All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

26 All About Inventions So far as commercial developments are concerned, although wireless has not superseded submarine cables and overhead or underground wires, it is supplement- ing the latter to a very pronounced degree. Then, again, it has enabled telegraphic communication to be carried through countries where the ordinary sys- tems are not to be found for the simple reason that they never could hops to pay their way. The barren territories surrounding the Poles are even being linked up with the humming commercial and industrial centres of the globe. Thus we have a wireless station in Macquarieland, where a few hundred enterprising and daring pioneers strive to make existence profit- able, although it is on the fringe of the silent con- tinent enveloping the South Pole. Wireless is serving as a connecting link over the vast distances separating the communities who are making good in far-away Alaska. Wireless has forged a link of conversation through the wildest and undeveloped parts of the South American continent, and of the darkest reaches of territory in Africa. Formerly the railway or the telegraph wire was considered to be the herald of civilisation and the open sesame to a new country but to-day it is wireless which is fulfilling this role. ’ Nowadays it is virtually impossible to particular- ise all the applications of etheric communication. By this means the aviator keeps the commander of an army beneath him posted up with the movements of the enemy. Warships talk to one another by its aid. From the Eiffel Tower the time is dispatched every noon throughout the world. The most distant stations receive the signal within the fraction of a second, and as it is Greenwich time which is flashed