The next day the wind was just as high but we stuck to the barracks in case it should go down. There were bits of talk among Mr. Marconi and his assistants about the instruments, the ground, the aerial and other things which would have been as Greek to any one but an old operator like myself. I drank in every word that these pioneer wireless men said but never a word said I. Once Mr. Paget asked me to hand him a dry-cell and I handed him a binding post instead. Some one said “stupid” under his breath but still loud enough for me to hear it and I was happy. None of this wireless kid stuff here. I was getting away with murder.
Mr. Paget looked at his watch. “Poldhu is sending now. Too bad we haven’t a kite up, Mr. Marconi.”
“We must get it up. Mr. Kemp, will you be good enough to try again?” Mr. Marconi said.
Oh-ho, said I to myself. I am in on big doings. What Mr. Marconi is here for is not particularly to get signals from passing ships far out at sea, but to try and get Poldhu! It made my hair stand on end at the thought of such wonders. And if he gets it he will have spanned the Atlantic—over 2,000 miles—with his wireless waves. He will have done the biggest scientific thing since Cyrus Field joined the old and the new worlds with his cable! Whoopee! Yow! Yow!
From that moment on I was walking on air. The inventor, whatever he may have felt, was calm, cool and collected, dignified at all times but always in a good humor. The strain he was undergoing must have been tremendous, but he had trained himself well in the art of restraint and no one, not in on the know would have ever suspected it.
At Poldhu, on the Cornish coast of England, the Marconi Company had built, for the express purpose of making this greatest of all experiments, the most powerful wireless station that had yet been put up. It had been figured by Marconi and his technical adviser of England, Dr. Fleming, that to transmit wireless messages across the ocean, 15 vertical wires 210 feet high, would have to be used and that these would have to be energized by oscillating currents equal to about 25 horse power. It was indeed a veritable lightning and thunder plant!
On Thursday, the 12th of December, we flew another kite and Mr. Marconi came out and personally saw to it that no flukes were made. The wind was still high and fitful, but with extreme care in which all of us, including Mr. Marconi, took a hand we somehow got it up and held it at about 400 feet.
Then the inventor and Mr. Kemp went into the wireless room. This was about 11:30 o’clock in the morning, St. Johns time. We held the kite as steady as we could and I knew that the supreme time in Marconi’s life was at hand. After waiting half an hour—it seemed like an eternity of time even to me—Mr. Kemp came out of the barracks and hurried over to where we were holding the kite. I couldn’t tell from his face whether the experiment had been a success or not, for an Englishman’s face always looks the same.
“We got it!” he told Mr. Paget. “Mr. Marconi got the signal first and then handed the head-phone to me. I heard the three dots several times in succession quite clearly.”
The three dots forming the letter S were those agreed upon by Mr. Marconi and his operators at the Poldhu station before he left England, as being the best signal to send out.