Progress in Wireless Telegraphy

Abstract

IT is eighteen months or more since Mr. Marconi A succeeded in establishing wireless communication across the Atlantic. On that occasion a few congratulatory messages were exchanged, a great deal was written on the subject in the Press, and the more timorous of cable shareholders were reported to be much troubled. A little later the attempt was made to demonstrate that this achievement was not merely a firework display, but was capable of direct commercial application; the Marconi Co. entered into a contract to supply the Times with news from America by wireless telegraphy, and for a day or so there appeared items of news in that paper under the heading “By Marconigraph.” But after a few messages something went wrong, and the public were given to understand that a piece of auxiliary machinery had broken down. It is to be presumed that this piece of machinery has at length been repaired, for Mr. Marconi has once again come very much to the front with longdistance transmission work. The announcement, which we published last week, that he had been successful in maintaining a supply of news to the Campania on her voyage across the Atlantic with a regularity sufficient to allow of the publication of a daily paper on board that vessel affords evidence that he is still steadily pushing forward the practical development of wireless telegraphy. We have repeatedly urged in these columns that the real work of wireless telegraphy lay in communication with ships, and it is therefore a greater pleasure to record this latest development than it would be to announce the reopening of Transatlantic communication.