Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/169

 case their bodies would become conductors and allow a few million volts of high potential electricity to pass through them, the posts are surrounded by iron fences. The main cables are connected together about half-way between the ground and the top of the tower with other and lighter cables and these are joined to a single leading-in cable which runs down to and passes through a window to the top of the area- way in the underground building.

Finally the leading-in cable is connected to one end of a tuning coil, the other end of which is joined to a ground formed of metal plates having nearly 3000 square feet of surface and these are buried deeply in the earth far below the underground building.

Before I left the States to get the Eiffel Tower station the Navy Department had contracted with the National Signaling Company, an American wireless telegraph concern, for the most powerful cableless plant that had yet been built.

While I was in France work had been started on the towers and buildings at Arlington on the Potomac River near Washington and the machinery and apparatus for it was being built.