Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/138

 on everybody’s tongue was wireless. A ship fitted with wireless that followed in the wake of the yacht, and a shore station was used as in the Kingston Regatta. Over 4,000 words were transmitted from the wireless ship to the shore station where they were retransmitted by wire to the Herald office in New York.

The Marconi interests got busy on this side of the big wet and organized a company to carry on the business over here. Stations were put up in 1901 at different points on the Atlantic coast and also in England. The British Marconi Company entered into an agreement with Lloyd’s in which the latter agreed to use only the Marconi system for a term of 14 years and that ships fitted with Marconi apparatus should not exchange messages with ships carrying any other make of apparatus. Then began the great business of installing Marconi apparatus on the fleets of transatlantic shipping routes. Still Marconi wasn’t satisfied; he wanted to and did do bigger things.

I hadn’t been home from South America more than a fortnight when it just so happened that I listened-in (without a receiver and quite unintentionally I assure you) to a conversation