Notes.

Messages from Newfoundland announce that Mr. Marconi has succeeded in signalling from England to America by wireless telegraph. Detailed information is not yet available, but it is said that the signals which were received at St. John's, three on Thursday and one on Friday last, though faint were unmistakable, and that Mr. Marconi intends to come immediately to England to increase the power of his transmitters at Poldhu, Cornwall, in order to establish more satisfactory communication across the Atlantic. According to later information the Anglo-American Telegraph Company have given Mr. Marconi notice to remove his instruments from the Colony, as they possess a fifty years' telegraphic monopoly, of which there are still two years to run. This will involve the removal of his experimental station to Nova Scotia or to some other convenient place on the American coast line, and may, perhaps, somewhat delay further experiments. It is to be hoped, however, that we shall before long see a further development of Mr. Marconi's remarkable achievement, upon which if confirmed by subsequent results he cannot be too warmly congratulated. It is interesting to compare the possible rapid development of wireless telegraphy in Mr. Marconi's hands with that of the ordinary telegraph. The first Atlantic cable was not laid until five-and-twenty years after the invention of the telegraph by Gauss and Weber. The earliest proposal to use Hertz waves for signalling was made in 1891, and Mr. Marconi began his experiments four or five years later; at that time he was able to signal two or three miles, and now, after five years' work, he claims to have succeeded in increasing this distance a thousandfold.

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