Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/134

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
110
Jack Heaton

This was the real beginning of wireless telegraphy and from that moment on Marconi’s star began to rise. It was not long before he was telegraphing over a space of eight miles, the aerials at both ends being held up in the air by kites.

These astounding results had reached the ears of German scientists and through the pull of the former German Emperor, now plain Mr. Hohenzollern, things were fixed so that Dr. Adolph Slaby, of the Charlottenburg University, was allowed to be present while Marconi was sending and receiving messages.

The learned doctor deliberately swiped Marconi’s ideas and on returning to the land of kultur he bent his energies toward outdoing and undoing the young inventor who showed him how to telegraph without wires. Of course, Dr. Slaby invented a system of wireless telegraphy and this was quickly used on the ships of what was formerly the German Navy.

But Marconi’s fame as the real inventor of the wireless telegraph had too sound a bottom for his detractors to hurt him much and he went right on about his work without the slightest caring whatever. He was next invited by the