cargo, and excluding vessels lost in the Great Lakes. It may be seen, therefore, that there is no lack of opportunities for the radio-telegraph to avert or mitigate disasters.

If it is not possible to quote authoritative totals in appraising the benefits conferred upon commerce by the radiotelegraph there is no lack of individual instances which may be cited to prove its worth. Perhaps, after all, that may be the better way of arriving at a true conception of the service the wireless telegraph has rendered to the world.

At the very outset of its career the wireless telegraph demonstrated its usefulness. An experimental outfit placed on the East Goodwin Lightship in the English Channel in December, 1898, was the means of saving several vessels and a number of lives. In the case of one steamer which went ashore on the Goodwin sands evidence introduced in an Admiralty court proved that by means of one short wireless message property worth $260,000 was saved.

One of the earliest merchant ships to be equipped with the Marconi apparatus was the Belgian Royal Mail steamship Princess Clementine, plying between Ostend and Dover, which received her installation in November, 1900. At the At the same time a land station was established at La Panne, near Ostend. On New Year's day, 1901, the Princess Clementine discovered the bark Medora stranded on the Ratel bank. A message was at once sent to La Panne, and before proceeding the Princess Clementine was able to tell the shipwrecked sailors that help was on the way. On the same trip the Roytengen Lightship, fifteen miles from Dunkirk, signalled the Princess Clementine that the lighting apparatus was out of order. A wireless message from the Clementine to La Panne enabled the lighthouse department to send out to the lightship and make repairs in time to have the lights in service that night.

From this promising beginning a steadily growing record of practical usefulness led up to a spectacular climax at 4 o'clock on the morning of January 23, 1909, when the Italian Steamship Florida, blundering through the fog sixty-five miles southeast of Nantucket,

crashed into the White Star liner Republic. In a few minutes Operator Jack Binns had sent out from the Republic the "C. Q. D.” call which has attracted more attention from the general public than all the other thrilling incidents in the history of the wireless telegraph combined. What was more to the purpose, it also attracted the attention of no fewer than five big liners within a comparatively short distance, not to mention two revenue cutters, all of which hastened to the rescue, arriving in time to take off the passengers and crew of the Republic and the passengers of the Florida, aggregating 1,650 souls. In this case the wireless telegraph not only gave the alarm but it played a vital part in guiding the rescuers through the fog, which was so dense that the Baltic had to grope about in circles for twelve hours before the Republic was finally reached. For thirty consecutive hours Binns sat with the telephone receivers which form part of the receiving apparatus strapped to his ears, keeping up communication with Siasconset Station and with other ships almost up to the time the Republic went down.

That was a fine exhibition of courage and devotion to duty, but Jack Binns has been surpassed in this respect by more than one wireless operator on sinking ships. When the steamer Ohio struck on a submerged rock in that marine graveyard off the Alaskan coast August 27, 1909, Operator George E. Eccles immediately began sending out signals of distress. He stuck to his key until the ship went down and he was drowned, though the steamships Humboldt and Rupert City, responding to his calls arrived in time to pick up the one hundred and forty passengers and most of the crew before the small boats were swamped.

Another operator who stuck to his key trying to hurry help to a sinking ship until the waters closed over him was S. C. Sczepanek, of Car Ferry No. 18. This large steel transfer steamer belonging to the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad, was bound diagonally across Lake Michigan from Ludington to Milwaukee on the night of September 9, 1910, when from some cause unknown she foundered in mid-lake. The first

steamer Arizona blew out while the steamer was being crowded to make speed in the teeth of a gale while bound from Chicago to Muskegon January 7, 1909. The wireless operator, who was asleep at the time, bounded out of bed and as soon as he learned what was wrong, sent out a call for help. Two hours and a half later the steamer Indiana was alongside. The City of South Haven, with a hundred passengers on board lost her rudder while crossing Lake Michigan June 26, 1909, leaving her floundering helplessly in the waves with the passengers in a panic. A call for help was sent out by wireless and within ten minutes two tugs were on their way from Chicago to the assistance of the City of South Haven. Two days later the City of Racine, bound from Chicago to Milwaukee in rough weather lost her propeller. A call for help by wireless brought two steamers to the rescue, one of which took off the two

hundred passengers while the other towed the disabled vessel to port. The wireless telegraph also brought help to the steamer Georgia in time to save her from going to the bottom when she lost her propeller in a storm on Lake Michigan on October 12, 1909.

It was a narrow escape that the passengers and crew of the Norwegian steamship Ocean Queen had in the lonely Pacific on September 16, 1909. Her engines broke down while the Ocean Queen was between Tahiti and Makatea. While thus helpless she was driven on a reef. The steamer Mariposa heard her call for help and arrived just in time to take off all hands before the Ocean Queen slid off the rocks and sank immediately in deep water.

The Princess Irene was one hundred and eighty miles away when, on June 12, 1909, her operator heard a call for help from the Slavonia which, with four hundred passengers on board, had gone on

the rocks off Flores Island in the Azores. Changing her course immediately and hurrying to the scene under full steam the Princess Irene arrived in time to take off all hands in safety.

Seven men bound from Seattle to Valdez, Alaska, had the remarkable experience in December, 1910, of being twice rescued from sinking ships, through the intervention of the radiotelegraph, in ten days. They sailed from Seattle December 1 on the steamer Northwestern which struck a reef and sunk a few hours later in False Bay. Steamers summoned by wireless conveyed them to Seattle from whence they took passage on the steamer Olympia. After calling at Cordova the Olympia ran into a fierce storm which drove her on a reef at the southeastern end of Bligh Island, four miles from shore. After striking the rock the Olympia slid down upon it tearing a large hole in her

side. The weather was intensely cold and the sea, driven by the terrific gale, was so high that the officers dared not launch a lifeboat. The sea battered the steamer so violently that it was feared she would not hold together until help could come; but Operator Hayes managed to send out an alarm before the engine room was flooded, rendering the wireless useless. Two steamers responded to the call in time to take off the one hundred and seventy-seven passengers and crew before the Olympia went to pieces. At any moment the call for help is likely to come floating through the ether to the ear of the operator who, in the vernacular, is "listening on the job." This call may be the "C. Q. D." made famous by Jack Binns, an abbreviation for "Come Quick, Danger," devised by the Marconi Company but never officially recognized, or it may be "S. O. S." -Stop Other Service-the signal of distress formally adopted by the International Wireless Convention at Berlin in 1906. The ship that first hears the appeal may be too far away to be of any assistance herself, unless, perhaps, to pass the message along to some other craft that can lend a hand, for it is a curious thing, for which no satisfactory explanation has yet been found, that a ship may often be unable to communicate with another near by, yet readily keep in touch with distant stations. Sometimes apparatus with a normal range of two hundred miles is able to communicate with stations twelve hundred miles away. A notable instance of this peculiarity was the experience of the steamship Caronia in 1908. The Caronia while off the coast of Sicily was totally unable to pick up any of the Italian stations, but had no difficulty in communicating with England and Holland.

The steamship Charles Nelson, of San Francisco, which went ashore a few miles north of Point Arena, California, in a thick fog October 28, 1910, was sufferer from this eccentricity of the

LEE DEFOREST AND HIS WIRELESS PHONE.

wireless telegraph. Fortunately there were enough other vessels at the proper distances to pass her messages along like a bucket brigade at a fire until she was rescued from her predicament.

The first intimation that anything was wrong came to Operator C. F. King, of the steamship Carlos, who while standing in the door of the wireless room with the receivers on his ears talking to some passengers heard a station working. Suddenly King realized that the stranger said something about a ship being ashore. He listened for a moment after the message was finished, but the government stations around San Francisco were working and had not heard the message.

"I immediately sent out a long general call," said King, "and asked Mare Island if he had heard the message of distress, and told him to keep the stations in the vicinity of San Francisco quiet. Mare Island had heard no message of distress, but told everybody else. to keep out. There was a short silence, after which came a message saying:

"Nelson ashore about fifteen miles northwest Point Reyes. Send help at 'Hanson.' "I copied this message as did the operator on the Farallone Islands and the San Francisco operator also gave his o. k. For quite awhile the Nelson operator continued to send out his distress message, not knowing that it had gone through. I gave him a number of calls, telling him the message was in all

right but could not make him hear me. We started at once to look for the Nelson but I was unable to make her operator hear me although I called him a great many times. About 8:30 p. m. the operator on the steamer Queen came on duty, the Queen then being near Point Arena, and much to my surprise made the Nelson hear him right away."

Thereupon King gave the Queen a message he had just received from San Francisco for the Nelson. Thereafter the Carlos took messages from San Francisco which were passed on to the Queen which in turn handed them on to the Nelson and transmitted messages from the latter to the Carlos, relayed them to San Francisco until the distressed vessel was definitely located and assured that help would reach her promptly.

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Not the least wonderful thing about the radio-telegraph is the distance its messages are conveyed. Last summer the wireless station near Hamburg kept up constant communication communication with steamer all the way from Hamburg to Kamerun, German West Africa, a distance of four thousand miles. To reach their destination the wireless waves had to pass over the Alps, the Algerian tableland and the Adamana mountains. exchange of messages between Key West and Norfolk November 22, 1910, was overheard at Mare Island Navy Yard, near San Francisco, a distance of 3,889 miles. On the thirteenth of the same month Marconi himself succeeded in establishing communication between. Coltano, Italy, and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, 4,500 miles distant. Early in October Marconi received messages at the wireless station at Punta del Este, near Buenos Ayres, from Glace Bay and from Clifden, Ireland, distances of approximately 5,600 miles. These long distance tests were preliminary to the opening of the great wireless station at Coltano, through which communication is to be maintained with Buenos Ayres, a distance of more than six thousand miles. This great distance has been bridged at an outlay of $500,000 for two wireless stations, which is but a fifth of what a cable between the same points would cost.

The usefulness of the wireless tele

graph is still limited by some strange idiosyncrasies. One of these is recognized by the U. S. statute which requires that wireless telegraph apparatus on shipboard shall be capable of sending and receiving messages over a distance of at least a hundred miles by day as well as by night, for the radio-telegraph seems to be as fond of darkness as evil deeds are alleged to be. Only half as much power is required to send a message on the Atlantic after dark as is required during daylight hours, while on the Pacific only a fourth as much power is used in sending a night message as is needed while the sun is shining. This strange difference between atmospheric conditions on the two oceans is very marked, for it takes five kilowatts to do on the Atlantic that for which two kilowatts will suffice on the Pacific. Morning and evening are times that try the patience of the wireless operators, for when darkness extends only part way across the ocean it is sometimes impossible to get signals through at all.

Marconi explains the greater difficulty of telegraphing in daylight by saying that the electric waves are absorbed by the ionization of the gaseous molecules of the air by the ultra-violet rays which emanate from the sun and which are largely absorbed in the upper atmosphere. He thinks it probable that this atmosphere, which is facing the sun, contains more electrons than the portion in the dark, and therefore the illumined and ionized air absorbs some of the energy of the electric waves. Apparently the length of the waves and the amplitude of the electric oscillations have much to do with this phenomenon, long waves and small amplitudes being less influenced by daylight than short waves and larger amplitudes. For comparatively short waves, such as are used for ship telegraphs, clear sunlight and blue skies act as a kind of fog to these electric waves. Mountains are no impediment to the radio-telegraph at night, but in the day time they greatly reduce the range of communication.

It is unfortunate that so valuable an invention as the wireless telegraph should be adopted by the unscrupulous as a new lure in the world-old process of separating the fool and his money.