Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/123

 it practical; then some fine day a genius will happen along and see just what the device lacks and add it to the general collection, or he will. put something to it, perhaps accidentally, that does the business, and this last touch which enables it to be used gives the man who does it the right to be called its inventor.

Now, dozens of men, including Morse, Edison and Tesla in this country, and Hughes, Pierce and Lodge in England, worked on the scheme of sending messages without wires; but they either experimented along the wrong line, or the few who worked on the right line did not push far enough ahead to get anywhere. The result was that by the time Mr. Marconi tackled it all the instruments that were needed for telegraphing without wires were at hand but no one had quite caught on how to use them.

Nearly every one thinks, too, that it is far more wonderful to send wireless messages than it is to send messages over a wire; but this is not the case at all, though both, I trow, are wonderful enough. When we say a message is sent by wireless we do not mean, by a long shot, that it goes from the place where it is sent to the place where it is received without anything