Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/130

 an aerial wire and a ground had ever been used in connection with a coherer. With this apparatus Popoff was able to hear the coming of storms for hours before they appeared above the horizon.

About this time, who was only 20 years old, was going to the University at Bologna, Italy. Prof. Righi who lectured on physics there was repeating Hertz’s experiments and used Branly’s coherer for detecting the electric waves. This set Marconi to thinking and it was not long before he had an experimental wireless set of his own, thus becoming the first wireless kid.

The chief difference between his transmitter and that of Hertz was a telegraph key which he put in the battery circuit so that he could break up the sparks into dots and dashes. He also set a reflector back of the apparatus to concentrate the electric waves into a beam to make them go in a given direction when they would be more powerful and cover a longer distance. But Hertz did the reflector stunt first.

Marconi’s receiver was made up of an apparatus just like Popoff’s except that he connected an old-time Morse printing register in