Here was a youth (scarcely twenty-one), with a great invention already within his grasp—­a revolutionising invention, the possibilities of which can hardly yet be conceived.  And so this young Italian, quiet, retiring, unassuming, and yet possessing Jove’s power of sending thunderbolts, came to London (in 1896), to upbuild and link nation to nation more closely.  With his successful experiments behind him, Marconi was well received in England, and began his further work with all the encouragement possible.  Then followed a series of tests that were fairly bewildering.  Messages were sent through 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.