Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/171

 towers, which were complete and ready for the aerials, rested on concrete bases and were insulated from the ground by slabs of marble. There are three buildings and these were also ready for the installation.

Now while the machinery and apparatus were being moved into the buildings and set in place a force of men was put to work on assembling the aerials and swinging them between the tops of the towers. These aerials are known as T, or flat-top aerials and right here I want to tell you how and why this type of aerial came to be.

In the early days Marconi, and those who followed him, thought that a high vertical wire, that is, one sticking straight up in the air, was all that was needed to get distance. On ships the masts are never very high and so the late Lieutenant Hudgens of the U. S. Navy tried stringing the wires of the aerial down to the bow and stern of the battleship  to give the wires a greater length. This sloping aerial gave so much better results than the straight, or vertical aerial that he then suspended the wires between the top of the masts of the ship and, lo-and-behold, it worked even