It is natural that one should wonder whether the wireless telephone is destined to displace our present apparatus.  This does not seem at all probable.  In the first place, wireless telephony is now, and probably always will be, very expensive.  Where the wire will do it is the more economical.  There are many limitations to the use of the other for talking purposes, and it cannot be drawn upon too strongly by the man of science.  It will accomplish miracles, but must not be overtaxed.  Millions of messages going in all directions, crossing and recrossing one another, as is done every day by wire, are probably an impossibility by wireless telephony.  Weird and little-understood conditions of the ether, static electricity, radio disturbances, make wireless work uncertain, and such a thing as twenty-four-hour service, seven days in the week, can probably never be guaranteed.  In radio communication all must use a common medium, and as its use increases, so also do the difficulties.  The privacy of the wire is also lacking with the wireless telephone.

But because a way was found to couple the wireless telephone with the wire telephone, the new wonder has great possibilities as a supplement to our existing system.  Before so very long it may be possible for an American business man sitting in his office to call up and converse with a friend on a liner crossing the Atlantic.  The advantages of speaking between ship and ship as an improvement over wireless telegraphy in time of need are obvious.  A demonstration of the part this great national telephone system would play in the country’s defense in case of attack was held in May of 1916.  The Navy Department at Washington was placed in communication with every navy-yard and post in the United States, so that the executive officers could instantly talk with those in charge of the posts throughout the country.  The wireless telephone was used in addition to the long distance, and Secretary of the Navy Daniels, sitting at his desk at Washington, talked with Captain Chandler, who was at his station on the bridge of the U.S.S. New Hampshire at Hampton Roads.

Whatever the future limitations of wireless telephony, there is no doubt as to the place it will take among the scientific accomplishments of the age.  Merely as a scientific discovery or invention, it ranks among the wonders of civilization.  Much as the tremendous leap of human voice across the line from New York to San Francisco appealed to the mind, there is something infinitely more fascinating in this new triumph of the engineer.  The human mind can grasp the idea of the spoken word being carried along wires, though that is difficult enough, but when we try to understand its flight through space we are faced with something beyond the comprehension of the layman and almost past belief.