Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/273

 it did not become famous until the  went down off the Diamond Shoals. Her operator did as many an operator had done before him and has done since, that is, he kept sending the S O S call. Her engine room was rapidly filling with water but before her dynamos were submerged and put out of commission the operator on the Alamo of the Mallory Line, ninety miles away, heard the call. The Alamo reached the sinking ship just in time to save her passengers and crew before she went down.”

“Do you think it is possible to send a wireless message around the world?”

“Not without relaying it. You remember back there in 1909 when all the small fry who were following in Marconi’s footsteps were trying to do something more wonderful than the great inventor? One of them made the statement that he had sent out a train of electric waves from his high power station which traveled completely round the world and in a small fraction of a second he received the signals on the same aerial; and he was backed up in it by a college professor, too.”

“I agree with you that college professors