were sent from one extreme limit of his father's farm to the other.

It is hard to realize that the young inventor only began his experiments
in wireless telegraphy in 1895, and that it is scarcely eight years
since the great idea first occurred to him.

After a year of experimenting on his father's property, Marconi was able
to report to W.H. Preece, chief electrician of the British postal
system, certain definite facts--not theories, but facts. He had actually
sent and received messages, without the aid of wires, about two miles,
but the facilities for further experimenting at Bologna were exhausted,
and he went to England.

Here was a youth (scarcely twenty-one), with a great invention already
within his grasp--a revolutionising invention, the possibilities of
which can hardly yet be conceived. And so this young Italian, quiet,
retiring, unassuming, and yet possessing Jove's power of sending
thunderbolts, came to London (in 1896), to upbuild and link nation to
nation more closely. With his successful experiments behind him, Marconi
was well received in England, and began his further work with all the
encouragement possible. Then followed a series of tests that were fairly
bewildering. Messages were sent through brick walls--through houses,
indeed--over long stretches of plain, and even through hills, proving
beyond a doubt that the etheric electric waves penetrated everything.
For a long time Marconi used modifications of the tin boxes which were a
feature of his early trials, but later balloons covered with tin-foil,
and then a kite six feet high, covered with thin metallic sheets, was
used, the wire leading down to the sending and receiving instruments
running down the cord. With the kite, signals were sent eight miles by
the middle of 1897. Marconi was working on the theory that the higher