hrough brick walls--through houses,
indeed--over long stretches of plain, and even through hills, proving
beyond a doubt that the etheric electric waves penetrated everything.
For a long time Marconi used modifications of the tin boxes which were a
feature of his early trials, but later balloons covered with tin-foil,
and then a kite six feet high, covered with thin metallic sheets, was
used, the wire leading down to the sending and receiving instruments
running down the cord. With the kite, signals were sent eight miles by
the middle of 1897. Marconi was working on the theory that the higher
the transmitting and receiving "capacity," as it was then called, or
wire, or "antenna," the greater distance the message could be sent; so
that the distance covered was only limited by the height of the
transmitting and receiving conductors. This theory has since been
abandoned, great power having been substituted for great height.

Marconi saw that balloons and kites, the playthings of the winds, were
unsuitable for his purpose, and sought some more stable support for his
sending and receiving apparatus. He set up, therefore (in November,
1897), at the Needles, Isle of Wight, a 120-foot mast, from the apex of
which was strung his transmitting wire (an insulated wire, instead of a
box, or large metal body, as heretofore used). This was the forerunner
of all the tall spars that have since pointed to the sky, and which have
been the centre of innumerable etheric waves bearing man's messages over
land and sea.

With the planting of the mast at the Needles began a new series of
experiments which must have tried the endurance and determination of the
young man to the utmost. A tug was chartered, and to the sixty-foot mast
erected thereon was connected the wire and transmitting and receiving
apparatus. From this little vessel Marconi sent and received wireless
signals day after day, no matter what the state of the weather. With
each trip experience was accumulated and the apparatus was improved; the
moving station steamed farther and farther out to sea, and the ether
waves circled wider and wider, until, at the end of two months of
sea-going, wireless telegraphy signals were received clear across to the
mainland, fourteen miles, whereupon a mast was set up and a station
established (at Bournemouth), and later eighteen miles away at Poole.

By the middle of 1898 Marconi's wireless system was doing actual
commercial service in reporting