The military wireless station at Aldershot had just finished sending the usual extracts from the press to the headquarters of the Rhine Army at Cologne, when Geoffrey Falconer, with the telephones still over his ears, lowered the wave-length of his reception set, and began to listen to the strains of an orchestra being played at The Hague.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and “the Dutch Concert,” to which all wireless men in England listen so eagerly, was in progress.
Seated in his own experimental laboratory at Warley he leaned his elbows upon the operating-bench and listened.
Who would have dreamed a couple of years ago that a concert given at The Hague could be heard with distinctness by wireless in every corner of the United Kingdom! A cornet solo at the moment being played was loud and perfectly clear. He turned a switch, when from the black trumpet of the loud-speaker telephone on the table the sound became so amplified that the instrument could be heard in any part of the house.
During the day he had been engaged upon some highly interesting experiments upon a crystal producing oscillations, audible frequency currents being obtained by two metal electrodes dipped into the powder of a certain crystal. The matter was extremely technical, and would not be understood by any but radio experimenters; therefore, I need not further describe it. Suffice it to say that all the time Geoffrey could spare from the Works at Chelmsford he devoted to research in his own laboratory at home.
Mrs. Beverley and Sylvia were away in the Trossachs, hence he seldom went to London save when duty took him up to Marconi House.
Geoffrey listened to several songs from The Hague, and then put down the head-’phones, switched his aerial wires to earth, and went out into the pleasant old-world garden to smoke a cigarette. The afternoon was clear and bright, and along the grass path of the long rose walk he strolled, his mind full of the scientific problems which he had been endeavouring all the morning to solve. He wandered to the lawn and sat down in the summer-house awaiting the Professor, for always about that hour he, too, came forth from his study to enjoy a cigar. Suddenly, however, the housemaid appeared saying that he was wanted on the hand telephone.
He hastened to the instrument in the hall, when he found himself speaking to one of his fellow-engineers, named Jerrold, who lived at Witham, and who had a private wireless station similar to his own not far from the Marconi station there.
“I say, Falconer,” he exclaimed, “have you been listening lately?”
“Yes. Till about twenty minutes ago.”