad, curving ocean, and similar poles and
wires (or perhaps only a kite struggling in the air) on the other--and
thought passing between!
I have told in the first "Boys' Book of Inventions" of Guglielmo
Marconi's early experiments. That was a chapter of uncertain beginnings,
of great hopes, of prophecy. This is the sequel, a chapter of
achievement and success. What was only a scientific and inventive
novelty a few years ago has become a great practical enterprise, giving
promise of changing the whole world of men, drawing nations more closely
together, making us near neighbours to the English and the Germans and
the French--in short, shrinking our earth. There may come a time when
we will think no more of sending a Marconigram, or an etheragram, or
whatever is to be the name of the message by wireless telegraphy, to an
acquaintance in England than we now think of calling up our neighbour on
the telephone.
Every one will recall the astonishment that swept over the country in
December, 1901, when there came the first meagre reports of Marconi's
success in telegraphing across the Atlantic Ocean between England and
Newfoundland. At first few would believe the reports, but when Thomas
A. Edison, Graham Bell, and other great inventors and scientists had
expressed their confidence in Marconi's achievement, the whole country,
was ready to hail the young inventor with honours. And his successes
since those December days have been so pronounced--for he had now
sent messages both ways across the Atlantic and at much greater
distances--have more than borne out the promise then made. Wireless
telegrams can now be sent directly from the shore of Massachusetts
to England, and ocean-going ships are being rapidly equipped with the
Marconi apparatus so that they can keep in direct communication with
both continents during every day of the voyage. On some of the great
ships a little newspaper is published, giving the world's news as
received from day to day.
It was the good fortune of the writer to arrive in St. John's,
Newfoundland, during Mr. Marconi's experiments in December, 1901, only
a short time after the famous first message across the Atlantic had been
received. Three months later it was also the writer's privilege to visit
the Marconi station at Poldhu, in Cornwall, England, from which the
message had been sent, Mr. Marconi being then planning his greater work
of placing his invention on a practical basis so that his company could
enter the field of commercial telegraphy. It was the writer's fortune to
have many talks with Mr. Marconi, both in America and in England, to see
him at his experiments, and to write some of the earliest accounts of
his successes. The story here told is the result of these talks.
Mr. Marconi kept his own counsel regarding his plans in coming to
Newfoundland in December, 1901. He told nobody, except his assistants,
that he was going to attempt the great feat of communicating across the
Atlantic Ocean. Though feeling very certain of success, he knew that
the world would not believe him, would perhaps only laugh at him for
his great plans. The project was entirely too daring for public
announcement. Something might happen, some accident to the apparatus,
that would cause a delay; people would call this failure, and it would
be more difficult another time to get any one to put confidence in the
work. So Marconi very wisely held his peace, only announcing what he had
done when success was assured.
Mr. Marconi landed at St. John's, Newfoundland, on December 6, 1901,
with his two assistants, Mr. Kemp and Mr. Paget.
He set up his instruments in a low room of the old barracks on Signal
Hill, which stands sentinel at the harbour mouth half a mile from the
city of St. John's. So simple and easily arranged is the apparatus that
in three days' time the inventor was prepared to begin his experiments.
On Wednesday, the 11th, as a preliminary test of the wind velocity, he
sent up one of his kites, a huge hexagonal affair of bamboo and silk
nine feet high, built on the Baden-Powell model: the wind promptly
snapped the wire and blew the kite out to sea. He then filled a 14-foot
hydrogen balloon, and sent it upward through a thick fog bank. Hardly
had it reached the limit of its tetherings, however, when the aërial
wire on which he had depended for receiving his messages fell to the
earth, the balloon broke away, and was never seen again. On Thursday,
the 12th, a day destined to be important in the annals of invention,
Marconi tried another kite, and though the weather was so blustery that
it required the combined strength of the inventor and his assistants
to manage the tetherings, they succeeded in holding the kite at an
elevation of about 400 feet. Marconi was now prepared for the crucial
test. Before leaving England he had given detailed instructions to
his assistants for the transmission of a certain signal, the Morse
telegraphic S, represented by three dots (...), at a fixed time each
day, beginning as soon as they received word that everything at St.
John's was in readiness. This signal was to be clicked out on the
transmitting instruments near Poldhu, Cornwall, the southwestern tip of
England, and radiated from a number of aërial wires pendent from
masts 210 feet high. If the inventor could receive on his kite-wire in
Newfoundland some of the electrical waves thus produced, he knew that he
held the solution of the problem of transoceanic wireless telegraphy. He
had cabled his assistants to begin sending the signals at three o'clock
in the afternoon, English time, continuing until six o'clock; that is,
from about 11.30 to 2.30 o'clock in St. John's.
[Illustration: Preparing to Fly the Kite which Supported the Receiving
Wire.
_Marconi on the extreme left._]
At noon on Thursday (December 12, 1901) Marconi sat waiting, a telephone
receiver at his ear, in a room of the old barracks on Signal Hill.
To him it must have been a moment of painful stress and expectation.
Arranged on the table before him, all its parts within easy reach of
his hand, was the delicate receiving instrument, the supreme product of
years of the inventor's life, now to be submitted to a decisive test. A
wire ran out through the window, thence to a pole, thence upward to the
kite which could be seen swaying high overhead. It was a bluff, raw day;
at the base of the cliff 300 feet below thundered a cold sea; oceanward
through the mist rose dimly the rude outlines of Cape Spear, the
easternmost reach of the North American Continent. Beyond that rolled
the unbroken ocean, nearly 2,000 miles to the coast of the British
Isles. Across the harbour the city of St. John's lay on its hillside
wrapped in fog: no one had taken enough interest in the experiments
to come up here through the snow to Signal Hill. Even the ubiquitous
reporter was absent. In Cabot Tower, near at hand, the old signalman
stood looking out to sea, watching for ships, and little dreaming of the
mysterious messages coming that way from England. Standing on that bleak
hill and gazing out over the waste of water to the eastward, one finds
it difficult indeed to realise that this wonder could have become a
reality. The faith of the inventor in his creation, in the kite-wire,
and in the instruments which had grown under his hand, was unshaken.
[Illustration: Mr. Marconi and his Assistants in Newfoundland: Mr. Kemp
on the Left, Mr. Paget on the Right.
_They are sitting on a balloon basket, with one of the Baden-Powell
kites in the background._]
"I believed from the first," he told me, "that I would be successful in
getting signals across the Atlantic."
Only two persons were present that Thursday noon in the room where the
instruments were set up--Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp. Everything had
been done that could be done. The receiving apparatus was of unusual
sensitiveness, so that it would catch even the faintest evidence of
the signals. A telephone receiver, which is no part of the ordinary
instrument, had been supplied, so that the slightest clicking of the
dots might be conveyed to the inventor's ear. For nearly half an hour
not a sound broke the silence of the room. Then quite suddenly Mr. Kemp
heard the sharp click of the tapper as it struck against the coherer;
this, of course, was not the signal, yet it was an indication that
something was coming. The inventor's face showed no evidence of
excitement. Presently he said:
"See if you can hear anything, Kemp."
Mr. Kemp took the receiver, and a moment later, faintly and yet
distinctly and unmistakably, came the three little clicks--the dots of
the letter S, tapped out an instant before in England. At ten minutes
past one, more signals came, and both Mr. Marconi and Mr. Kemp assured
themselves again and again that there could be no mistake. During this
time the kite gyrated so wildly in the air that the receiving wire was
not maintained at the same height, as it should have been; but again, at
twenty minutes after two, other repetitions of the signal were received.
Thus the problem was solved. One of the great wonders of science had
been wrought. But the inventor went down the hill toward the city, now
bright with lights, feeling depressed and disheartened--the rebound from
the stress of the preceding days. On the following afternoon, Friday, he
succeeded in getting other repetitions of the signal from England, but
on Saturday, though he made an effort, he was unable to hear anything.
The signals were, of course, sent continuously, but the inventor was
unable to obtain continuous results, owing, as he explains, to the
fluctuations of the height of the kite as it was blown about by the
wind, and to the extreme delicacy of his instruments, which required
constant adjustment during the experiments.
Even now that he had been successful, the inventor hesitated to make his
achievement public, lest it seem too extraordinary for belief. Finally,
after withholding the great news for two days, certainly an evidence
of self-restraint, he gave out a statement to the press, and on Sunday
morning the world knew and doubted; on Monday it knew more and believed.
Many, like Mr. Edison, awaited the inventor's signed announcement
before they would credit the news. Sir Cavendish Boyle, the Governor
of Newfoundland, reported at once to King Edward; and the cable company
which has exclusive rights in Newfoundland, alarmed at an achievement
which threatened the very existence of its business, demanded that he
desist from further experiments within its territory, truly an evidence
of the belief of practical men in the future commercial importance
of the invention. It is not a little significant of the increased
willingness of the world, born of expanding knowledge, to accept a new
scientific wonder, that Mr. Marconi's announcement should have been
so eagerly and so generally believed, and that the popular imagination
should have been so fired with its possibilities. One cannot but recall
the struggle against doubt, prejudice, and disbelief in which the
promoters of the first transatlantic cable were forced to engage. Even
after the first cable was laid (in 1858), and messages had actually
been transmitted, there were many who denied that it had ever been
successfully operated, and would hardly be convinced even by the
affidavits of those concerned in the work. But in the years since then,
Edison, Bell, Röntgen, and many other famous inventors and scientists
have taught the world to be chary of its disbelief. Outside of this
general disposition to friendliness, however, Marconi on his own part
had well earned the credit of the careful and conservative scientist;
his previous successes made it the more easy to credit his new
achievement. For, as an Englishman (Mr. Flood Page), in defending Mr.
Marconi's announcement, has pointed out, the inventor has never made any
statement in public until he has been absolutely certain of the fact;
he has never had to withdraw any statement that he has made as to his
progress in the past. And these facts unquestionably carried great
weight in convincing Mr. Edison, Mr. Graham Bell, and others of
equal note of the literal truth of his report. It was astonishing how
overwhelmingly credit came from every quarter of the world, from high
and low alike, from inventors, scientists, statesmen, royalty. Before
Marconi left St. John's he was already in receipt of a large mail--the
inevitable letters of those who would offer congratulations, give
advice, or ask favours. He received offers to lecture, to write
articles, to visit this, that, and the other place--and all within a
week after the news of his success. The people of the "ancient colony"
of Newfoundland, famed for their hospitality, crowned him with every
honour in their power. I accompanied Mr. Marconi across the island on
his way to Nova Scotia, and it seemed as if every fisher and farmer in
that wild country had heard of him, for when the train stopped they
came crowding to look in at the window. From the comments I heard, they
wondered most at the inventor's youthful appearance. Though he was
only twenty-seven years old, his experience as an inventor covered many
years, for he began experimenting in wireless telegraphy before he
was twenty. At twenty-two he came to London from his Italian home, and
convinced the British Post-Office Department that he had an important
idea; at twenty-three he was famous the world over.
Following this epoch-making success Mr. Marconi returned to England,
where he continued most vigorously the work of perfecting his invention,
installing more powerful transmitters, devising new receivers, all the
time with the intention of following up his Newfoundland experiments
with the inauguration of a complete system of wireless transmission
between America and Europe. In the latter part of the year 1902 he
succeeded in opening regular communication between Nova Scotia and
England, and January 18, 1903, marked another epoch in his work. On that
day there was sent by Marconi himself from the wireless station at South
Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass., to the station at Poldhu, Cornwall, England,
a distance of 3,000 miles, the message--destined to be historic--from
the President of the United States to the King of England.
It will be interesting to know something of the inventor himself. He
is somewhat above medium height, and, though of a highly strung
temperament, he is deliberate in his movements. Unlike the inventor of
tradition, he dresses with scrupulous neatness, and, in spite of being
a prodigious worker, he finds time to enjoy a limited amount of club
and social life. The portrait published with this chapter, taken at St.
John's a few days after the experiments, gives a very good idea of the
inventor's face, though it cannot convey the peculiar lustre of his eyes
when he is interested or excited--and perhaps it makes him look older
than he really is. One of the first and strongest impressions that the
man conveys is that of intense nervous activity and mental absorption;
he has a way of pouncing upon a knotty question as if he could not
wait to solve it. He talks little, is straightforward and unassuming,
submitting good-naturedly, although with evident unwillingness, to being
lionised. In his public addresses he has been clear and sensible; he
has never written for any publication; nor has he engaged in scientific
disputes, and even when violently attacked he has let his work prove his
point. And he has accepted his success with calmness, almost unconcern;
he certainly expected it. The only elation I saw him express was over
the attack of the cable monopoly in Newfoundland, which he regarded as
the greatest tribute that could have been paid his achievement. During
all his life, opposition has been his keenest spur to greater effort.
Though he was born and educated in Italy, his mother was of British
birth, and he speaks English as perfectly as he does Italian. Indeed,
his blue eyes, light hair, and fair complexion give him decidedly the
appearance of an Englishman, so that a stranger meeting him for the
first time would never suspect his Italian parentage. His parents are
still living, spending part of their time on their estate in Italy and
part of the time in London. One of the first messages conveying the news
of his success at St. John's went to them. He embarked in experimental
research because he loved it, and no amount of honour or money tempts
him from the pursuit of the great things in electricity which he sees
before him. Besides being an inventor, he is also a shrewd business man,
with a clear appreciation of the value of his inventions and of their
possibilities when generally introduced. What is more, he knows how to
go about the task of introducing them.
No sooner had Marconi announced the success of his Newfoundland
experiments than critics began to raise objections. Might not the
signals which he received have been sent from some passing ship fitted
with wireless-telegraphy apparatus? Or, might they not have been the
result of electrical disturbances in the atmosphere? Or, granting his
ability to communicate across seas, how could he preserve the secrecy
of his messages? If they were transmitted into space, why was it not
possible for any one with a receiving instrument to take them? And was
not his system of transmission too slow to make it useful, or was it not
rendered uncertain by storms? And so on indefinitely. An acquaintance
with some of the principles which Marconi considers fundamental, and on
which his work has been based, will help to clear away these objections
and give some conception of the real meaning and importance of the
work at St. John's and of the plans for the future development of the
inventor's system.
In the first place, Mr. Marconi makes no claim to being the first to
experiment along the lines which led to wireless telegraphy, or the
first to signal for short distances without wires. He is prompt with
his acknowledgment to other workers in his field, and to his assistants.
Professor S. F. B. Morse, the inventor of telegraphy; Dr. Oliver Lodge
and Sir William Preece, of England; Edison, Tesla, and Professors
Trowbridge and Dolbear, of America, and others had experimented along
these lines, but it remained for Marconi to perfect a system and put
it into practical working order. He took the coherer of Branley and
Calzecchi, the oscillator of Righi, he used the discoveries of Henry and
Hertz, but his creation, like that of the poet who gathers the words of
men in a perfect lyric, was none the less brilliant and original.
[Illustration: _MARCONI TRANSATLANTIC STATION AT SOUTH WELLFLEET, CAPE
COD, MASS._]
In its bare outlines, Marconi's system of telegraphy consists in setting
in motion, by means of his transmitter, certain electric waves which,
passing through the ether, are received on a distant wire suspended from
a kite or mast, and registered on his receiving apparatus. The ether
is a mysterious, unseen, colourless, odourless, inconceivably rarefied
something which is supposed to fill all space. It has been compared to a
jelly in which the stars and planets are set like cherries. About all we
know of it is that it has waves--that the jelly may be made to vibrate
in various ways. Etheric vibrations of certain kinds give light; other
kinds give heat; others electricity. Experiments have shown that if the
ether vibrates at the inconceivable swiftness of 400 billions of waves
a second we see the colour red, if twice as fast we see violet, if more
slowly--perhaps 230 millions to the second, and less--we have the Hertz
waves used by Marconi in his wireless-telegraphy experiments. Ether
waves should not be confounded with air waves. Sound is a result of the
vibration of the air; if we had ether and no air, we should still see
light, feel heat, and have electrical phenomena, but no sound would ever
come to our ears. Air is sluggish beside ether, and sound waves are
very slow compared with ether waves. During a storm the ether brings the
flash of the lightning before the air brings the sound of thunder, as
every one knows.
[Illustration: AT POOLE,
_ENGLAND_.]
Electricity is, indeed, only another name for certain vibrations in the
ether. We say that electricity "flows" in a wire, but nothing really
passes except an etheric wave, for the atoms composing the wire, as
well as the air and the earth, and even the hardest substances, are all
afloat in ether. Vibrations, therefore, started at one end of the wire
travel to the other. Throw a stone into a quiet pond. Instantly waves
are formed which spread out in every direction; the water does not move,
except up and down, yet the wave passes onward indefinitely. Electric
waves cannot be seen, but electricians have learned how to incite
them, to a certain extent how to control them, and have devised cunning
instruments which register their presence.
Electrical waves have long been harnessed by the use of wires for
sending communications; in other words, we have had wire telegraphy.
But the ether exists outside of the wire as well as within; therefore,
having the ether everywhere, it must be possible to produce waves in it
which will pass anywhere, as well through mountains as over seas, and
if these waves can be controlled they will evidently convey messages
as easily and as certainly as the ether within wires. So argued Mr.
Marconi. The difficulty lay in making an instrument which would produce
a peculiar kind of wave, and in receiving and registering this wave in
a second apparatus located at a distance from the first. It was,
therefore, a practical mechanical problem which Marconi had to meet.
Beginning with crude tin boxes set up on poles on the grounds of his
father's estate in Italy, he finally devised an apparatus from which a
current generated by a battery and passing in brilliant sparks between
two brass balls was radiated from a wire suspended on a tall pole. By
shutting off and turning on this peculiar current, by means of a device
similar to the familiar telegrapher's key, the waves could be so divided
as to represent dashes and dots, and spell out letters in the Morse
alphabet. This was the transmitter. It was, indeed, simple enough to
start these waves travelling through space, to jar the etheric jelly,
so to speak; but it was far more difficult to devise an apparatus to
receive and register them. For this purpose Marconi adopted a device
invented by an Italian, Calzecchi, and improved by a Frenchman, M.
Branley, called the coherer, and the very crux of the system, without
which there could be no wireless telegraphy. This coherer, which he
greatly improved, is merely a little tube of glass as big around as a
lead-pencil, and perhaps two inches long. It is plugged at each end
with silver, the plugs nearly meeting within the tube. The narrow space
between them is filled with finely powdered fragments of nickel and
silver, which possess the strange property of being alternately very
good and very bad conductors of electrical waves. The waves which
come from the transmitter, perhaps 2,000 miles away, are received on
a suspended kite-wire, exactly similar to the wire used in the
transmitter, but they are so weak that they could not of themselves
operate an ordinary telegraph instrument. They do, however, possess
strength enough to draw the little particles of silver and nickel in the
coherer together in a continuous metal path. In other words, they make
these particles "cohere," and the moment they cohere they become a good
conductor for electricity, and a current from a battery near at hand
rushes through, operates the Morse instrument, and causes it to print
a dot or a dash; then a little tapper, actuated by the same current,
strikes against the coherer, the particles of metal are jarred apart or
"decohered," becoming instantly a poor conductor, and thus stopping the
strong current from the home battery. Another wave comes through space,
down the suspended kite-wire, into the coherer, there drawing the
particles again together, and another dot or dash is printed. All these
processes are continued rapidly, until a complete message is ticked
out on the tape. Thus Mr. Kemp knew when he heard the tapper strike the
coherer that a signal was coming, though he could not hear the click
of the receiver itself. And this is in bare outline Mr. Marconi's
invention--this is the combination of devices which has made wireless
telegraphy possible, the invention on which he has taken out more than
132 patents in every civilised country of the world. Of course his
instruments contain much of intricate detail, of marvellously ingenious
adaptation to the needs of the work, but these are interesting chiefly
to expert technicians.
[Illustration: NEARER VIEW OF
_SOUTH FORELAND STATION_.]
[Illustration: ALUM BAY STATION
_ISLE OF WIGHT_.]
In his actual transoceanic experiments of December, 1901, Mr. Marconi's
transmitting station in England was fitted with twenty masts 210 feet
high, each with its suspended wire, though not all of them were used. A
current of electricity sufficient to operate some 300 incandescent lamps
was used, the resulting spark being so brilliant that one could not have
looked at it with the unshaded eye. The wave which was thus generated
had a length of about a fifth of a mile, and the rate of vibration was
about 800,000 to the second. Following the analogy of the stone cast in
the pond with the ripples circling outward, these waves spread from the
suspended wires in England in every direction, not only westward toward
the cliff where Marconi was flying his kite, but eastward, northward,
and southward, so that if some of Mr. Marconi's assistants had been
flying kites, say on the shore of Africa, or South America, or in St.
Petersburg, they might possibly, with a corresponding receiver,
have heard the identical signals at the same instant. In his early
experiments Marconi believed that great distances could not be obtained
without very high masts and long, suspended wires, the greater the
distance the taller the mast, on the theory that the waves were hindered
by the curvature of the earth; but his later theory, substantiated by
his Newfoundland experiments, is that the waves somehow follow around
the earth, conforming to its curve, and the next station he establishes
in America will not be set high on a cliff, as at St. John's, but down
close to the water on level land. His Newfoundland experiments have
also convinced him that one of the secrets of successful long-distance
transmission is the use of a more powerful current in his transmitter,
and this he will test in his next trials between the continents.
And now we come to the most important part of Mr. Marconi's work, the
part least known even to science, and the field of almost illimitable
future development. This is the system of "tuning," as the inventor
calls it, the construction of a certain receiver so that it will respond
only to the message sent by a certain transmitter. When Marconi's
discoveries were first announced in 1896, there existed no method
of tuning, though the inventor had its necessity clearly in mind.
Accordingly the public inquired, "How are you going to keep your
messages secret? Supposing a warship wishes to communicate with another
of the fleet, what is to prevent the enemy from reading your message?
How are private business despatches to be secured against publicity?"
Here, indeed, was a problem. Without secrecy no system of wireless
telegraphy could ever reach great commercial importance, or compete
with the present cable communication. The inventor first tried using
a parabolic copper reflector, by means of which he could radiate the
electric waves exactly as light--which, it will be borne in mind,
is only another kind of etheric wave--is reflected by a mirror. This
reflector could be faced in any desired direction, and only a receiver
located in that direction would respond to the message. But there were
grave objections to the reflector; an enemy might still creep in between
the sending and receiving stations, and, moreover, it was found that
the curvature of the earth interfered with the transmission of reflected
messages, thereby limiting their usefulness to short distances.
[Illustration: MARCONI ROOM
_SS PHILADELPHIA_.]
In passing, however, it may be interesting to note one extraordinary use
for this reflecting system which the inventor now has in mind. This
is in connection with lighthouse work. Ships are to be provided with
reflecting instruments which in dense fog or storms can be used exactly
as a searchlight is now employed on a dark night to discover the
location of the lighthouses or lightships. For instance, the lighthouse,
say, on some rocky point on the New England coast would continually
radiate a warning from its suspended wire. These waves pass as readily
through fog and darkness and storm as in daylight. A ship out at sea,
hidden in fog, has lost its bearings; the sound of the warning horn,
if warning there is, seems to come first from one direction, then from
another, as sounds do in a fog, luring the ship to destruction. If now
the mariner is provided with a wireless reflector, this instrument can
be slowly turned until it receives the lighthouse warning, the
captain thus learning his exact location; if in distress, he can even
communicate with the lighthouse. Think also what an advantage such an
equipment would be to vessels entering a dangerous harbour in thick
weather. This is one of the developments of the near future.
The reflector system being impracticable for long-distance work, Mr.
Marconi experimented with tuning. He so constructed a receiver that it
responds only to a certain transmitter. That is, if the transmitter is
radiating 800,000 vibrations a second, the corresponding receiver will
take only 800,000 vibrations. In exactly the same way a familiar tuning
fork will respond only to another tuning fork having exactly the same
"tune," or number of vibrations per second. And Mr. Marconi has now
succeeded in bringing this tuning system to some degree of perfection,
though very much work yet remains to be done. For instance, in one
of his English experiments, at Poole in England, he had two receivers
connected with the same wire, and tuned to different transmitters
located at St. Catherine's Point. Two messages were sent, one in English
and one in French. Both were received at the same time on the same wire
at Poole, but one receiver rolled off its message in English, the other
in French, without the least interference. And so when critics suggested
that the inventor may have been deceived at St. John's by messages
transmitted from ocean liners, he was able to respond promptly:
"Impossible. My instrument was tuned to receive only from my station in
Cornwall."
Indeed, the only wireless-telegraph apparatus that could possibly
have been within hundreds of miles of Newfoundland would be one of the
Marconi-fitted steamers, and the "call" of a steamer is not the letter
"S," but "U."
The importance of the new system of tuning can hardly be overestimated.
By it all the ships of a fleet can be provided with instruments tuned
alike, so that they may communicate freely with one another, and have no
fear that the enemy will read the messages. The spy of the future must
be an electrical expert who can slip in somehow and steal the secret
of the enemy's tunes. Great telegraph companies will each have its own
tuned instruments, to receive only its own messages, and there may be
special tunes for each of the important governments of the world. Or
perhaps (for the system can be operated very cheaply) the time will even
come when the great banking and business houses, or even families and
friends, will each have its own wireless system, with its own secret
tune. Having variations of millions of different vibrations, there will
be no lack of tunes. For instance, the British navy may be tuned to
receive only messages of 700,000 vibrations to the second, the German
navy 1,500,000, the United States Government 1,000,000, and so on
indefinitely.
[Illustration: _TRANSATLANTIC HIGH POWER MARCONI STATION AT GLACE BAY,
NOVA SCOTIA_]
Tuning also makes multiplex wireless telegraphy a possibility; that
is, many messages may be sent or received on the same suspended wire.
Supposing, for instance, the operator was sending a hurry press despatch
to a newspaper. He has two transmitters, tuned differently, connected
with his wire. He cuts the despatch in two, sends the first half on one
transmitter, and the second on the other, thereby reducing by half the
time of transmission.
A sort of impression prevails that wireless telegraphy is still largely
in the uncertain experimental stage; but, as a matter of fact, it has
long since passed from the laboratory to a wide commercial use. Its
development since Mr. Marconi's first paper was read, in 1896, and
especially since the first message was sent from England to France
across the Channel in March, 1899, has been astonishingly rapid. Most
of the ships of the great navies of Europe and all the important ocean
liners are now fitted with the "wireless" instruments. The system has
been recently adopted by the Lloyds of England, the greatest of shipping
exchanges. It is being used on many lightships, and the New York
_Herald_ receives daily reports from vessels at sea, communicated from
a ship station off Nantucket. Were there space to be spared, many
incidents might be told showing in what curious and wonderful ways the
use of the "wireless" instruments has saved life and property, to say
nothing of facilitating business.
And it cannot now be long before a regular telegraph business will be
conducted between Massachusetts and England, through the new stations.
Mr. Marconi informed me that he would be able to build and equip
stations on both sides of the Atlantic for less than $150,000, the
subsequent charge for maintenance being very small. A cable across the
Atlantic costs between $3,000,000 and $4,000,000, and it is a constant
source of expenditure for repairs. The inventor will be able to transmit
with single instruments about twenty words a minute, and at a cost
ridiculously small compared with the present cable tolls. He said in
a speech delivered at a dinner given him by the Governor at St. John's
that messages which now go by cable at twenty-five cents a word might
be sent profitably at a cent a word or less, which is even much cheaper
than the very cheapest present rates in America for messages by land
wires. It is estimated that about $400,000,000 is invested in cable
systems in various parts of the world. If Marconi succeeds as he hopes
to succeed, much of the vast network of wires at the bottom of
the world's oceans, represented by this investment, will lose its
usefulness. It is now the inventor's purpose to push the work of
installation between the continents as rapidly as possible, and no
one need be surprised if the year 1902 sees his system in practical
operation. Along with this transatlantic work he intends to extend his
system of transmission between ships at sea and the ports on land, with
a view to enabling the shore stations to maintain constant communication
with vessels all the way across the Atlantic. If he succeeds in doing
this, there will at last be no escape for the weary from the daily news
of the world, so long one of the advantages of an ocean voyage. For
every morning each ship, though in mid-ocean, will get its bulletin
of news, the ship's printing-press will strike it off, and it will be
served hot with the coffee. Yet think what such a system will mean to
ships in distress, and how often it will relieve the anxiety of friends
awaiting the delayed voyager.
Mr. Marconi's faith in his invention is boundless. He told me that
one of the projects which he hoped soon to attempt was to communicate
between England and New Zealand. If the electric waves follow the
curvature of the earth, as the Newfoundland experiments indicate, he
sees no reason why he should not send signals 6,000 or 10,000 miles as
easily as 2,000.
Then there is the whole question of the use of wireless telegraphy on
land, a subject hardly studied, though messages have already been sent
upward of sixty miles overland. The new system will certainly prove an
important adjunct on land in war-time, for it will enable generals
to signal, as they have done in South Africa, over comparatively
long distances in fog and storm, and over stretches where it might be
impossible for the telegraph corps to string wires or for couriers to
pass on account of the presence of the enemy.
[Illustration: Work on the Smith Point Lighthouse Stopped by a Violent
Storm.
_Just after the cylinder had been set in place, and while the workmen
were hurrying to stow sufficient ballast to secure it against a heavy
sea, a storm forced the attending steamer to draw away. One of the
barges was almost overturned, and a lifeboat was driven against the
cylinder and crushed to pieces._]