The Triumph of Wireless;
Wireless Telegraphy Rescues Life at Sea

A.D. 1909

EDWARD J. WHEELER CHEVALIER GUGLIELMO MARCONI ARTHUR
D. H. SMITH

It would not be possible to set an exact date to Marconi’s invention of the wireless telegraph, nor even to the beginning of its great practical usage as a means of communication between Europe and America. Marconi actually transmitted a message across the ocean in 1902, but the service proved so very uncertain and irregular as to be useless for commercial purposes until some years later. Gradually, however, the distance over which wireless messages could be transmitted increased. Ships began to use the wireless at sea in 1904. At first its sea use was almost as a toy, a means of interesting idle passengers. Then in January of 1909 there came suddenly the first dramatic occasion in which wireless telegraphy saved from death a whole ship-load of the victims of a mid-ocean wreck.

At once this newest and strangest of electricity’s marvels leaped into universal glory as the brightest achievement of the age. We give here an excellent brief account of the rescue by Mr. Edward J. Wheeler, Editor of Current Literature, reprinted by permission of the magazine. Then follows Signor Marconi’s own explanation of his work; and then an account of the wireless operators, who took part in that first shipwreck which lifted their labor into fame.

EDWARD J. WHEELER

WHEN the ocean liner Republic was rammed in a fog off the Nantucket shoals a few days ago, a brand-new tale was added to the annals of Time, and in the long, long duel between man and nature the former achieved a fresh triumph. The story of the collision between the Republic and the Florida is, unhappily, a commonplace one, except for one thing-the part played by wireless telegraphy. There was a heavy fog. The two ships, going in opposite directions, drew near together. Their fog-sirens were sounding continuously, but the fog sometimes plays tricks with sounds, deflecting the vibrations so that two ships, as they near each other, may enter a "zone of silence," in which neither may hear the other’s warning. Whether this was what happened, or whether the quartermaster of the Florida turned the wheel in the wrong direction, in the early morning the sharp bow of the Florida came out of the fog and clove the side of the Republic amidships, crashing through five staterooms and opening a gap into the engine-room. As the Florida rebounded out of sight in the fog, leaving one of her anchors in a wrecked state-room, the sea began to flood the engine-room of the Republic, and the engineers had barely time to bank the fires, and then, neck-high in water, flee to the decks. Ten minutes after the collision the ominous sound of axes was heard on the top deck as the crew began knocking away the boat-blocks preparatory to launching the life-boats. But the calmness of the captain prevented any disorder or panic.

"And darkness was upon the face of the deep." The electric lights on the Republic had been instantly put out of commission, and nearly 500 men, women, and children, wakened from a sound sleep, confronted the possibility of death without being able to see each other’s faces more than a pace or two away. Fortunately, the bulkheads of the ship held, and the sea was calm. Then it was that a young man with the unheroic name of Jack Binns got into action. He was the wireless telegraph operator, and his storage batteries were uninjured. Out through the fog and over the wide waste of waters he sent the ambulance call of the deep-C Q D-over and over again. Every other message that was traversing the air when that call of distress came promptly ceased, in order to give the right of way to Binns. The wireless operator in the Boston navy-yard caught the call and responded. Then came Binns’s message: "The steamship Republic has been rammed in latitude 40.57, longitude 70, twenty-six miles south of Nantucket." Then the Boston operator got busy. If one could have been up in a balloon and had had eyes to see the unseeable he would have noticed a tremendous force at work at the top of the wireless mast, hurling vibrations in every direction with inconceivable velocity-the messengers of the ether, racing through space to find succor for the Republic. Most of them, scientists tell us, are still racing out on the far frontiers of our solar system, seeking help from Uranus and Neptune; but a few of them were arrested in their flight, taken down a wire and translated into flashes that told the whole story. The wire of the liner Baltic caught one series of the vibrations, halted it, and took it down into a little cabin on the upper deck for cross-examination by a young man named Tattersall. The whaleback steamer City of Everett did the same thing. So did the Gresham, so did the Seneca, so did the Lorraine. So did a dozen or more of liners, tugs, revenue-cutters, and even a little torpedo-boat, and in a brief time a fleet of ships were feeling their way carefully through the fog to find latitude 40.57 and longitude 70, where Jack Binns kept talking to the world with his finger-tips and telling of the progress of affairs.

It sounds like a fairy story, and it has a beautiful ending, as all fairy stories must have. The Republic lies at the bottom of forty-five fathoms of water; but not a soul went dove with her. The transfer of 1,500 persons, more or less, including all the passengers of the Republic and the Florida and the crew of the former, in small boats, in the open sea, to the decks of the Baltic, took twelve hours of hard work, but it was effected without a mishap. The lady in a blue silk night-robe who sat down on deck while Jack Binns was calling to universal space for help, and who began combing her hair, remarking that if she was going to die she might as well die looking her best, can still spread her sunshiny philosophy among the living. The stout, motherly looking woman, "in a bath-robe that flamed like a Jamaica sunrise," who went about distributing hairpins and smiles while the green waves were chasing the engineers out of the engine-room, will probably have use for many hairpins in the future. The lady who played solitaire in the midst of the peril can play again. The Florida reached port under her own steam, and it is possible she could have done so with all the passengers of both ships; but it is not certain, says James B. Connolly, the writer, who was on board the Republic, and who tells the story in Collier’s:

"One thing that the passengers on this ship are well convinced of is that this Marconi system is a great blessing. There were those two ships lying out there helpless in the fog-the Republic, with her engine-room filled with water, unable to turn her screws; the Florida, in fear that in attempting to drive ahead she might be driven under. With no wireless working we might have lain out there for a week in that fog; a week at this time of the year means certain bad weather for some length of time; a few hours of heavy weather would probably have settled both ships; and with those 1,500 people driven from the ships to the boats-and here let it be said that neither ship carried half enough boats or life-rafts for a full passenger list-it is a sure thing that between the sea and the frost it would not have been dozens, but hundreds, that would have been lost-possibly the 1,500."

"It is not true," says the Philadelphia Ledger, "that the age of romance and heroism is dead. Nothing could have been more thrilling than the episode of the wreck of the Republic; nothing finer than the courage with which the human beings involved met the test." "Wireless telegraphy," remarked the New York Evening Sun, "has been hailed as a marvel of science, but the service it has done humanity to-day sets it far higher in the people’s minds. It will hereafter be considered as indispensable a part of any steamship’s equipment of safety as her charts or her navigator. It is the steamship’s invisible life-line, by which the safety of her passengers is safeguarded in a degree which no traveler of ten years ago could have dreamed. It is the best of modern magic." In a message to Congress a few days after the collision and the rescue, President Roosevelt recommended a law requiring all ocean-going steamships carrying considerable numbers of passengers to install a wireless service. Congressman Burke has introduced such a bill. A chain of wireless stations already extends along our Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf shores, and even Alaska, Porto Rico, Hawall, and the Philippines are equipped. This latest of scientific marvels has already become a part of the daily humdrum of life, and there are enterprising schoolboys in most of the coast cities who have run up a hole of their own in the back yard, and who can sit in their rooms and hear the liners talking to each other out in the ocean. One of our magazine poets, Mr. Oppenheim, has given us recently the "Song of the Wireless":

Who will gather my flying reins and bridle my headlong speed?

Who will hold me back on my whirlwind track as I carry the hidden screed?

Do you think you have conquered time, loud slaves of the narrow rail?

I will leave you a thousand miles behind in the teeth of an open gale!

When the storm-wrecked steamer limps through the mist and the swirling spume,

I push a way to the outer day and tell of the vessel’s doom.

I have come unseen with secret speech, I have guarded the tale unheard;

I have put mine eyes on the journey’s end and delivered the faithful word.

CHEVALIER G. MARCONI, LL.D., D.SC., M.R.I.

The following account is printed by special permission of Signor Marconi. It is part of an address delivered by him before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and traces the progress of his great invention in the days before its value had received world-wide recognition.

The phenomena of electromagnetic induction, revealed chiefly by the memorable researches and discoveries of Faraday, carried out in the Royal Institution, have long since shown how it is possible for the transmission of electrical energy to take place across a small air space between a conductor traversed by a variable current and another conductor placed near it, and how such transmission may be detected and observed at distances greater or less, according to the more or less rapid variation of the current in one of the wires, and also according to the greater or less quantity of electricity brought into play.

Maxwell, inspired by Faraday’s work, gave to the world in 1873 his wonderful mathematical theory of electricity and magnetism, demonstrating on theoretical grounds the existence of electromagnetic waves, fundamentally similar to but enormously longer than waves of light. Following up Maxwell, Hertz in 1887 furnished his great practical proof of the existence of these true electromagnetic waves.

Building on the foundations prepared by these great men, the author carried out in 1895 and 1896 his first tests, with apparatus which embodied the principle on which long-distance wireless telegraphy is successfully worked at the present day.

The main feature of the system is the utilization of the earth effect by connecting both the transmitting and receiving instruments between earth and a raised capacity.

The later improvements introduced in the author’s system of wireless telegraphy have been directed toward the following ends:

1. To obtain independence of communication or the prevention of interference between several neighboring stations.

2. To increase the distance of communication.

3. To increase the efficiency of the apparatus, its accuracy, and working speed.

One of the chief objections which are raised against wireless telegraphy is that it is possible to work only two or a very limited number of stations in the immediate vicinity of each other without causing mutual interference or producing a jumble by the confusion of the different messages. This objection appears to be much more serious to that section of the public which knows little or nothing of telegraphy in general than to telegraph engineers, who know that without organization and discipline the same interference would occur in the great majority of ordinary land telegrams. For example, there is an "omnibus" line between Cork and Crookhaven. On this line there are a dozen or more telegraph offices, all with their instruments joined up to the same wire running from the terminal stations. Now, if any of these offices should proceed to send a message, say to Cork, while this office is receiving another message from Crookhaven, it would cause an interference which would result in the confusion of the two messages, thus rendering them unintelligible. Any message sent on the line will affect all the instruments and can be read by all the other telegraph offices on the line; but certain rules and regulations are laid down and adhered to by the operators in the employ of the General Post Office which make it impossible for one station to interfere with the rest. It is obvious that these same rules are applicable to every case in which a group of equally tuned wireless telegraph stations happen to be in proximity to each other.

Although in many instances untuned wireless telegraphy may prove of great utility, it is, however, clear that so long as some method of rendering stations completely independent of one another was not devised, a very important and effectual limit to the practical utilization of wireless telegraphy would be imposed. The new method adopted by the author in 1898 was a step in the right direction. This improvement was described by the author in a discourse which he had the honor to deliver in the Royal Institution in February, 1900.

Up to the commencement of 1902 the only receivers that could be practically employed for the purpose of wireless telegraphy were based on what may be called the coherer principle-that is, the detector, the principle of which is based on the discoveries and observations made by S. A. Varley, Professor Hughes, Calsecchi Onesti, and Professor Branly.

Early in that year the author was fortunate enough to succeed in constructing a practical receiver of electric waves, based on a principle different from that of the coherer. Speaking from the experience of its application for over two years to commercial purposes, the author is able to say that, in so far as concerns speed of working, facility of adjustment, reliability, and efficiency when used on tuned circuits, this receiver has left all coherers or anticoherers far behind.

This detector is and has been successfully employed for both long and short distance work. It is used on the ships of the Royal Navy and on all transatlantic liners which are carrying on a long distance news service. It has also been used to a large extent in the tests across the Atlantic Ocean.

As already stated, the adoption of this magnetic receiver was the means of bringing about a great improvement in the practical working conditions of wireless telegraphy by making it possible to do away with the troublesome adjustments necessary when using coherers, and also by considerably increasing the speed at which it is possible to receive, the speed depending solely on the ability of the individual operators.

A very considerable amount of public interest has been centered during the last few years on the tests and experiments in which the author has been engaged in investigating the possibilities of wireless telegraphy over very great distances, and especially on the tests which are being carried out across the Atlantic Ocean.

The facility with which distances of over 200 miles could be covered with the author’s apparatus as long ago as 1900, and the knowledge that by means of syntonic devices mutual interferences could be prevented, led the author to advise the construction of two large power stations, one in Cornwall and the other in North America, in order to test whether, by the employment of much greater power, it might not be possible to transmit messages across the Atlantic Ocean.

On the erection of these stations very extensive tests and experiments were carried out during the latter part of 1902. These tests were greatly facilitated by the courtesy of the Italian Government, which placed a 7,000-ton cruiser, the Carlo Alberto, at the author’s disposal. During these trials the interesting fact was observed that, unlike what occurs with moderate power-transmitting stations, the effect of intervening land or mountains between the sending and receiving apparatus does not bring about any considerable reduction in the distances over which it is possible to communicate; this result being due, no doubt, to the much greater length-of wave radiated by the big elevated conductor of the long-distance stations, compared with the shorter wave-length radiated by the smaller and less powerful installations.

After these experiments the Carlo Alberto was sent back from the Mediterranean to Plymouth, and thence conveyed the author to Canada; and in October, 1902, signals from Poldhu were received on board ship throughout the voyage up to a distance of 2,300 miles.

In December, 1902, messages were exchanged between the stations at Poldhu in England and Cape Breton in Canada, but it was found that communication was better from Canada to England than in the opposite direction.

The reason for this is to be attributed to the fact that, owing to the support and encouragement of the Canadian Government, the station at Cape Breton had been more efficiently and expensively equipped; while as regards Poldhu, owing to the uncertainty as to what would be the attitude of the British Government at that time toward the working of the station, the author’s company was unwilling to expend large sums of money for the purpose of increasing its range of transmission.

As, however, messages were sent with ease and accuracy from Canada to England, the author considered it his duty to send the first messages to their Majesties the Kings of England and Italy, both of whom had previously given him much encouragement and assistance in his work. The author was thus enabled to announce that the transmission of telegraphic messages across the Atlantic Ocean without the use of cable or wire was an accomplished fact. Messages were also sent to his Majesty from Lord Minto, the Governor-General of Canada, who had taken a considerable interest in the author’s early experiments in Canada. Officers delegated by the Italian Government and a representative of the London Times were present at the transmission of the messages, and over 2,000 words were sent and correctly received in the presence of these Government delegates.

Further tests were then carried out at the long-distance station erected at Cape Cod, in the United States of America, and a message from President Roosevelt was successfully transmitted from this station to his Majesty the King.

In the spring of 1903 the transmission of news messages from America to the London Times was attempted, and the first messages were correctly received and published in that newspaper. A breakdown in the insulation of the apparatus at Cape Breton made it necessary, however, to suspend the service, and, unfortunately, further accidents made the transmission of messages unreliable, especially during the spring and summer. In consequence of this, the author’s company decided not to attempt the transmission of any more public messages until such time as a reliable and continuous service could be maintained and guaranteed under all ordinary conditions.

It is curious to note that the transmission of messages across the Atlantic appeared to be much easier during the winter months of December, January, and February than during the spring and summer, but no serious difficulties were encountered before April. These were partly caused by the insulation of the aerial not being so good during the damp spring weather, when the snow and ice are melting and thawing, as at this period the insulation is much more difficult to maintain in an efficient condition than during the dry and crisp Canadian winter.

In October, 1903, it was found possible to supply the Cunard steamship Lucania during her entire crossing from New York to Liverpool with news transmitted direct to that ship from Poldhu and Cape Breton. Since June, 1904, a regular long-distance commercial service has been in operation on certain ships of the Cunard Steamship Company, which ships, throughout their voyage across the Atlantic, receive daily news messages collected for transmission by Messrs. Reuter in England and by the Associated Press in America.

As to the future of wireless telegraphy, the author expresses his confidence in its ability to furnish a more economical means for the transmission of telegrams from England to America and from England to the colonies than the present service carried on by the cables.

It is true that many scientific men are dubious of the practicability of sending electric waves to great distances. Others are not. On a recent memorable occasion at Glasgow University, Lord Kelvin publicly stated that he not merely believed that messages could be transmitted across the Atlantic, but that some day it would be possible to send messages to the other side of the globe. Apart from the practical and economical possibilities of this step, when realized, the transmission of messages to the antipodes would open up the possibility of carrying out tests of very great scientific interest. For example, if transmission to the antipodes were possible, the energy ought to go over or travel round all parts of the globe from one station to the other, and perhaps concentrate at the antipodes, and in this way it might perhaps be possible for messages to be sent to such distant lands by means of a very small amount of electrical energy, and, therefore, at a correspondingly small expense.

ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH¹

Within two hours of the moment when the wireless operator at Siasconset was startled by the ill-fated Republic’s C Q D call, last January, the public was beginning to get the news. The White Star liner, Mediterranean-bound, had been rammed by an unknown vessel, and was sinking, though her passengers were safe. Crowds gathered in the streets of New York, whence she had proudly sailed the day before. They besieged the steamship offices and the offices of the Marconi Company. It took little imagination to realize that a drama of surpassing interest was being played behind the curtain of fog that enshrouded the sea south of Nantucket Island.

In this state of public suspense, wireless telegraphy bridged the billowing waves, telling in quick, throbbing beats the story of the accident. Wireless stations on shore caught the brief bulletins from the rescuing liners that were feeling their way toward the Republic; and these were served up to the waiting multitudes on shore as fast as newspaper presses could throw off the printed sheets. Now and then, a faint buzzing in a receiver indicated a message from the Republic herself, where "Jack" Binns-the youngster of twenty-six who became famous in a day-was sitting at the key in his shattered cabin, nursing the power in his depleted accumulators, so that he might keep in touch with the outside world.

It was to the wireless that the passengers on the Republic owed their salvation. The collision water-proof bulkheads and the iron discipline of the liner’s crew must receive their due meed of praise. Yet, had it not been for the wireless instrument that Binns contrived to run on his accumulators, after the incoming water had flooded the engine-room dynamos, it is quite conceivable that the Republic’s danger might have been unknown for hours-perhaps for the two days that, as it was, sufficed to bring her passengers back to New York. To be sure, the transfer to the Florida was made within that time; but the Florida was badly damaged herself, and an attempt to reach port with such an added load might have resulted disastrously. At any rate, it is the wireless that the Republic’s passengers must thank for saving them much discomfort and a certain amount of physical harm.

The world learned a thing or two about the wireless service and the brotherhood of operators in the two days that followed the ramming of the Republic. Previously it had only conceived of the service as nests of wires strung on tall poles. Messages were sent from these, but how or why was beyond the comprehension of all except the scientifically instructed. Of the operators, as well, the world only knew, in a vague general sort of way, that they were men who sat in the little cabins on the hurricane-decks of ocean liners, living amid a constant crackle of blue sparks.

Now, it realizes that a new gild of men who live face to face with danger has been established. For the code of the wireless operator is the code of the locomotive engineer, of the shipmaster, the fireman, the soldier. He sticks to his post to the last. His is the same spirit that animated Captain Sealby, of the Republic, who almost insisted on going down with his ship; for so long as there is a spark to be got from the batteries the wireless operator stays by his key.

It will be many a long day before men of the sea forget the names of "Jack" Binns and H. G. Tattersall, the operator on the Baltic, who sat at his key for fifty-two hours while the work of rescuing the passengers of the Republic and Florida was in progress. With the wall of his metal cabin splintered and shattered by the knife-bow of the Italian liner, Binns stuck to his instrument all through the dreary day, sending, sending, sending the hurry call of the sea-C Q D! C Q D!

The fog clung round them like a clammy veil; strange noises and mutterings sounded, dimly; the submarine bell signal tinkled an ominous warning that was too late. But Binns stuck to his key and tapped out the cry of the stricken in streaks of electricity that pierced through fog and ether to where the sandspit of Siasconset stretched into the Atlantic.

Of Tattersall it was only known, until he reached New York, that he was the man who, two nights after the accident, ended a message with the pathetic paragraph: "I can send no more. I have been constantly at the key without sleep for fifty-two hours." Afterward, striding up and down the pier with the nervousness of the man who has lacked sleep so long that it is no longer necessary to him, he told his story of the rescue.

"Excited?" he repeated. "No-that is, I was, once, when I got the first message from the Republic, via Siasconset. After that, I don’t remember anything coherently. Things just happened, one after another. I don’t even remember the order in which they took place. The most trying part of it was having to send and receive those Republic messages, matters of life and death, while all the time the powerful batteries of the shore stations were calling me. It was a terrible strain on the nerves.

"Five minutes after the Republic was struck her lights went out, and the dynamos were put out of business. After that, Binns, her operator, had to rely on his accumulators. You can’t get a great deal of power out of your accumulators. They won’t send a spark much more than sixty miles-not more than eighty, at a maximum. And even at sixty miles they are very faint.

"With the shore stations jerking out flashes of desperate power, it was all I could do to decipher the feeble signals from the Republic. They were mere buzzes in my receiver, for the first few hours. They were jammed out, as we say, by the powerful messages from the shore stations, dinning and crackling into my ears. But all the time I kept calling `Republic! Republic!’ and telling them that we were coming to their aid.

"At last, when we were within forty miles of their position, I began to be able to make out words from the buzzes in the receiver-scattered, senseless syllables to begin with, and then whole phrases and sentences. They gave me their position, and I answered that we were coming as fast as we could steam through the fog.

"Was I excited? No; it’s the awful nervous strain of striving, always striving, to get the messages right, when half a dozen gigantic batteries are jerking flashes to you at the same time, drowning each other out, pounding in your ears, making the night seem to swarm with sparks before your eyes. That’s what gets on a man’s nerves; that’s what makes you next to insane. I hardly knew what to do, with the Republic calling me faintly, so faintly that I could not make out whether they were saying: `We are sinking!’ or `All safe !"

"Sometimes, I wanted to swear at Siasconset or Woods Hole. It made me angry that they couldn’t realize they were spoiling my receiving. How could I take those flutters from the Republic’s wires, when they were crashing out their sparks powerful enough to travel two hundred miles?"

There is nothing at all romantic-looking about Tattersall. He is a little, slim, red-whiskered Londoner, as quick and limber as a cat. And, strange to say, he is bashful about what he has done. It is not easy to make him talk about himself, and when he realizes that he has been led into such a digression, he blushes and stammers like a schoolgirl. "Jack" Binns is the same sort of man-young, boyish, quite immature in appearance, but possessed of the identical iron nerve and dauntless resolution that kept Tattersall at his post for more than two days.

He took it as a matter of course that he should be the last man to leave the sinking Republic, except her captain, and the second officer, who insisted on remaining with his chief. It was Binns, too, who held his broken instrument together with one hand, while with the other he rapped the cry for help. Of this, he made light, afterward. It was nothing, he insisted, with a cheery grin. "Any fellow could do that much," he declared.

Binns and Tattersall are like most of the other operators on the transatlantic liners, in that they are young. Somehow or other, the wireless trade seems to be attractive to youth. It is not because men do not last long at it. It is a hearty and healthy, though strenuous, occupation, and gives a man bracing air in his off-hours. Yet the constant change and excitement incidental to it are factors that appeal to youth. That is the reason most of the men in the trim blue uniforms who have charge of the network of wires that criss-cross between the masts are under thirty.

On all big steamships, like the Republic and the Baltic, there are two, if not three, operators. The rules say nothing explicit about what a head operator shall do in time of stress and danger. Yet the words of Tattersall, shot through the murk that shrouded the sea, were pregnant with the spirit of the wireless operator.

He had a mate at hand who could have relieved him of his task, a task from which he never swerved, save to gulp a cup of coffee or eat a roll, while he chewed on a black cigar and tapped away all through the weary hours. But it was not in accordance with his idea of the duty of a chief operator to leave to a subordinate the responsibility that devolved upon the wireless in that time of suspense.

In the years that have passed since wireless apparatus became a recognized part of a sea-going vessel’s equipment, much improvement has taken place in the methods of sending and receiving. The open-mouthed wonder of the men who stood at Marconi’s side at Glace Bay, four years ago, and heard him taking down a message from the storm-beaten Umbria, hundreds of miles away, would now be regarded as a thing to laugh at. We are used to such trivial marvels. The Federal Government is advertising for bids for the construction of a station at Washington capable of maintaining communication within a radius of 1,000 miles. The Eiffel Tower station in Paris already receives messages from the same distance; and communication between the coasts of Newfoundland and Ireland is an established fact.

One can hardly overemphasize the development of the science. It was so recently as 1895 that Marconi sent his first message two miles. Regarded seven years ago in the light of a toy-as a questionable practical adjunct to man’s power-it has since leaped into position as one of the most useful inventions vouchsafed by modern science. Probably Marconi himself was pleasurably surprised when he first sent a message fifty miles. It was but the other day that the station on Russian Hill, San Francisco, established commumcation with the Kuhuhu station on the island of Oahu, 2,100 nautical miles distant. And this year the Navy expects to transmit messages 3,000 miles!

A German wireless company claims to have sent messages 2,290 miles, and it is a common thing for the Marconi operators to flash dispatches across the Atlantic-so common that some of the newspapers now publish a special page of wireless news in their Sunday edition. While the battleship fleet was in the Pacific, certain messages flashed from the men-o’-war to the California land-stations were received by the operator at the Pensacola Navy Yard. Think of that! Those communications had passed through the ether, over many miles of tumbling blue water, across the Sierra Nevada, the hot sand-wastes of the southwest, the broad Texas prairies and the Gulf of Mexico, to the station on the Florida shore.

In the American Navy, use of the wireless plays an important part in all battle maneuvers, and experiments are being conducted by the Army Signal Corps with a view to employing it as an adjunct to the field telegraph and telephone, as well as providing a means of communication between war-balloons and air-ships and the earth. In future campaigns on land or sea, it is destined to play as prominent a role as any of the engines of destruction.

And with the time not far distant, according to many engineers, when Bellini and Tosi will perfect their device for independent communication-too complicatedly simple for the layman to understand-and when Hans Knudsen will succeed in working linotype machines by wireless waves, not to speak of flashing perfect photographs through the infinite ether, what seems the fairy tale of to-day will be the familiar proceeding of to-morrow.

¹Reprinted from Putnam’s Magazine, by permission of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, of New York and London.