and allows extra current impulses to show themselves instantly without loss of energy just as the continuous line of marbles did. To put it in another way, this arrangement virtually makes the cable the counterpart of a cup filled to the very brim-one more drop and exactly that amount overflows. The overflow, in this case, is the desired signal. As you will probably realize, signal waves or impulses must travel faster when a line is so charged that it has no more appetite to be satisfied from the waves in transit. Accordingly, in this manner, Doctor Musso is able to put an insulated cable, either underground or submarine, in this condition, and he does not need a specially large conductor, nor does he have to employ "inductance coils" to "load" the line. But this is not all.

The signals used on a submarine cable in dispatching telegrams from continent to continent are in the Morse code. The impulses at the receiving end tell their story by tracing a zigzag line upon a strip of paper. In this system of inter-continental communication the dots and dashes are merely two waves, and the problem is a simple one compared with the impulses needed to reproduce speech electrically by wire.

Speaking in your ordinary voice, pitched fairly evenly, each tone has a number of “overtones," and all of these produce separate vibrations. These overtones must be reproduced by the telephone in order to duplicate intelligible speech at the receiving station. This is difficult enough on land where special auxiliaries are installed along the line, but Doctor Musso tells us that he can do this by an under-sea route even though we know the submarine cable is already sorely taxed in carrying the simple dotand-dash impulses from shore to shore.

The waves will have to withstand marring in transit, and yet they must have the desired form when they reach the end of their journey. The solution is fairly simple. He starts his waves out in a manner caricaturing their normal originals, and as they travel along the cable, their exaggerations are removed by the influences that would otherwise deface the usual wave; and, at the receiving station, these initial caricatures arrive either as excellent likenesses or actual images of

the true waves of the sender's voice. With a single submarine telephone circuit from here to Europe, conversation could be maintained with the two wires while telegraphic dots and dashes could be sent independently by either of the single wires the two services of the voice and the double telegraph keys working without interference. No changes need be made in existing cables or along telephone systems now installed, and Doctor Musso declares that the employment of two simple and inexpensive auxiliaries are the only additions demanded. But even beyond this, land lines and submarine lines, or underground cables and overhead wires can be joined together indifferently in the Musso circuit for carrying telephone messages afar. This is impossible with any of the existing commercial installations.

So though this son of Tuscany gave up his dream when he landed in New York City some twelve years ago, he has achieved a success which is one of the great steps in linking the Old and the New worlds closer together than were New York and Boston in the days before the telephone. With the unswerving patience which is one of the great attributes essential to the creative mind, he has singled out his job, attacked it, and completed it. He is not the kind of Italian that you see digging in the streets of a great city with a noisy boss to give him commands in "wop" dialect. Neither is he of the reckless, care-free Neapolitan or Sicilian breed. The blood of the Teutonic conquerors of the northern provinces flows through his veins. Looking at him and studying his breadth of forehead, the distance between his eyes, the features finely yet firmly molded, we see an entirely different type of Italian. We see a man who laid aside a great ambition because the world was not yet ready for it, and attacked a problem which, to him, was but a side issue.

Giuseppe Musso was ahead of his time; so he waited, leading the scientists of his day up to the point where they would be able to go hand in hand with him toward something bigger and more difficult of achievement. Meanwhile, his countryman, Marconi, may have snatched those laurels, but nevertheless the quiet, firmfeatured Musso will never be forgotten.

O

NE of the greatest joys of the small boy-and of the man who never grows oldhas been to watch the circus mechanics set up the "big top", but the old method, which required about twenty minutes for the setting of

each pole, has now given way to machinery which can raise a forest of poles in a few moments.

Formerly, gangs of men struggled with each separate pole, some of them hauling on the rope fastened to the top, others holding the base, while a large

force of "canvas men" was required to lift the top end, attached to the canvas, and force it up so that the rope gang could pull it into position. After this the rope had to be fastened to stakes. The whole operation was attended with uncertainty, and it was impossible to plan ahead on the length of time it would take. That is the explanation of the proverbial lateness of the circus parade.

The new machine will bring the parade around on time. By means of it, the

whole job can be done in three or four minutes. An enlarged windlass, operated by a gasoline engine, is hitched to the poles and the engine is started. A cable running from the top of each one is attached to the windlass and the base of each pole is made fast so that it will not slip during the operation. The canvas top is put on after the poles are up; . it can be wound around a spool to obviate the necessity of carrying it to the canvas wagon in sections.

W

WITH the graciousness of an oriental potentate who, in a fit of generosity, lightly tosses a gift of priceless jewels into the lap of some favorite, Congress flung down a vast treasure-over sixty million dollars in value-and then, as the expectant recipient stooped to pick it up, niggardly snatched it away.

The treasure was three million acres of Oklahoma's most fertile territory. The expectant recipient was the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railroad. The outcome of the withdrawal of the great prize has been forty-four years of litigation carried on by the disappointed railroad against the Federal Government. The last fight is now being made in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Back of the technical pleadings of "extinguishment of the Indian titles", of "grants in futuro", and "grants in praesenti", being considered by the courts, lies the romantic story of a spectacular track-laying contest, entered into by three railway lines of the Southwest, and lasting six strenuous months, during the winter of 1869-70.

Congress was at that time wrestling with left-over problems from the Civil War and was lavishing millions of acres of land upon railroad companies to hasten

transcontinental building. It was a day of unexampled generosity in railroad land grants. That things were not well with the Southwest, Congress knew. Out in Kansas there were three forts, Leavenworth, Riley, and Scott. Down in Oklahoma, Fort Gibson had been standing in splendid military isolation since 1824. Across the Arkansas line was Fort Smith. Texas lay across the untamed unmapped reaches of the Indian country. Congress wanted these forts tied together and connected with Texas by a military road of fifty-six-pound steel laid on hardwood ties.

To foster quick construction of such a railway, Congress on July 25, 1866, laid down the terms of a remarkable race. The first of three Kansas railroads to reach the boundary between Kansas and the Indian Territory was to have the exclusive right to build southward across the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw lands, the richest part of the country, to Preston-now Denison-Texas.

It was further provided that the winning road should be given "every alternate section of land or parts thereof, designated by odd numbers, to the extent of ten sections per mile on each side of said road," this to take effect "whenever the Indian title shall be extinguished by treaty, or otherwise."