Jack Heaton, wireless operator

by A. Frederick Collins

Somebody must have told the Directeur, or manager as we would call him in good old English, that I was coming for before I could explain in sign language that I wanted a job he, with the aid of a couple of other conspirators, hustled me unceremoniously out, up the stairs and on to the green grass of the park. No, it wasn’t exactly a case of sour grapes but after I had seen the apparatus of the station and added it to my Christian Science collection I didn’t want the job anyway.

The most interesting feature of the Eiffel Tower wireless station is its aerial and before I left I studied it carefully. It is a one-sided affair, but this is not because its designer thought well of it but in virtue of the fact that the Eiffel Tower sets at one end of the Champ de Mars.

If the tower had been built in the middle of the park the wires could have been brought down all around it on all sides thus forming what is called an umbrella aerial and this would have been good practise, as the engineers say. As it is there are six steel cables about ½ an inch in diameter secured to but insulated from the top of the tower on one side and these are guyed out in the shape of a fan and anchored at the other end of the park.

The cables are set in stone posts which project above the ground and to prevent simple folks from laying their hands on them, in which case their bodies would become conductors and allow a few million volts of high potential electricity to pass through them, the posts are surrounded by iron fences. The main cables are connected together about half-way between the ground and the top of the tower with other and lighter cables and these are joined to a single leading-in cable which runs down to and passes through a window to the top of the area-way in the underground building.

Finally the leading-in cable is connected to one end of a tuning coil, the other end of which is joined to a ground formed of metal plates having nearly 3000 square feet of surface and these are buried deeply in the earth far below the underground building.

Before I left the States to get the Eiffel Tower station the Navy Department had contracted with the National Signaling Company, an American wireless telegraph concern, for the most powerful cableless plant that had yet been built.

While I was in France work had been started on the towers and buildings at Arlington on the Potomac River near Washington and the machinery and apparatus for it was being built. After my return, with some jockeying, I landed a position with the National Signaling Company in the testing department and so had the opportunity of watching the whole installation grow up of which I shall tell you presently.

Finally when every piece of apparatus had been built and given exhaustive tests the equipment was shipped to Arlington, or, as some would-be high-brow tried to rename it, Radio, and the engineers and working force of the Company were sent to Arlington to install it, get it into working order and make the final tests required by the Government before the latter took it over.

When we reached Washington I could see the three great steel towers at Arlington looming up as high, it seemed to me, as the Washington Monument itself. On reaching the Arlington station which sets on the crest of a hill in a corner of the Fort Myer Reservation, the towers did not look so high, nor were they, for the tallest one was about 600 feet and the two shorter ones were 450 feet high. These three towers formed a triangle, the distance between the two shorter ones being 350 feet, and 450 feet between the taller and shorter ones. These towers, which were complete and ready for the aerials, rested on concrete buses and were insulated from the ground by slabs of marble. There are three buildings and these were also ready for the installation.

Now while the machinery and apparatus were being moved into the buildings and set in place a force of men was put to work on assembling the aerials and swinging them between the tops of the towers. These aerials are known as T, or flat-top aerials and right here I want to tell you how and why this type of aerial came to be.