The devices which Marconi thus assembled and put to practical use had been, in the hands of others, little more than scientific toys.  Others had studied the Hertzian waves and the methods of sending and detecting them from a purely scientific viewpoint.  Marconi had the vision to realize the practical possibilities, and, though little more than a boy, had assembled the whole into a workable system of communication.  He richly deserves the laurels and the rewards as the inventor of the wireless telegraph.

XVII

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY ESTABLISHED

    Marconi Goes to England—­he Confounds the Skeptics—­A Message to
    France Without Wires—­The Attempt to Span the Ocean—­Marconi in
    America Receives the First Message from Europe—­Fame and Recognition
    Achieved.

The time had now come for Marconi to introduce himself and his discoveries to the attention of the world.  He went to England, and on June 2, 1896, applied for a patent on his system of wireless telegraphy.  Soon afterward his plans were submitted to the postal-telegraph authorities.  Fortunately for Marconi and for the world, W.H.  Preece was then in authority in this department.  He himself had experimented with some little success with wireless messages.  He was able enough to see the merit in Marconi’s discoveries and generous enough to give him full recognition and every encouragement.

The apparatus was first set up in the General Post-office in London, another station being located on the roof but a hundred yards away.  Though several walls intervened, the Hertzian waves traversed them without difficulty, and messages were sent and received.  Stations were then set up on Salisbury Plain, some two miles apart, and communication was established between them.

Though the postal-telegraph authorities received Marconi’s statements of his discoveries with open mind and put his apparatus to fair tests, the public at large was much less tolerant.  The skepticism which met Morse and Bell faced Marconi.  Men of science doubted his statements and scoffed at his claims.  The Hertzian waves might be all right to operate scientific playthings, they thought, but they were far too uncertain to furnish a medium for carrying messages in any practical way.  Then, as progress was made and Marconi began to prove his system, the inevitable jealousies arose.  Experimenters who might have invented the wireless telegraph, but who did not, came forward to contest Marconi’s claims and to seek to snatch his laurels from him.