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1903-] MARINE REVIEW AND MARINE RECORD. 27 GUGLIELMO MARCONI, THE PRACTICAL. George W, Fishback in American Industries. It is characteristic of most inventors that they dream dreams which others must make come true. They have visions of great mechanical achievements which will revolutionize the world's business; yet they do not themselves know how to construct the necessary machinery for the operation. Marconi, of world-wide wireless telegraph fame, is an exception. He has dreamed dreams, but he has seen them come true because of his almost superhuman effort; he has had visions of the annihilation of distance and time, the two great obstacles of the world's progress, and he has devised with his own hands the apparatus by means of which he has brought this end about. In addition to being the student and solver of abstruse scientific problems, he has be- come the manufacturer of concrete things; his inventions have stepped from the stage of laboratory experiment to that of an enterprise world wide in its embrace. And this man, Marconi, who has achieved in such a: manner as to win the plaudits of kings--and of common men--who has linked the hemispheres through a medium a millionth part as dense as the air we breathe, is a Scotch-Italian citizen of the world not yet thirty years of ape. Some historical novelist may some day: write the romance of the accomplished daughter of a wealthy Dublin manufacturer and her dashing young Italian lover. The Dublin manufacturer sent his daughter to Italy to complete her musical studies. How she was wooed and won is a story still to be told; but these two, 'Anne Jamison and Guiseppe Marconi, are distinguished now as the parents of Marconi, of wireless fame. It is not of: great- est interest to know that their elder son, Guglielmo, was born in Marzabotta, on his: father's ancestral estate, Villa. Griffon, rear Bologna, Italy, on April 25, 1874, yet that is the first biog- raphical fact to record concerning him. He was educated mainly by tutors and grew up much as any other Italian boy of his time. He did not regularly attend any college or universitv' he had some schooling in Leghorn and Bologna, and spent two years in school at Bedford, England, when a young boy. The important fact is that when the young man had reached the age of twenty he was already an inventor, and that, at this early age, he manu- factured an apparatus by which he sent signals through the walls of his father's house without the use of any connecting wires. It was this date, December, 1894, that began his career. He had previously read of the work of Hertz on electro-magnetic waves, and when he thought of using Hertzian waves for wire- less telegraphy he had the foundations of his present success. In the next few years Marconi made thousands of experiments. Each step was carefully taken, and when he went to England in 1897, he was prepared to send messages five miles. Fortunately, he had considerable wealth of his own for his early work; but when he began important developments in England, his friends foresaw the necessity of a business corporation behind him, and an English company was organized. His continued success caused the stock to be over-subscribed, and soon it rose to four times its pat value. Marconi went on with his experiments; from five miles he increased the efficiency of his apparatus to eighteen-- the Isle of Wight to Poole harbor; then followed in rapid suc- cession the triumphs of across the English channel, a service on the Goodwin Sands lightship, by means of which several lives were saved in one year; 86 miles from ship to ship during the English fleet maneuvers, reporting the international yacht races off Sandy Hook, contracts with Lloyds for fifteen years, service established on over thirty transatlantic liners, messages from shore to ship, 1,550 miles; from Italy to England; from England 'to the Baltic, and, finally, from Cape Cod, Mass., to Poldhu, Eng- land, 3,000 miles. These tremendous results were not brought about, however, without further commercial developments. A continental com- pany was formed in Europe by leading Belgian, German, French and Spanish financiers, and last year it became apparent that the forthcoming establishment of transatlantic wireless service would make an American company necessary. Accordingly the Mar- coni Wireless Telegraph Co. of America was formed. It pur- chased the entire Marconi rights in the United States and its de- pendencies, covering Cuba, Porto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii. and the Philippines. During the past year it had constructed the trans- atlantic station at Cape Cod, Mass., a Marconi school at Babylon, stations at Chicago and Milwaukee, a ship reporting station at Sagaponack, L. I., installed the system in several steamships, and began work in Cuba and Alaska. oe As the system stands today it is an art of communication which has spanned wirelessly a distance of something over 3,000 _ miles--from Cape Cod, Mass., to Poldhu, England. It has been used daily between Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, and Poldhu, 2,400 miles, transmitting a service of news for the London Times from Canada and a variety of messages besides. It is now a matter of a comparatively short time when the Cape Cod station will be - put in daily operation, and soon thereafter commercial wireless telegraphy between the United States and England should be an accomplished fact. Not to go too far into the future, the Italian government has appropriated $150,000 for the erection 0 a station on the Italian coast, designed to communicate with Buenos Ayres--a distance of 5,000 miles! Work has already be- non the Italian long distance station, and the confidence of the talian officials in the success of the project is sufficient reason i its mention here. ; hile. Marconi's long distance achievements are the more sensational, the applications of his system to the business of the - world in many other channels must not be lost sight of. In Europe the system has been adopted by the British and Italian navies; thirty-two installations have already been placed on the warships of England and twenty on the ships of Italy. England has over twenty land stations and Italy five. The great shipping association of Lloyds has made a contract with Marconi which has yet thirteen years to run, by which the system is being ap- plied in such Lloyds stations as may be desired. Already several installations have been made and others are now under way. These stations facilitate the business of the association by re- porting ships many hours ahead of their arrival, by communicat- ing one to the other in case of wrecks or other necessity, and by making meteorological reports which reduce greatly the dangers heretofore attendant upon the shipping trade. In England, the center of business control for the system, there are twenty coast stations, as well as an interior station at Chelmsford, where is located a wireless telegraph school and factory. The channel boats plying between Dover and Calais are equipped with the svstem. On the continent there is at present much activity in the practical application of Marconi stations. Plans are under way by which the Belgian railways will take up the system, sub- stituting it for other forms of signaling and using it for the prevention of wrecks. Until recently the German government excluded Marconi from its territory, but not long since it was pro- posed to consolidate the wireless telegraph interests in Germany, now operated by two or three firms:whose developments of the system have extended mainly to the manufacture of wireless in- struments, and to make a working alliance with the Marconi sys- tem, so that messages can be interchanged. The fact that the Slaby-Arco system, operated for a time on some of the ships of the Hamburg-American line, did not prove effective and was re- placed by Marconi installations probably had considerable to do towards the movement to form an alliance with the Marconi sys- tem in German territory. In France the system is being tried, though not to a large extent beyond its application to the channel boats. The czar of Russia has shown his interest in the system and the recent achievement of sending a message from St. Pet- ersburg to England, across a great deal of land, has brought out very prominently the need for the application of the system in the Baltic and North seas.. Already work is under way for the linking of the continent with Iceland, between which there is now no form of communication, except by ships which ply in the sum- mer season. This brief resume of the present. status of the Marconi sys- tem is in itself a nromise of its accomplishment in the future; yet if a new discovery of science can come to such a state of commercial application in the short space of ten years, it would be difficult to predict its applications to the work of the world at the end of another decade. In the light of past experiences 'may we not say that "wireless" will be generally used all over the world, on land as well as on sea and over seas? Two years ago no one believed that Marconi would be able to bridge the 'Atlantic. Now the Italian government is going ahead with plans which comprehend the bridging of a distance almost twice as far as that attained by Marconi's greatest record. There is no longer any doubt in the minds of those who have come close to Marconi that he will be able to accomplish the linking of any two points on the globe by the use of his system. . There is another feature in the promise of wireless which means much for the future of this system of communication. Al- 'most up to the present time few people have believed that Mar- coni would be able to use two installations of his system in the same range of electrical wave influence; that is to say, it has been generally believed that two stations in the same locality would confuse one another. Marconi has been working on this prob- lem for the last four years. He found, in 1899, that he could tune his system for short distances, and since that time he has been able to devise instruments which were commercially availa- ble. It is now more than a year since he demonstrated to Lord Kelvin, Professor Fleming, and others, the "tuned" system. He caused two of his stations to communicate with a third at the same time, one of the sending stations transmitting a message in French and the other one in English. Both messages were re- ceived at the same time on separate instruments without error and without confusion of any kind. Now comes the announce- ment that Marconi is working on much more important develop- ments of "tuning," and that he will now be able to apply these new devices to his installations here, insuring absolute secrecy to his messages. : "Consider," said President Eliot of Harvard, recently, "the imagination which resulted in the transmission of thought over a distance of 3,000 miles without any visible means of connec- tion!" That accomplishment by Marconi is the most wonderful achievement which has taken place in the past fifty years; and who shall doubt the future of the system which he is building up for the accomplishment of commercial business in all parts -of the world? Wireless telegraphy is not a dream; it is not a vision of the electrical enthusiast; it is a most positive, present- day accomplishment of the most tremendous importance. The experimental tank of John Brown & Co. Clydebank, is now nearly completed. The canal is 400 ft. long, 20 ft. broad and 10 ft. deep and is covered by a shed 500 ft. long and 45 ft. broad.