“The first message Marconi ever got through from the other side of the ocean I took from his hand to carry to the telegraph office. I’d waited about six days to get it, with Black Diamond hitched up in the buggy most of the time. We jes stayed there, ready to go any minute. “It was winter and colder’n Greenland. Dimey had two blankets over her and I was wearin’ Steve Paine’s wolf coat that he shot up in Alaska. All of a sudden I see Marconi come rearin’ out of the plant with both hands full of tape. He was jes like a crazy man. “‘You wait there, Paine, and I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted, and started for his office. I got my buggy turned around ready. The nearest telegraph office was Wellfleet, four miles away. When he came out again he had two big envelopes in his hand. They were messages to be telegraphed to Washington and New York. I found out later that it was a message from King Edward to President Theodore Roosevelt, for one envelope was addressed to the White House and the other to a New York newspaper. “‘Drive like the wind!’ says Marconi. ‘If you kill your horse I’ll buy you another.’ “Well, I started off for Wellfleet as fast as I could make Dimey go. But when I got over the dunes, out of sight, I slowed down. I couldn’t see any need of goin’ crazy over a telegraph message. ’Twas four miles of hard goin’ and I wasn’t goin’ to kill my horse for nobody. Jim Swett was telegraph operator at Wellfleet railroad station then and I gave him the two envelopes. And that’s all there was to it.” MARCONI WAS JUST 29 Marconi was not yet in his 30th year. First he had proved wireless practicable by communicating across the French channel from his native Bologna in 1899. Working at Cornwall, he made contact with Newfoundland. His Cape Cod transmission of President Roosevelt’s message was the crowning achievement of his career. Thereon the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America became absorbed in a brisk overseas business. The _London Times_ received part of its American news through this Cape Cod station. The term Marconigram became familiar to American ears. Marconi’s system was adopted by the British and Italian navies. He took charge of wireless operations of the Italian government during the last war. He was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1909, and the J. Scott medal for the invention of wireless telegraphy on June 5, 1931. The pioneering was done on a high bluff overlooking the endless sweep of the Atlantic. Work was started in 1901. Twenty immense spars, 200 feet high, were erected in a circle. The station proper was a one-story bungalow. Marconi and his crew slept and ate in a cottage a few paces away. The big poles hadn’t been up long when a nor’easter howled down on the exposed spot. They were knocked over like matchsticks. Ice contributed to the damage and the loss ran into $50,000. Then four towers of steel and wood, rooted with blocks of cement and cables were erected, and they stayed put.