Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/168

 hustled me unceremoniously out, up the stairs and on to the green grass of the park. No, it wasn’t exactly a case of sour grapes but after I had seen the apparatus of the station and added it to my Christian Science collection I didn’t want the job anyway.

The most interesting feature of the Eiffel Tower wireless station is its aerial and before I left I studied it carefully. It is a one-sided affair, but this is not because its designer thought well of it but in virtue of the fact that the Eiffel Tower sets at one end of the Champ de Mars.

If the tower had been built in the middle of the park the wires could have been brought down all around it on all sides thus forming what is called an umbrella aerial and this would have been good practise, as the engineers say. As it is there are six steel cables about &frac12; an inch in diameter secured to but insulated from the top of the tower on one side and these are guyed out in the shape of a fan and anchored at the other end of the park.

The cables are set in stone posts which project above the ground and to prevent simple folks from laying their hands on them, in which