Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/162

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
138
Jack Heaton

There are 18,000.feet of wire in it and it is made in the shape of a fan with the handle pointing in the direction of Clifden where our other station is located.”

Before leaving Howard told me that when he heard the Marconi Company intended to build a pair of cableless stations it was his great ambition to be one of the operators and in getting this position he had realized it. For myself I preferred to go on making my collection of cableless stations rather than to be planted up there at Glace Bay even though this was one of the three places in the world where the overland telegraph lines and transatlantic cableless meet and form a clearing house for the news of two continents.

It was my intention to sail for Belfast, Ireland—all the big steamers touch at that port on their way from New York to Liverpool—and go over to Clifden to see the cableless station there. Before leaving, however, I got it straight from Mr. Bottomley, who was the President of the American Marconi Company, that it was built from the same plans as the one at Glace Bay and that the apparatus was exactly the same. I concluded not to bother add-