He is now engaged in further experiments and hopes to establish permanent communication between England and America within a very short time, and later extend the system over the entire globe.
At the present time all the leading steamship lines crossing the Atlantic, and many ships of the British navy, are equipped with wireless telegraph apparatus, by means of which vessels at sea are in constant touch with Europe and America; thus each ship has become a floating telegraph office.
The inventor is somewhat above medium height and of a highly strung temperament. He is quiet and deliberate in his movements; he talks little; is straightforward, unassuming, and has accepted his success with calmness, almost with unconcern.
He is undoubtedly the most prominent man of the day and the wonder of the age.
Genesis of Wireless Telegraphy.
Professor McBride, M.A., D.Sc., of McGill University, in his inaugural address as President of the Natural History Society of Montreal in October, 1901, referred to wireless telegraphy as follows:—
“Take a discovery that is exciting the greatest interest at the present time, and promises results of the most far-reaching importance, namely, wireless telegraphy. Let us trace the apostolical succession, to borrow a term from theology, of the idea which underlies the discovery.
“Thirty or forty years ago the great Cambridge physicist, Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest and most penetrative of the geniuses who have filled the chairs of that ancient university, was engaged in determining the value of the electric unit. As many of my hearers are aware, there are two ways of doing this: we can estimate either the push that an electric charge exerts on another similar charge, or else the pull that an electric current effects on a magnetic needle. In this way two different values for the unit are arrived at, and the relation between them, or to put it more simply, the number obtained by dividing the one by the other, gives the velocity of light in centimeters per second. This remarkable result suggested to Clerk Maxwell that, that mysterious thing called electricity had something to do with the ether which fills all space and transmits the vibrations which we call light, and he thereupon constructed this famous electro-magnetic theory of light which conceives light to consist of vibrations not on a comparatively gross material like ordinary matter, but of electricity itself. This theory received at first little support from the German physicists, who are inclined to scoff at every idea that is not of German origin.
“Amongst a crowd of scoffers, however, one open-minded enquirer was found who said to himself ‘If Clerk Maxwell is right, I ought to find that if I start artificial electric vibrations they will propagate themselves like light waves.’ This man’s name was Hertz, and he promptly set about producing electric waves purely with a view of testing Clerk Maxwell’s theory.