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Acknowledgments
This book would be confusing and riddled with errors if it
weren’t for a bunch of awesome people who patiently and
carefully read our drafts.

We had a great team of people provide technical reviews for this

edition and previous editions: in no particular order, Frank
Ruiz, Stefan Turalski, Stephen Wolff, Peter W.A. Wood, Steve
Wolfman, Adam Foster, Owen Nelson, Arturo Martínez
Peguero, C. Keith Ray, Michael Szamosi, David Gries, Peter
Beens, Edward Branley, Paul Holbrook, Kristie Jolliffe, Mike
Riley, Sean Stickle, Tim Ottinger, Bill Dudney, Dan Zingaro, and
Justin Stanley. We also appreciate all the people who reported
errata: your feedback was invaluable.

Greg Wilson started us on this journey when he proposed that

we write a textbook, and he was our guide and mentor as we
worked together to create the first edition of this book.

Finally, we would like to thank our editor Tammy Coron, who

set up a workflow that made the tight timeline possible. Tammy,
your gentle nudges kept us on track (squirrel!) and helped us
complete this third edition in record time.

Copyright © 2018, The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Preface
This book uses the Python programming language to teach
introductory computer science topics and a handful of useful
applications. You’ll certainly learn a fair amount of Python as
you work through this book, but along the way you’ll also learn
about issues that every programmer needs to know: ways to
approach a problem and break it down into parts, how and why
to document your code, how to test your code to help ensure
your program does what you want it to, and more.

We chose Python for several reasons:

It is free and well documented. In fact, Python is one of the largest

and best-organized open source projects going.

It runs everywhere. The reference implementation, written in C, is

used on everything from cell phones to supercomputers, and it’s
supported by professional-quality installers for Windows, macOS,
and Linux.

It has a clean syntax. Yes, every language makes this claim, but
during the several years that we have been using it at the University
of Toronto, we have found that students make noticeably fewer
“punctuation” mistakes with Python than with C-like languages.

It is relevant. Thousands of companies use it every day: it is one of

the languages used at Google, Industrial Light & Magic uses it
extensively, and large portions of the game EVE Online are written
in Python. It is also widely used by academic research groups.

It is well supported by tools. Legacy editors like vi and Emacs all

have Python editing modes, and several professional-quality IDEs
are available. (We use IDLE, the free development environment that
comes with a standard Python installation.)
Online Resources
All the source code, errata, discussion forums, installation
instructions, and exercise solutions are available at
http://pragprog.com/book/gwpy3/practical-programming.

Footnotes

[1]

See http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/index.html.

[2]

See http://learnyousomeerlang.com.

[3]

See http://learnyouahaskell.com.

Copyright © 2018, The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Chapter 1
What’s Programming?

(Photo credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific

Visualization Studio)

Take a look at the pictures above. The first one shows forest
cover in the Amazon basin in 1975. The second one shows the
same area twenty-six years later. Anyone can see that much of
the rainforest has been destroyed, but how much is “much”?

Now look at this:

(Photo credit: CDC)

Are these blood cells healthy? Do any of them show signs of
leukemia? It would take an expert doctor a few minutes to tell.
Multiply those minutes by the number of people who need to be
screened. There simply aren’t enough human doctors in the
world to check everyone.

This is where computers come in. Computer programs can

measure the differences between two pictures and count the
number of oddly shaped platelets in a blood sample. Geneticists
use programs to analyze gene sequences; statisticians, to
analyze the spread of diseases; geologists, to predict the effects
of earthquakes; economists, to analyze fluctuations in the stock
market; and climatologists, to study global warming. More and
more scientists are writing programs to help them do their
work. In turn, those programs are making entirely new kinds of
science possible.

Of course, computers are good for a lot more than just science.
We used computers to write this book. Your smartphone is a
pretty powerful computer; you’ve probably used one today to
chat with friends, check your lecture notes, or look for a
restaurant that serves pizza and Chinese food. Every day,
someone figures out how to make a computer do something that
has never been done before. Together, those “somethings” are
changing the world.

This book will teach you how to make computers do what you
want them to do. You may be planning to be a doctor, a linguist,
or a physicist rather than a full-time programmer, but whatever
you do, being able to program is as important as being able to
write a letter or do basic arithmetic.
We begin in this chapter by explaining what programs and
programming are. We then define a few terms and present some
useful bits of information for course instructors.
Programs and Programming
A program is a set of instructions. When you write down
directions to your house for a friend, you are writing a program.
Your friend “executes” that program by following each
instruction in turn.

Every program is written in terms of a few basic operations that

its reader already understands. For example, the set of
operations that your friend can understand might include the
following: “Turn left at Darwin Street,” “Go forward three
blocks,” and “If you get to the gas station, turn around—you’ve
gone too far.”

Computers are similar but have a different set of operations.

Some operations are mathematical, like “Take the square root of
a number,” whereas others include “Read a line from the file
named data.txt” and “Make a pixel blue.”

The most important difference between a computer and an old-

fashioned calculator is that you can “teach” a computer new
operations by defining them in terms of old ones. For example,
you can teach the computer that “Take the average” means “Add
up the numbers in a sequence and divide by the sequence’s
size.” You can then use the operations you have just defined to
create still more operations, each layered on top of the ones that
came before. It’s a lot like creating life by putting atoms
together to make proteins and then combining proteins to build
cells, combining cells to make organs, and combining organs to
make a creature.
Defining new operations and combining them to do useful
things is the heart and soul of programming. It is also a
tremendously powerful way to think about other kinds of
problems. As Professor Jeannette Wing wrote in Computational
Thinking [Win06], computational thinking is about the
following:

Conceptualizing, not programming. Computer science isn’t

computer programming. Thinking like a computer scientist means
more than being able to program a computer: it requires thinking at
multiple levels of abstraction.

A way that humans, not computers, think. Computational thinking

is a way humans solve problems; it isn’t trying to get humans to
think like computers. Computers are dull and boring; humans are
clever and imaginative. We humans make computers exciting.
Equipped with computing devices, we use our cleverness to tackle
problems we wouldn’t dare take on before the age of computing and
build systems with functionality limited only by our imaginations.

For everyone, everywhere. Computational thinking will be a reality

when it becomes so integral to human endeavors it disappears as an
explicit philosophy.

We hope that by the time you have finished reading this book,
you will see the world in a slightly different way.
What’s a Programming Language?
Directions to the nearest bus station can be given in English,
Portuguese, Mandarin, Hindi, and many other languages. As
long as the people you’re talking to understand the language,
they’ll get to the bus station.

In the same way, there are many programming languages, and

they all can add numbers, read information from files, and
make user interfaces with windows and buttons and scroll bars.
The instructions look different, but they accomplish the same
task. For example, in the Python programming language, here’s
how you add 3 and 4:

​3 + 4

But here’s how it’s done in the Scheme programming language:

​(+ 3 4)

They both express the same idea—they just look different.

Every programming language has a way to write mathematical

expressions, repeat a list of instructions a number of times,
choose which of two instructions to do based on the current
information you have, and much more. In this book, you’ll learn
how to do these things in the Python programming language.
Once you understand Python, learning the next programming
language will be much easier.
What’s a Bug?
Pretty much everyone has had a program crash. A standard
story is that you were typing in a paper when, all of a sudden,
your word processor crashed. You had forgotten to save, and
you had to start all over again. Old versions of Microsoft
Windows used to crash more often than they should have,
showing the dreaded “blue screen of death.” (Happily, they’ve
gotten a lot better in the past several years.) Usually, your
computer shows some kind of cryptic error message when a
program crashes.

What happened in each case is that the people who wrote the
program told the computer to do something it couldn’t do: open
a file that didn’t exist, perhaps, or keep track of more
information than the computer could handle, or maybe repeat a
task with no way of stopping other than by rebooting the
computer. (Programmers don’t mean to make these kinds of
mistakes, they are just part of the programming process.)

Worse, some bugs don’t cause a crash; instead, they give

incorrect information. (This is worse because at least with a
crash you’ll notice that there’s a problem.) As a real-life example
of this kind of bug, the calendar program that one of the authors
uses contains an entry for a friend who was born in 1978. That
friend, according to the calendar program, had his 5,875,542nd
birthday this past February. Bugs can be entertaining, but they
can also be tremendously frustrating.

Every piece of software that you can buy has bugs in it. Part of
your job as a programmer is to minimize the number of bugs
and to reduce their severity. In order to find a bug, you need to
track down where you gave the wrong instructions, then you
need to figure out the right instructions, and then you need to
update the program without introducing other bugs.

Every time you get a software update for a program, it is for one
of two reasons: new features were added to a program or bugs
were fixed. It’s always a game of economics for the software
company: are there few enough bugs, and are they minor
enough or infrequent enough in order for people to pay for the
software?

In this book, we’ll show you some fundamental techniques for

finding and fixing bugs and also show you how to prevent them
in the first place.
The Difference Between Brackets,
Braces, and Parentheses
One of the pieces of terminology that causes confusion is what
to call certain characters. Several dictionaries use these names,
so this book does too:

() Parentheses

[] Brackets

Braces (Some people call these curly brackets or curly braces,

{}
but we’ll stick to just braces.)
Installing Python
Installation instructions and use of the IDLE programming
environment are available on the book’s website:
http://pragprog.com/titles/gwpy3/practical-programming.

Copyright © 2018, The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Chapter 2
Hello, Python
Programs are made up of commands that tell the computer
what to do. These commands are called statements, which the
computer executes. This chapter describes the simplest of
Python’s statements and shows how they can be used to do
arithmetic, which is one of the most common tasks for
computers and also a great place to start learning to program.
It’s also the basis of almost everything that follows.
How Does a Computer Run a Python
Program?
In order to understand what happens when you’re
programming, it helps to have have a mental model of how a
computer executes a program.

The computer is assembled from pieces of hardware, including

a processor that can execute instructions and do arithmetic, a
place to store data such as a hard drive, and various other
pieces, such as a screen, a keyboard, an Ethernet controller for
connecting to a network, and so on.

To deal with all these pieces, every computer runs some kind of
operating system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, or
macOS. An operating system, or OS, is a program; what makes
it special is that it’s the only program on the computer that’s
allowed direct access to the hardware. When any other
application (such as your browser, a spreadsheet program, or a
game) wants to draw on the screen, find out what key was just
pressed on the keyboard, or fetch data from storage, it sends a
request to the OS (see the top image).

This may seem like a roundabout way of doing things, but it

means that only the people writing the OS have to worry about
the differences between one graphics card and another and
whether the computer is connected to a network through
Ethernet or wireless. The rest of us—everyone analyzing
scientific data or creating 3D virtual chat rooms—only have to
learn our way around the OS, and our programs will then run
on thousands of different kinds of hardware.

Today, it’s common to add another layer between the

programmer and the computer’s hardware. When you write a
program in Python, Java, or Visual Basic, it doesn’t run directly
on top of the OS. Instead, another program, called an
interpreter or virtual machine, takes your program and runs it
for you, translating your commands into a language the OS
understands. It’s a lot easier, more secure, and more portable
across operating systems than writing programs directly on top
of the OS:

There are two ways to use the Python interpreter. One is to tell
it to execute a Python program that is saved in a file with a .py
extension. Another is to interact with it in a program called a
shell, where you type statements one at a time. The interpreter
will execute each statement when you type it, do what the
statement says to do, and show any output as text, all in one
window. We will explore Python in this chapter using a Python
shell.

Install Python Now (If You Haven't Already)

If you haven’t yet installed Python 3.6, please do so now. (Python 2 won’t do; there are
significant differences between Python 2 and Python 3, and this book uses Python 3.6.)
Locate installation instructions on the book’s website:
http://pragprog.com/titles/gwpy3/practical-programming.

Programming requires practice: you won’t learn how to program just by reading this book,
much like you wouldn’t learn how to play guitar just by reading a book on how to play guitar.

Python comes with a program called IDLE, which we use to write Python programs. IDLE
has a Python shell that communicates with the Python interpreter and also allows you to
write and run programs that are saved in a file.

We strongly recommend that you open IDLE and follow along with our examples. Typing in
the code in this book is the programming equivalent of repeating phrases back to an
instructor as you’re learning to speak a new language.
Expressions and Values: Arithmetic in
Python
You’re familiar with mathematical expressions like 3 + 4 (“three
plus four”) and 2 - 3 / 5 (“two minus three divided by five”);
each expression is built out of values like 2, 3, and 5 and
operators like + and -, which combine their operands in
different ways. In the expression 4 / 5, the operator is “/” and
the operands are 4 and 5.

Expressions don’t have to involve an operator: a number by

itself is an expression. For example, we consider 212 to be an
expression as well as a value.

Like any programming language, Python can evaluate basic

mathematical expressions. For example, the following
expression adds 4 and 13:

​​>>>​​​4​​+​13​
​17

The >>> symbol is called a prompt. When you opened IDLE, a

window should have opened with this symbol shown; you don’t
type it. It is prompting you to type something. Here we typed 4
+ 13, and then we pressed the Return (or Enter) key in order to
signal that we were done entering that expression. Python then
evaluated the expression.

When an expression is evaluated, it produces a single value. In

the previous expression, the evaluation of 4 + 13 produced the
value 17. When you type the expression in the shell, Python
shows the value that is produced.

Subtraction and multiplication are similarly unsurprising:

​​>>>​​​15​​​-​​3​
​12
​​>>>​​​4​​*​​7​
​28

The following expression divides 5 by 2:

​​>>>​​​5​​/​​2​
​2.5

The result has a decimal point. In fact, the result of division

always has a decimal point even if the result is a whole number:

​​>>>​​​4​​/​​2​
​2.0

TYPES
Every value in Python has a particular type, and the types of
values determine how they behave when they’re combined.
Values like 4 and 17 have type int (short for integer), and values
like 2.5 and 17.0 have type float. The word float is short for
floating point, which refers to the decimal point that moves
around between digits of the number.

An expression involving two floats produces a float:

​​>>>​​​17.0​​​-​​10.0​
 ​7.0

When an expression’s operands are an int and a float, Python

automatically converts the int to a float. This is why the
following two expressions both return the same answer:

​​>>>​​​17.0​​​-​​10​
​7.0
​​>>>​​​17​​​-​​10.0​
​7.0

If you want, you can omit the zero after the decimal point when
writing a floating-point number:

​​>>>​​​17​​​-​​10.​
​7.0
​​>>>​​​17.​​​- ​10​
​7.0

However, most people think this is bad style, since it makes

your programs harder to read: it’s very easy to miss a dot on the
screen and see 17 instead of 17..

INTEGER DIVISION, MODULO, AND

EXPONENTIATION
Every now and then, we want only the integer part of a division
result. For example, we might want to know how many 24-hour
days there are in 53 hours (which is two 24-hour days plus
another 5 hours). To calculate the number of days, we can use
integer division:

​​>>>​​​53​​​//​​​24​
 ​2

We can find out how many hours are left over using the modulo
operator, which gives the remainder of the division:

​​>>>​​​53​​​%​​24​
​5

Python doesn’t round the result of integer division. Instead, it

takes the floor of the result of the division, which means that it
rounds down to the nearest integer:

​​>>>​​​17​​​//​​​10​
​1

Be careful about using % and // with negative operands.

Because Python takes the floor of the result of an integer
division, the result is one smaller than you might expect if the
result is negative:

​​>>>​​​-17​​​//​​​10​
​-2

When using modulo, the sign of the result matches the sign of
the divisor (the second operand):

​​>>>​​​-17​​​%​​10​
​3
​​>>>​​​17​​​%​​-10​
​-3
For the mathematically inclined, the relationship between //
and % comes from this equation, for any two non-zero numbers
a and b:

​(b * (a // b) + a % b) is equal to a

For example, because -17 // 10 is -2, and -17 % 10 is 3; then 10 *

(-17 // 10) + -17 % 10 is the same as 10 * -2 + 3, which is -17.

Floating-point numbers can be operands for // and % as well.

With //, division is performed and the result is rounded down
to the nearest whole number, although the type is a floating-
point number:

​​>>>​​​3.3​​​//​​​1​
​3.0
​​>>>​​​3​​//​​1.0​
​3.0
​​>>>​​​3​​//​​1.1​
​2.0
​​>>>​​​3.5​​​//​​​1.1​
​3.0
​​>>>​​​3.5​​​//​​​1.3​
​2.0

The following expression calculates 3 raised to the 6th power:

​​>>>​​​3​​**​​​6​
​729

Operators that have two operands are called binary operators.

Negation is a unary operator because it applies to one operand:

​​>>>​​​-5​
​-5
​​>>>​​​--5
​5
​​>>>​​​---5​
​-5
What Is a Type?
We’ve now seen two types of numbers (integers and floating-
point numbers), so we ought to explain what we mean by a type.
In Python, a type consists of two things:

A set of values

A set of operations that can be applied to those values

For example, in type int, the values are …, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, …
and we have seen that these operators can be applied to those
values: +, -, *, /, //, %, and **.

The values in type float are a subset of the real numbers, and it
happens that the same set of operations can be applied to float
values. We can see what happens when these are applied to
various values in Table 1, ​Arithmetic Operators​. If an operator
can be applied to more than one type of value, it is called an
overloaded operator.

Table 1. Arithmetic Operators

Symbol Operator Example Result

- Negation -5 -5

+ Addition 11 + 3.1 14.1

- Subtraction 5 - 19 -14
 Symbol Operator Example Result

* Multiplication 8.5 * 4 34.0

/ Division 11 / 2 5.5

// Integer Division 11 // 2 5

% Remainder 8.5 % 3.5 1.5

** Exponentiation 2 ** 5 32

FINITE PRECISION
Floating-point numbers are not exactly the fractions you
learned in grade school. For example, look at Python’s version
of the fractions 2/3 and 5/3:

​​>>>​​​2​​/​​3​
​0.6666666666666666
​​>>>​​​5​​/​​3​
​1.6666666666666667

The first value ends with a 6, and the second with a 7. This is
fishy: both of them should have an infinite number of 6s after
the decimal point. The problem is that computers have a finite
amount of memory, and (to make calculations fast and memory
efficient) most programming languages limit how much
information can be stored for any single number. The number
0.6666666666666666 turns out to be the closest value to 2/3
that the computer can actually store in that limited amount of
memory, and 1.6666666666666667 is as close as we get to the
real value of 5/3.

More on Numeric Precision

Integers (values of type int) in Python can be as large or as small as you like. However, float
values are only approximations to real numbers. For example, 1/4 can be stored exactly, but
as we’ve already seen, 2/3 cannot. Using more memory won’t solve the problem, though it
will make the approximation closer to the real value, just as writing a larger number of 6s
after the 0 in 0.666… doesn’t make it exactly equal to 2/3.

The difference between 2/3 and 0.6666666666666666 may look tiny. But if we use
0.6666666666666666 in a calculation, then the error may get compounded. For example, if
we add 1 to 2/3, the resulting value ends in …6665, so in many programming languages, 1 +
2/3 is not equal to 5/3:

​​>>>​​​2​​/​​3​​+​​1​
​1.6666666666666665
​​>>>​​​5​​/​​3​
​1.6666666666666667

As we do more calculations, the rounding errors can get larger and larger, particularly if we’re
mixing very large and very small numbers. For example, suppose we add 10000000000 (10
billion) and 0.00000000001 (there are 10 zeros after the decimal point):

​​>>>​​​10000000000​​​+​​0.00000000001​
​10000000000.0

The result ought to have twenty zeros between the first and last significant digit, but that’s
too many for the computer to store, so the result is just 10000000000—it’s as if the addition
never took place. Adding lots of small numbers to a large one can therefore have no effect at
all, which is not what a bank wants when it totals up the values of its customers’ savings
accounts.

It’s important to be aware of the floating-point issue. There is no magic bullet to solve it,
because computers are limited in both memory and speed. Numerical analysis, the study of
algorithms to approximate continuous mathematics, is one of the largest subfields of
computer science and mathematics.

Here’s a tip: If you have to add up floating-point numbers, add them from smallest to largest
in order to minimize the error.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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ACTS IN AN OCCULT DRAMA 41 "ether." Experimentalists

who believed space might be set in vibration turned to the induction
coil as a means of generating electromagnetic waves. The history of
the induction coil goes back to November, 1831, when Faraday
discovered the principle of induction. As time went on, various
practical applications for the coil were foreseen. H. D. Ruhmkorff, a
Russian working in Paris, in 1853, added an automatic interrupter to
the coil; insulated the secondary and increased the number of turns
of wire, thereby minimizing the possibility of breakdown. Utilizing a
battery as the primary source of power, high voltages could then be
generated. Armand H. L. Fizeau shunted a condenser around the
interrupter, increasing the length of the sparks that snapped across
the induction coil's gap-like mouth. By the time 1867 arrived
suspicions were being aroused that man might some day actually
send signals through the air, but there were more who scorned the
idea than believed in it. The Faraday conception of a field of
magnetic force inspired James Clerk Maxwell, Professor of
Experimental Physics at Cambridge, and later at the University of
Edinburgh, to evolve the famous equation from which he predicted,
solely by mathematical reasoning, the existence of ether waves. In
what was called a masterful treatise on the electro-dynamic theory
of light, he proved that light is one form of electromagnetic waves.
His logical equations concluded that electric waves were propagated
in space with sunlight velocity. As an expert mathematician he
pointed the way to a new field of research, although in 1867 he had
no method of generating or detecting the impulses. Maxwell found
the ether. The task of causing the vast ethereal sea to ripple and
wave under the influence of electricity remained for Hein 
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42 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS rich Rudolph

Hertz, born in 1857. At Berlin University, in 1878, he enrolled as a
student under the distinguished scientist, Hermann L. F. Helmholtz,
who developed the static or friction machine. The youthful Hertz was
attracted by the Maxwell theory and became convinced that if a
conductor were charged or discharged suddenly, electromagnetic
waves would radiate into space. He went to Kiel in 1883 as Professor
of Theoretical Physics, and, while lecturing, he experimented with
two flat coils linked by wire with a Leyden jar or condenser. He
noticed the discharge of the jar through one coil, in which there was
a tiny gap, induced a current in the other coil, despite the fact that
they were not connected. This encouraged him to delve further into
the mystery. He built a machine to generate and another to detect
electromagnetic waves. The transmitter was called an "exciter." It
comprised two metal plates connected by rods to two metal balls
about onehalf inch apart. The rods were wired to the terminals of an
induction coil's secondary. When the coil was electrified sparks
jumped the gap between the balls. The receiver or "resonator," as
Hertz called it, was extremely simple, consisting of a circlet of wire
the ends of the wire being connected to two small metal balls. This
formed a loop with a micrometer opening in it. When the exciter was
energized and sparks leaped across its gap, a spark was also seen to
flow across the fractional gap in the resonator. Of course, the
resonator was not far removed from the exciter, nevertheless, the
simple experiment confirmed the Maxwell theory, and demonstrated
the physical properties of electromagnetic waves. Furthermore, Hertz
observed that the law of this electrical radiation was the same as the
corresponding law of optics. He proved Maxwell was right in his
assertion that
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ACTS IN AN OCCULT DRAMA 43 the velocity of

electromagnetic impulses was the same as that of light. Hertz had
done much to prepare for the entrance of Marconi. Yet, this scientist,
of whom Sir Oliver Lodge remarked, "He effected an achievement
that will hand his name down to posterity as the founder of a new
epoch in experimental physics," modestly stated: 2 "The theory of
electricity is so foreign to me, that I should almost like to chime in
with the regular question: what is really the purpose of the whole
nonsense?" On a page of his diary, dated December 9, 1893, Hertz
wrote: "If anything actually happens to me, you are not to sorrow
but to be a little proud and to think that I belong to those especially
selected, who live only briefly and yet live enough." Four weeks later
he died leaving behind a lasting monument to his memory —
Hertzian waves. Of her son's innermost trait his mother said, "He
was really not ambitious, only very eager." Now, those who accepted
the electro-dynamic theory of Maxwell were aware of an all-
pervading ether. They knew from the work of Hertz that electric
waves with a penetrative power could pass through the mysterious
ether to be reflected and even polarized. They knew the waves
traveled 186,000 miles in a second. But how could the trick be done
if the transmitter and receiver were more than a few feet apart?
How could it be done from room to room, from mile to mile, from
city to city, from continent to continent? If Hertzian waves could
cover all that territory and be converted into sound or print again at
a distant point, then they could be used for signaling through space.
Conquest of the ether became international. Experimenters studied
the scientific records of the past for clues that might lead to a device
capable of detecting electric waves. They found that as far back as
1835 it was known * Short Wave Craft, May, 1932.
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44 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS that a mixture

of tin filings and carbon were non-conductive of electricity but
became conductive when the discharge of a Ley den jar passed
through them. Also there were records to show that S. A. Varley, in
1852, noticed metallic filings when influenced by atmospheric
electricity offered less resistance to the current. Several years later
he made the first practical application of the principle in the
construction of a lightning arrester designed to protect telegraph
lines. Professor David E. Hughes, in 1878, observed the discharge of
a Leyden jar or condenser caused loosely associated zinc and silver
filings in a glass tube, wired in series with a battery and telephonic
earphone, to cling together or cohere. Professor Calzecchi Onesti of
Italy noticed that copper filings between two metal plates were non-
conductors but quickly became conductive when under the influence
of a high voltage discharge. Then, in 1881, Edouard Branly of
France, contributed his famous filings tube. A patent was awarded
Professor Amos Emerson Dolbear, an American physicist at Tufts
College, for a unique apparatus utilizing the induction principle to
facilitate "electrical communication between two points, certainly
more than one-half mile apart, but how much further I cannot say."
That was in 1882. Had not Professor Alexander Popoff of the Electro-
Technical Institute of St. Petersburg, in 1895, used a coherer,
battery, relay and tapper to detect approaching thunder storms? One
end of the coherer is reported to have been attached to an elevated
wire to intercept the "static," and the other terminal connected to
the earth. When the metal filings cohered under the influence of the
atmospheric electricity, caused by the lightning storm, they were
automatically decohered by the tapper and restored to sensitivity.
Popoff was close to wireless!
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ACTS IN AN OCCULT DRAMA 45 He expressed a hope that

wireless telegraphy could be accomplished by the utilization of
Hertzian waves, but as the courts later pointed out, "no one had
described and demonstrated a system of wireless adapted for the
transmission and reception of definite intelligible signals by such
means." Marconi did. Edison had been witnessing another curious
phenomenon inside an incandescent lamp. His curiosity was aroused
by an electric current passing across the space between the hot
filament and an adjacent cold metal plate. That was a breath of life
for wireless; some day vacuum tubes would send streams of
electrical energy circulating through the international arteries in the
sky. And at the receiver this same sort of tube would detect and
amplify the incoming impulses. Edison's patent stated a fact and
suggested a tantalizing mystery, because even he did not pretend to
know why the "effect" took place. His disclosure remained a
laboratory problem for some one to apply to a new and practical
field of usefulness. An English physicist — a wireless expert — would
do it years later. But the principle went into history as "the Edison
Effect." When the calendar turned into the 'go's more frequent
predictions were heard from men of science that space might soon
be used as a medium of invisible communication. Sir William Crookes
contributed a remarkable prophecy to the London Fortnightly Review
in 1892 : Here is unfolded to us a new and astonishing world, one
which is hard to conceive should contain no possibilities of
transmitting and receiving intelligence. "Rays of light will not pierce
through a wall, nor, as we know only too well, through a London fog.
But the electrical vibrations of a yard or more in wave length . . . will
easily pierce such mediums, which to them will be transparent. Here,
then is revealed the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without
wires, posts, cables or any of our present costly appliances. Granted
a few reasonable postulates, the whole thing comes
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46 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS well within the

realms of possible fulfillment. At the present time, experimentalists
are able to generate electrical waves of any desired wave length
from a few feet upwards, and to keep up a succession of such waves
radiating into space in all directions. This is no mere dream of a
visionary philosopher. All the requisites needed to bring it within
grasp of daily life are well within the possibilities of discovery, and
are so reasonable and so clearly in the path of researches which are
now being actively prosecuted in every capital of Europe that we
may any day expect to hear that they have emerged from the realms
of speculation to those of sober fact. The stage was set in this occult
drama for the entrance of a practical-minded scientist — a master
magician who could juggle coils of wire, unleash electrical impulses
and pull messages from the air, all in the twinkle of an eye. The
queer-looking instruments and strange theories of the pioneers were
but props assembled before the footlights of the scientific world. The
trick was to make them work; to talk across the sea. All very well to
predict such miracles by mathematics. Theoretically, and on paper it
might look quite feasible, but even the sages wondered what there
was to prevent such electrical flashes from flying off the globe at a
tangent like the sparks from a wheel? How could mute devices built
by man cause the immensity of space to pulse with living sound;
spoken words in any tongue — the symphonies of Beethoven;
swirling images of people and places all crisscrossed through the sky
at the speed of sunlight? Impossible! But even so, by what fantastic
chance could these waves be plucked from overhead to be turned
back into the original sound and possibly into television pictures? At
sunlight velocity they would be gone before man could snatch them.
To do it would be witchery. So reasoned those who called the idea
but a whimwham. This thing called wireless was a miracle too
wondrous for
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Early receiving equipment which, with the simple coherer

as a "heart," first felt the pulse of wireless. The coherer — first
detector of Hertzian waves.
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ACTS IN AN OCCULT DRAMA 47 the mauve decade to

grasp. The man to perform such wizardry in the span of a human life
would be immortal. In Italy a life had been shaping for the task.
Tireless in play as a boy so was the youth in study and research.
There was no end to his energy. Always he pursued the goal, no
matter how puzzling or evasive. If Nature were ever caught off
guard, this penetrating mind might go far to learn long protected
secrets. The earth might be girdled in less time than the imaginative
Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," fancied it could be done in
forty minutes! The unprecedented job cut out for this young Italian
was to conquer space, shrivel the size of a 25,ooo-mile sphere and
weave his fellowmen closer together in an invisible web of lightning-
like communication; to make an international whispering gallery of
the heavens.
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IV THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND MARCONI'S youthful

intuition and patience, his ambition and perseverance would carry
him far. Having put the spark of life into wireless he offered it to the
Italian Government, but the offer was not accepted. So following in
the footsteps of Columbus, Marconi at the age of twenty-two left
Italy to seek encouragement under a foreign flag.1 Accompanied by
his mother, whose method of doing things was English rather than
Italian, he set out for London. Yet in their hearts both held a strong
love for Italy. "I first offered wireless to Italy," Marconi explained,
"but it was suggested, since wireless was allied to the sea, it might
be best that I go to England, where there was greater shipping
activity, and, of course, that was a logical place from which to
attempt transatlantic signaling. Also my mother's relatives in England
were helpful to me. I carried a letter of introduction to Sir William
Preece. Mind you, Italy did not say the invention was worthless, but
wireless in those days seemed to hold promise for the sea, so off to
London I went." There he met Sir William Preece,2 Engineer-in-Chief
of the British Post Office, a man deeply interested in the possibilities
of signaling without wires. Marconi told Sir William about the magic
tin boxes or cylinders, and how he had discovered, "when these
were placed on top of a pole two meters high, signals could be
obtained at 30 meters from the 1 First British patent, No. 12039 °f
1896, described use of transmitter and coherer connected to earth
and elevated aerial. 2 Died, November 6, 1913.
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THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND 49 transmitter"; and that,

"with the same boxes on poles fourmeters high, signals were
obtained at 100 meters, and with the same boxes at a height of
eight meters, other conditions being equal. Morse signals were easily
obtained at 400 meters." It began to look as if the higher the pole
the greater would be the mileage. So the sky was the limit to this
youth hot on the track of something stupendous. The urge for
distance pushed wireless on to new goals just as it has enchanted
explorers and astronomers. Distance, distance, more distance, that
has always been the call ringing amid the wireless signals since the
beginning. Now there were two gentlemen in London at this same
time from different countries, to tell the same story — telegraphy
needs no wires. And the messages will go through walls, houses,
towns and mountains — even through the earth — on the wings of
an electrical flash. The Italian youth, aided by his cousin Jameson
Davis,8 was soon ready to begin experiments in London. "When
Guglielmo was a small boy, about six or seven years of age, I stayed
with his parents for a short time in Italy," recollected Mr. Davis. "He
was a bright, intelligent child, but, of course, no one suspected at
that time or for a long time afterward that he would blossom into a
genius. "When he was twenty- two or three I was in considerable
practice as an engineer in London, and his mother wrote asking if I
could help him; I replied that I would be glad to do what I could if
he came to London to see me. This he did very shortly after. His
instruments were broken by the customs authorities, as they were
not understood and were thought to be dangerous. New instruments
had to be procured, and these we ordered on Marconi's
specifications. "When they were assembled and started to work, the
pos8 Died on Christmas Day, 1936.
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50 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS sibilities of

wireless telegraphy were very evident to me, and for some weeks
experiments were conducted at my home in London; many
prominent experts and others came to see them." Among the
notables was Sir William Preece. He welcomed Marconi and
extended an invitation to use his laboratory. Britain was interested in
this thing called wireless and was anxious to get to the root of it.
This was fortunate for the Italian who otherwise might have
encountered opposition from the British authorities. On the contrary,
their cooperation was at his command and he installed apparatus at
Westbourne Park. Preece, in December 1896, lectured in London on,
"Telegraphing without Wires." He described the Italian's magic and
expressed complete faith in Marconi. He disclosed that he had been
instructed by the Postal Department to spare no expense in testing
the Marconi instruments and ideas to the fullest degree. The
Marconis, however, were not long in London when the Ministry of
War in Rome declared that Guglielmo should do regular military
service as all others. He had two choices: go to Italy and enroll for
three years of military training and be completely distracted from his
wireless experiments or remain in England and apply for citizenship
papers, thereby evading Italian service. But he thought too much of
Italy. He went to General Ferrero at the Italian Embassy in London
and explained the situation; he wanted to remain an Italian but he
also wanted to continue the conquest of wireless. Ferrero was
sympathetic and wrote to the Minister of the Navy, who luckily for
Italy decided if the young man consented to conduct his tests under
the auspices of the Italian Embassy, he could be attached to it as a
naval student in training.
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THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND 51 Marconi quickly

agreed, and the demonstrations that followed for the benefit of the
Post Office officials were highly successful. The signals first covered
only 100 yards but later traveled between the General Post Office
and the Savings Bank Department in Queen Victoria Street. Trivial
distances, yes — but extremely important. The next step was to
establish stations at Penarth and Weston-Super-Mare. Between
those two sites the sputter of wireless sounded more triumphant
than ever as Marconi "pumped" more power into the mystic waves.
All of these English tests were so encouraging that the Wireless
Telegraph and Signal Company, Ltd./ was incorporated in. England
(July 1897), as the first commercial organization of its kind, the chief
purpose of which was to install wireless on lightships and at
lighthouses along the English coast. The capitalization, £100,000
was sufficient to acquire Marconi's patents in all countries except
Italy and her dependencies. Marconi was given half -share of the
capital and £15,000 in cash. Jameson Davis, who assisted in
formation of the company, was appointed Managing Director, a
position he held for two years. Marconi, disappointed in Italy's lack
of interest in his invention, nevertheless, did not yield the Italian
patent rights to the English Marconi Company. More faithful to Italy
than Italy was to wireless and to him, he wanted to be liberal to the
land of his birth, the land over which wireless first vibrated. He felt
that Italy in case of war might want to be independent of any
foreign nation, so with his usual foresight he protected Italy in
regard to wireless apparatus and patent rights. The serious-
mannered Italian youth, speaking with grave precision in his London
home in Westbourne Park, made no claim whatever to being a
scientist. He simply said that he * Name changed to Marconi's
Wireless Telegraph Co., Ltd., in 1900.
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52 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS had observed

certain facts and invented instruments to meet them. "My work," he
said, "consists mainly in endeavoring to determine how far these
waves will travel in the air for signaling purposes. I am forced to
believe the waves will penetrate anything and everything." ' Inquiry
was made if fog would interfere. "Nothing affects them," he replied.
"My experience with these waves leads me to believe they will go
through an ironclad." What are you working on at present? "Mr.
Preece and I are working at Penarth, in Wales, to establish regular
communication through the air from the shore to a lightship." What
length of waves have you used? "Various lengths from thirty meters
down to ten inches." Why could you not send a dispatch from
London to New York? "I do not say that it could not be done," he
continued. "Please remember wireless is a new field, and the
discussion of possibilities which may fairly be called probabilities
omits obstacles and difficulties likely to develop in practical working.
I do not wish to be recorded as saying anything can actually be done
beyond what I have already been able to do. With regard to future
developments I am only saying what may ultimately happen; what,
so far as I can now see does not present any visible impossibilities."
The interviewer concluded: "Such are the astounding statements
and views of Marconi. What their effects will be remains to be seen.
The imagination abandons as a hopeless task the attempt to
conceive what — in the use of electric waves — the immediate
future holds in store. The air is full 5 McClure's Magazine, March,
1897.
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THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND 53 of promises, of

miracles. The certainty is that strange things are coming." What is
his magic? Proclaimed in a headline across the front page of the
New York World ° as "the boy wizard, an Italian lad of 23 years of
age," Marconi described his invention and his faith in wireless : "I
am uncertain as to the final results of my system. My discovery was
not the result of long hours and logical thought, but of experiments
with machines invented by other men to which I applied certain
improvements. These experiments were made principally at Bologna,
Italy. I used the Hertzian radiator and the Branly coherer. The
radiator was what would be known in telegraphers' speech as the
sender and the coherer the receiver. Before I began the experiments
these two instruments would send a message without wires a
distance of from three to thirty yards, but there the power ended.
"The improvements which I made were to connect both receiver and
sender with first the earth and second the vertical wire insulated
from the earth. The latter was by all means the more important of
the two innovations. "At once instead of being limited to a few yards
in results, I extended the distance over which a message could be
sent without wires to about two miles. I found this principally due to
the vertical wire, and speaking as simply as possible, I believe the
following theory may explain why this was so. "Everybody knows
how sound is transmitted by means of vibrations of air. For instance,
if you fire a cannon, the concussion produced by the explosion of
the powder causes the air to vibrate, and so far as these vibrations
of air extend just so far is sound audible. In other words, sound
consists of vibrations of air. Well, my vertical wire carries the elec6
August 8, 1897.
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54 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS trie vibrations

up into the air and produces certain vibrations in the ether, and
these vibrations extend in every direction until they reach the
receiving instrument. Thus a message can be transmitted through
ether for as great a distance as you can cause vibrations to proceed.
"The original Hertz radiator worked on the same principle, but the
vibrations its two brass spheres produced were very slight. My
improvement magnifies them. "An Italian scientist in speaking of the
case said: 'The old Hertz radiator and old Branly coherer might be
likened to the reed of an organ. By the Marconi improvements the
pipe of the organ is added. The reed would make very little noise,
but when you add the reverberant power of the pipe you get a great
volume of sound. Marconi's connection of both receiver and
transmitter, first with earth, second with air, supplies the pipe to the
reed and makes the volume of vibrations great enough so that it will
reach great distances.' "As a matter of fact before I improved the
receiver, it was impossible to end one pole of the transmitter with
the earth and the opposite pole with insulated vertical wire. It was
impossible to communicate intelligible messages even thirty yards,
but after I had done these things, I succeeded in communicating
from the Arsenal of San Bartolomeo at Spezia with an ironclad
twelve miles away upon the water. "I have no reason to suppose
that this is the limit of the possibilities of the system. Indeed, I am
sure that it is not the limit. What the ultimate limit will be I cannot
say. I have no idea whether or not my system will ever be able to
carry messages across the Atlantic, but for land purposes it will be a
complete commercial success within a comparatively short time."
England still wondered what Sir William Preece, after association
with this young man from Italy, really thought of him. Why should
Britain be devoting so much attention to
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THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND 55 the foreigner when

Preece and Lodge were already in pursuit of the mysterious waves?
Preece endeavored to clear up the matter when interviewed by the
New York World: 7 While I cannot say that Marconi has found
anything absolutely new it must be remembered that Columbus did
not invent the egg. He showed how to make it stand on end.
Marconi shows how to use the Hertz radiator and Branly coherer. He
has produced a new electric eye, more delicate than any other
known system of telegraphy which will reach hitherto inaccessible
places. But enough has been shown to prove its value. I have
experimented freely with Marconi's instruments and I find for a
certainty that they all proved of immense value to shipping and
lighthouse purposes. The next experiments, the historic dots and
dashes on Salisbury Plain, proved the wisdom of Preece's remarks,
and caused many others to agree with him. First, the signals flashed
across 100 yards; then for a mile and a quarter; six miles and nine.
Army and Navy officials were summoned to watch this
demonstration. If any were skeptical when the tests began they left
with plenty of evidence that wireless could speed through house and
hill, and that neither brick, rock, earth nor wood could stop or block
the subtle waves. Surprisingly, Marconi was able to send the
messages at Salisbury in a more or less definite direction. By aiming
aerial reflectors he projected beam-like waves. The Hertzian energy
was concentrated by a parabolic copper reflector or bowl, two or
three feet in diameter, thereby shaping the waves into narrow strips,
in much the same way that a searchlight stabs a streak through the
darkness. The waves measured about two feet from crest to crest
instead of two or three hundred feet as previously used. The
reflector results, however, were not so satisfactory as the results
obtained with longer waves radiated from a pendant 7 August 8,
1897.
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56 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS wire.

Naturally, at this time Marconi was more desirous of widespread
coverage than limitation of range or area so he resumed his
experiments with longer waves. Lavernock Point and Breen Down,
eight miles apart, were the scenes of the next demonstrations. One
witness was Professor Adolphus Slaby, a German electrical scientist,
who lost no time in carrying the news of what he had heard and
seen back to his fatherland. In the summer of 1897, while Preece
was busy bringing the attention of the Royal Institution to bear upon
the miracles being performed, Professor Slaby was lecturing on
wireless telegraphy before a royal audience that included the
German Emperor and Empress, and the King of Spain. Professor
Slaby also contributed an article to the Century Magazine in 1898,
from which these remarks are quoted: In January 1897, when the
news of Marconi's first successes ran through the newspapers, I
myself was earnestly occupied with similar problems. I had not been
able to telegraph more than 100 metres through the air. It was at
once clear to me that Marconi must have added something else —
something new — to what was already known, whereby he had
been able to attain to lengths measured by kilometres. Quickly
making up my mind, I travelled to England, where the Bureau of
Telegraphs was undertaking experiments on a large scale. Mr.
Preece, the celebrated Engineerin-Chief of the General Post Office, in
the most courteous and hospitable way, permitted me to take part in
these, and in truth what I saw there was something quite new.
Marconi had made a discovery. He was working with means the
entire meaning of which no one before him had recognized. Only in
that way can we explain the secret of his success. In the English
professional journals an attempt has been made to deny novelty to
the method of Marconi. It was urged that the production of the
Hertz rays, their radiation through space, the construction of his
electric eye — all this was known before. True; all this had been
known to me also and yet I never was able to exceed 100 metres. In
the first place Marconi has worked out a clever arrangement of
apparatus, which by the use of the simplest means produces a sure
technical result. Then he has shown that such telegraphy (writing
from afar) was to be made
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THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND 57 possible only through,

on the one hand, earth connection between the apparatus and, on
the other, the use of long extended upright wires. By this simple but
extraordinarily effective method he raised the power of radiation in
the electrical forces a hundred fold. Incidentally, Marconi had taken
out German patents covering his invention. A year later, however,
patents were granted to Professor Slaby, who had modified Marconi's
aerial system, and developed in collaboration with Count Arco the
Slaby-Arco system, which in 1903 was merged with other German
wireless organizations into what was called the Telefunken system.
There was bitter rivalry between Marconi and the Germans, but the
former held the secrets of long-distance communication. There was
some talk by enthusiasts that wireless might replace the cables,
which were expensive, and always in danger of destruction by
upheavals at the bottom of the sea. And for the lonely lightships
wireless was a boon. That had already been indicated. Wireless
seemed to belong to the sea and its sailors. "There must be a great
saving by the wireless over cables," remarked a newspaper reporter.
"Judge for yourself/' replied a Marconi engineer. "Every mile of deep-
sea cable costs about $750; every mile for the land-ends about
$1,000. All that we save, also the great expense of keeping a cable
steamer constantly in commission making repairs and laying new
lengths. All we need is a couple of masts and a little wire. The wear
and tear is practically nothing. The cost of running, simply for home
batteries and operators' keep." While the controversy of wireless
versus cable spread, strange antics were witnessed in various parts
of England during 1897. Masts were temporarily abandoned while
tenfoot balloons covered with tinfoil were sent up as "capac 
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58 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS ities." They

might be efficient aerials, but they were heavy and required a strong
wind. Gales, however, ripped them to slivers. Then long-tailed calico
kites bedecked with tinfoil were entrusted to the winds. The
atmospherics were none too favorable, nevertheless, signals
broadcast from these lofty aerials covered about eight miles. The
tests were made in the daytime, the experimenters being unaware
that at night the range might be doubled if not tripled. The kites
offered interesting results, but Marconi soon realized such aerials
bobbing up and down at the mercy of the winds were impractical, so
in November 1897, at Needles on the Isle of Wight, he rigged up a
stout mast to support a i2o-foot aerial wire. It connected with a
transmitter destined to radiate the first paid Marconigrams sent by
Lord Kelvin to his friend George Stokes, and to Sir William Preece.8
Marconi, anxious to test the range of the Needles signals, hired a tug
and went to sea with a receiving set fed by an antenna suspended
from a 6o-foot mast. For several weeks he tossed about on the
water, all the time tinkering with the apparatus. When he returned to
land the tests were reported successful, for he had heard the signals
over a distance of eighteen miles. Encouraged, Marconi built a new
station at Bournemouth, fourteen miles west of Needles, but later
moved it to Poole, which was eighteen miles away. The station was
erected on the sand dunes of a barren promontory six miles from
the town. Wireless from this transmitter vibrated with such strength
that a Marconi engineer intercepted the signals at Swanage, several
miles down the coast, by simply lowering an antenna from a high
cliff, dispensing with the usual mast. Marconi stations were visualized
dotting the coastlines, because, even as the invention stood at this
time, it would 8 June 3, 1898.
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THE SCENE SHIFTS TO ENGLAND 59 be possible for all

incoming and outgoing vessels within twenty-five miles of shore to
broadcast position reports. So apparent were the advantages of the
system that in May, 1898, the Lloyds Corporation negotiated for
instruments at various Lloyd lighthouse stations; and a preliminary
test was made between Bally castle and Rathlin Island in the north
of Ireland. The distance was seven and one-half miles, and the fact
that a high cliff intervened made the communication all the more
astonishing. Wireless was on its way from England to the sea.
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AS TRIUMPHANT AS A CAESAR MARCONI'S renown was

spreading. Newspapers were telling more and more about the young
Italian and his work. New commercial possibilities were foreseen
almost daily for the invention, in fact, the applications of wireless to
business were featured in predictions as well as further scientific
advances. For example, why should wireless not speed the news? It
could flash dispatches from remote regions beyond the reach of
telephone, telegraph and cable, and in more civilized areas the ether
might supplement them. Marconi saw the possibilities and he gave
an inkling of what his invention might do in this respect, when in
July, 1898, he accepted an invitation to wireless bulletins of the
yacht races off the Irish coast. Already he had conducted a series of
experiments under the patronage of a French Commission between
a station he built at Wimereux, France, another at South Foreland
Lighthouse and a third on the French battleship Ib is. Both
transmitters sent messages to the Ibis, the replies from which
proved beyond doubt that messages could be sent and received
from a station in motion. It was the Daily Express of Dublin that
introduced a new fashion in newspaper reporting by arranging to
have the races observed from a steamer, the Flying Huntress, used
as a mobile station from which Marconi should describe the progress
of the yachts. 60
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AS TRIUMPHANT AS A CAESAR 61 The wireless men were

still laboring under the idea that the higher the aerial the better
would be the results, so from a 7 5 -foot mast they suspended an
aerial wire, which they figured would radiate messages to
Kingstown, even while the steamer was twenty-five miles off shore.
The receiving mast at Kingstown was no feet high. As fast as the
bulletins were received they were telephoned to Dublin, enabling the
Express to print full accounts of the contest as soon as the races
were over, and while the yachts were far beyond the range of
telescopes on shore. During the regatta more than 700 bulletins
were broadcast to the printing press. If wireless had failed in this
test of its career the press might have lampooned it. But Marconi
succeeded and won the backing of a powerful agency — the
newspapers. Editors realized that wireless brought them news while
it was still news on the spot where the event happened. It was not
long after this, that Marconi was invited by Queen Victoria to
establish communication between Osborne House, on the Isle of
Wight, and the Royal Yacht Osborne with the Prince of Wales
aboard, in Cowes Bay. The Queen was anxious for frequent bulletins
in regard to the Prince's injured knee. Marconi lost no time in
installing the equipment. Within sixteen days more than 150
messages of a strictly private nature were transmitted with success,
bringing new laurels to the young man from Italy and his so-called
toy of the air. By permission of the Prince of Wales several of the
messages were made public: August 4, 1898, From Dr. Tripp to Sir
James Reid. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales has passed another excellent
night and is in very good spirits and health. The knee is most
satisfactory.
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62 MARCONI: THE MAN AND HIS WIRELESS August 5,

1898. From Dr. Tripp to Sir James Reid. H.R.H. the Prince of Wales
has passed another excellent night, and the knee is in good
condition. These messages were intercepted by a vertical antenna
suspended from a loo-foot mast at Lady wood Cottage on the
grounds at Osborne House. The aerial on the yacht was attached to
the mast, eighty-three feet above the deck. The lead-in wire ran
down into the salon, one corner of which served as a wireless cabin.
Royalty aboard, notably the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York and
the Princess Louise, anxiously watched the instruments that were
talking back and forth with the shore. They marveled most at the
fact that signals could be sent and answers received while the yacht
was in motion. And even rain or fog did not stop them. In the
meantime the Needles station was becoming quite famous.
Overhanging Alum Bay was the Needles Hotel alongside which
towered Marconi masts braced against the winds as new symbols of
safety for the men who went down to the sea in ships. From the
halyard a wire dangled to a window of the wireless room, where
seashore visitors caught their first glimpse of the flashing sparks as
they enacted the mystery of talking through space. Two matter-of-
fact young men, whom a visitor described as doing something
simple, adjusted the instruments. One of them worked a long, black-
handled key up and down. Every time he touched it a bluish spark
crashed and leaped an inch or more between two metal balls of a
spark gap atop a large induction coil. He was saying something to
the operator at Poole, eighteen miles away. It was a noisy machine
but that seemed to add to the witchery and romance of wireless. A
short-lived spark jumped the gap when a dot was the
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AS TRIUMPHANT AS A CAESAR 63 signal. The dash was a

longer stream of the spark. One terminal of the induction coil was
linked with the aerial lead-in and the other knob was connected with
the "earth" to form the so-called "ground." Press a key, flash a spark
and it was picked up miles away. That's all there was to wireless in
the beginning! A guest at the station looked out across the water,
which was dull under a gray sky. He found something uncanny in the
thought that the young man at the key, who seemed as far as
possible from a magician or supernatural being, was flinging his
words across the waste of sea, over the schooners, over the feeding
cormorants to the dim coast of England yonder down the map. It all
seemed so simple, but not so easy to teach the world how to do it.
Marconi was busy now at the Poole station, where he and Dr. Erskine
Murray, one of his assistants, were trying to unravel more of the
ethereal mysteries. It was there that Cleveland Moffett, an American
correspondent found them; Marconi and his electricians granted one
of their first interviews. "How about the earth's curvature?" inquired
Moffett.1 "Or doesn't that amount to much just to the Needles
station?" "Doesn't it though," exclaimed an engineer. "Look across
and judge for yourself. It amounts to 100 feet at least. You can only
see the head of the Needles lighthouse from here, and that must be
150 feet above the sea. And the big steamers pass there hulls and
funnels down." "Then the earth's curvature makes no difference with
your waves?" "It has made none up to twenty-five miles, which we
have covered from ship to shore; and in that distance the 1
McClure's Magazine, June, 1899.
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