Abstract
QUITE the most important of the pronouncements of the past year in connexion with wireless telegraphy were the two addresses given by Senatore Marconi to the Royal Society of Arts, London, in July and December, and also a paper by Sir Joseph Larmor, in NATURE of November i, and the Philosophical Magazine for December last, on the theory of wireless transmission round the world. Senatore Marconi gave details in July of his remarkable achievements with electric waves of relatively short wave-length, and in December of his discovery that waves of only 30 metres in length, or about 100 ft., can be used for reliable communication by day as well as by night over any distance, even to the antipodes, although entire continents and mountain ranges intervene (see NATURE, September 6, p. 359, and December 27, p. 939). In this most important advance, he has certainly priority of achievement, as he had in 1901, in long-wave transmission across the Atlantic. When in 1902 Senatore Marconi discovered the great difference in range between day and night transmission with long waves across the Atlantic, it at once became clear that wireless transmission involved not only the ether of space round the earth, but also that the atmosphere itself, and especially, its state as regards illumination by sunlight, had a great deal to do with the matter.
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FLEMING, J. The Propagation of Wireless Waves of Short Wave-length round the World. Nature 115, 123–124 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115123a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115123a0