In this choice I was perhaps influenced somewhat by getting a job as second wireless officer on the _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_, a fine fast passenger express steamer of the _North German Lloyd Line_. This German ship--as in fact all other transatlantic liners--was equipped with the Marconi system and this grouched the German officers to the last limits of despair. A little newspaper was published on board every day and, of course, the news in it came _via_ wireless. Whenever we had trouble in getting the messages from the stations at Wellfleet, Mass., or Poldhu, England--as was always the case more or less when we were in mid-ocean--the paper which the Germans ran printed them anyway just as we took them down, and then they commented on what a rotten system Marconi’s was. The _Kronprinzessin Cecilie_ touched at Plymouth, England, and then sailed across the English channel and touched again at Cherbourg, France, where I threw up the job, as my destination was Paris, and I arrived there a few hours later. You know the Eiffel Tower was built in the midst of the ornamental park of the Champ de Mars as the biggest attraction of the Paris Exposition in 1885. When it was built wireless was an unknown means of communication and when the Exposition was over there was much talk about wrecking it, for it was not only useless but the Parisians thought it a hideous object to be stuck up in a park. But when Marconi showed the world how to send messages across the ocean, and since one of the chief factors for long distance wireless transmission was a high aerial, it didn’t take half-an-eye for the _French War Department_ to see that the Eiffel Tower, which was very nearly a thousand feet high, was just the thing to support an aerial. Captain Ferrié, who had given much time to developing wireless apparatus for the Army, was put in charge of installing a small plant of about 15 horsepower simply to see what could be done with it. This experimental plant at once proved very useful in sending out time signals and weather reports to ships at sea and for the Navy Department to issue orders to Naval Commanders, but its greatest value was shown during the Moroccan troubles when the War Department was able to keep in direct touch with the Army there through its station at Casablanca. The need of a new, permanent, high-powered station was strongly felt and work was commenced on it in 1908. Now instead of a couple of makeshift shacks at the base of the tower a concrete building was put in under the ground so that its roof was on a level with the surface of the park. This was done in order that a clear view across the grounds could be had and also to prevent the noise of the sparks from being heard in the neighborhood, which would not only be disturbing, but, what mattered more, any one who knew the Morse code could read all the outgoing messages a block away.