Marconi’s great achievement, which was of immense importance, naturally astonished the world. Of course, there were not wanting those who discredited the report. Others, on the contrary, were seized with panic and showed their readiness to believe that the Atlantic had been spanned aërially, by selling off their shares in cable companies. To use the language of the money-market, there was a temporary “slump” in cable shares. The world again woke up—this time to the fact that experiments of which it had heard faintly had at last culminated in a great triumph, marvellous in itself, and yet probably nothing in comparison with the revolution in the transmission of news that it heralded.
The subject of Wireless Telegraphy is so wide that to treat it fully in the compass of a single chapter is impossible. At the same time it would be equally impossible to pass it over in a book written with the object of presenting to the reader the latest developments of scientific research. Indeed, the attention that it has justly attracted entitle it, not merely to a place, but to a leading place; and for this reason these first pages will be devoted to a short account of the history and theory of Wireless Telegraphy, with some mention of the different systems by which signals have been sent through space.
On casting about for a point at which to begin, the writer is tempted to attack the great topic of the ether, to which experimenters in many branches of science are now devoting more and more attention, hoping to find in it an explanation of and connection between many phenomena which at present are of uncertain origin.
What is Ether? In the first place, its very existence is merely assumed, like that of the atom and the molecule. Nobody can say that he has actually seen or had any experience of it. The assumption that there is such a thing is justified only in so far as that assumption explains and reconciles phenomena of which we have experience, and enables us to form theories which can be scientifically demonstrated correct. What scientists now say is this: that everything which we see and touch, the air, the infinity of space itself, is permeated by a something, so subtle that, no matter how continuous a thing may seem, it is but a concourse of atoms separated by this something, the Ether. Reasoning drove them to this conclusion.
It is obvious that an effect cannot come out of nothing. Put a clock under a bell-glass and you hear the ticking. Pump out the air and the ticking becomes inaudible. What is now not in the glass that was there before? The air. Reason, therefore, obliges us to conclude that air is the means whereby the ticking is audible to us. No air, no sound. Next, put a lighted candle on the further side of the exhausted bell-glass. We can see it clearly enough. The absence of air does not affect light. But can we believe that there is an absolute gap between us and the light? No! It is far easier to believe that the bell-glass is as full as the outside atmosphere of the something that communicates the sensation of light from the candle to the eye. Again, suppose we measure a bar of iron very carefully while cold and then heat it. We shall find that it has expanded a little. The iron atoms, we say, have become more energetic than before, repel each other and stand further apart. What then is in the intervening spaces? Not air, which cannot be forced through iron whether hot or cold. No! the ether: which passes easily through crevices so small as to bar the way to the atoms of air.
A Corner of M. Marconi’s cabin on board S.S. “Minneapolis,” showing instruments used in Wireless Telegraphy.
Once more, suppose that to one end of our iron bar we apply the negative “pole” of an electric battery, and to the other end the positive pole. We see that a current passes through the bar, whether hot or cold, which implies that it jumps across all the ether gaps, or rather is conveyed by them from one atom to another.
The conclusion then is that ether is not merely omnipresent, penetrating all things, but the medium whereby heat, light, electricity, perhaps even thought itself, are transmitted from one point to another.