Wireless telegraphy has already proved itself of the greatest value on the ocean. It has sent news of storms and wrecks across tossing seas and brought rescue to scores of voyagers. Ships may now keep in constant communication with their offices on shore. The great lines send Marconigrams to each other in mid-ocean, and publish daily papers giving the latest news of the whole world. Greater distances have so far been covered over water than over land, but this branch of the service is being rapidly developed, and it must prove in time of the greatest value across deserts and wild countries, where a regular telegraph service would be impracticable. In such a country as Alaska, where there are constant heavy sleet and snow storms, the wireless should prove invaluable. The telegraph and cable companies did their best to ignore the claims of the wireless systems, but they have been compelled to acknowledge them at last. Rival companies have sprung up, using slightly different varieties of apparatus. Each of the big companies that were ready to compete with the Marconi Company by 1906, the German Telefunken Company, the American National Electric Signaling Company, the American De Forest Company, and the British Lodge-Muirhead Wireless Syndicate, had certain peculiar advantages over the others. The laws relating to the uses of wireless, and especially the rights of governments to the sole use of the systems in case of war, are in a confused condition, but eventually order must come from this chaos as it did in the history of the telephone and telegraph. Wireless has brought the possibility of communication between any two individuals, no matter where they may be situated, within the realm of fact. A severing of communication with any part of the world will be impossible. Storms and earthquakes that destroy telegraph systems, enemies that cut submarine cables, cannot prevent the sending of Marconigrams. The African explorer and the Polar adventurer can each talk with his countrymen. The use of this agency is still in its earliest youth, but it has already done so much that it is impossible to say to what a stature it may grow. It should cut down the rates for using wire and cable systems, and ultimately place the means of communicating directly with any one on land or sea within the reach of every man. All the world’s information will be at the instant disposal of whomsoever needs it, and all this is due to those electro-magnetic waves that permeate the ether, waiting to be put into service at the touch of man. XVI THE WRIGHTS AND THE AIRSHIP Wilbur Wright 1867- Orville Wright 1871-