office; wrecks, derelicts and storms are reported. Every operator sends
out regular reports daily, so that the home office can tell the exact
position of the vessel. If she is too far from land on the one side
to be reached by wireless she is near enough on the other to come
within the sphere of its operations.

Weather has no effect on wireless, therefore the question of meteorology
does not come into consideration. Fogs, rains, torrents, tempests,
snowstorms, winds, thunder, lightning or any aerial disturbance
whatsoever cannot militate against the sending or receiving of wireless
messages as the ether permeates them all.

Submarine and land telegraphy used to look on wireless, the youngest
sister, as the Cinderella of their name, but she has surpassed both
and captured the honors of the family. It was in 1898 that Marconi
made his first remarkable success in sending messages from England to
France. The English station was at South Foreland and the French near
Boulogne. The distance was thirty-two miles across the British channel.
This telegraphic communication without wires was considered a wonderful
feat at the time and excited much interest.

During the following year Marconi had so much improved his first
apparatus that he was able to send out waves detected by receivers up
to the one hundred mile limit.

In 1900 communication was established between the Isle of Wight and
the Lizard in Cornwall, a distance of two hundred miles.

Up to this time the only appliances employed were induction coils
giving a ten or twenty inch spark. Marconi and others perceived the