Bigger things were now in order and greater distances were to be spanned. Early in 1899 Marconi set up a station at Dover on the English coast and another at Wimereaux on the French coast. The distance between these stations was 30 miles but Marconi had no trouble in sending messages forth and back across the English Channel. This astounding feat made the _British Admiralty_ sit up and scan the horizon and seeing wireless writ large upon it, it had Marconi put his outfits on three cruisers that very year. During the naval manœuvers which soon took place wireless as a factor in fighting was given a thorough tryout with the result that the top-notch distance was reached when the flagship of the fleet signaled orders to one of the cruisers at a distance of 85 miles. I remember distinctly how every one over here was talking about that wonderful wireless and the boy who invented it. Consequently when the _New York Herald_ announced that it had engaged Marconi to report the _International Yacht Race_ at New York, the one word on everybody’s tongue was _wireless_. A ship fitted with wireless that followed in the wake of the yacht, and a shore station was used as in the _Kingston Regatta_. Over 4,000 words were transmitted from the wireless ship to the shore station where they were retransmitted by wire to the _Herald_ office in New York. The Marconi interests got busy on this side of the _big wet_ and organized a company to carry on the business over here. Stations were put up in 1901 at different points on the Atlantic coast and also in England. The _British Marconi Company_ entered into an agreement with _Lloyd’s_ in which the latter agreed to use only the Marconi system for a term of 14 years and that ships fitted with Marconi apparatus should not exchange messages with ships carrying any other make of apparatus. Then began the great business of installing Marconi apparatus on the fleets of transatlantic shipping routes. Still Marconi wasn’t satisfied; he wanted to and did do bigger things. I hadn’t been home from South America more than a fortnight when it just so happened that I _listened-in_ (without a receiver and quite unintentionally I assure you) to a conversation between two officials of a certain wireless company. The message I got was that Marconi was on his way to St. Johns, Newfoundland, with a couple of assistants and that his purpose was to find out how far he could receive messages from passing steamers. My subconscious self immediately wirelessed to my conscious self that it would be a fitting piece of business for me to work under the great inventor--though he was not much older than I, I knew perfectly well that there was no use trying to get a job with him through the ordinary channels for he had brought his own assistants from England with him and, of course, none others were wanted.