“Want to see the station, Jack?” he asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I replied in a don’t-give-a-care way.
The building we were in not only contained the office but a sound proof room in which the receiving sets were placed. When we crossed the threshold I was standing in a room where even the directors of the company could not tread, not because they were, like angels, afraid, but the men higher up were afraid to let them, for Marconi had a lot of would-be rivals in those days especially on this side of the Atlantic.
The receivers were of the usual ship type, with magnetic detectors and head-phones, and these were connected to the leading-in wire of the aerial through switches and passed outside through insulators in the wall. Several other wires connected to ordinary telegraph instruments also passed through the wall.
“You see, Jack,” my guide said, “these lines belong to the Western Union and the Canadian Pacific Railway Telegraph Company and by means of them the transatlantic cableless messages are received for transmission to England or are forwarded to their destination on the Continent.”
This was all interesting enough but there wasn’t much to see. We went over to another building which contained the power plant. In here a big steam engine was running an alternating current generator.
“This generator develops 820 kilowatts, or about 1,100 horsepower, and,” he continued, “this is the most powerful generator ever built for a wireless transmitter.”
Again interesting but as far as I could see they looked just like any other power plant. I sized them up just the same to see what I could see.
“Now, let’s take a peep at the sending apparatus,” and with that we strolled over to the third building.
“Sounds like a young thunder factory!” I ejaculated as crashes of electric fire tore through the air like small bolts of lightning.