THE night-watch had just come on duty in the operatingroom of the great wireless station. The operator had taken his place, the receivers clasped to his ears, in the midst of the mysterious machinery which filled the great room. A century or so ago, one of these operators, calling up the four corners of the world at will, would have been considered a witch of a very dangerous kind. Any twentieth-century boy, however, would recognize the apparatus at a glance, and

about one in five could take hold of the machinery and run it himself.

Imagine a gigantic spider's web with innumerable threads radiating from New York more than a thousand miles over land and sea in all directions. In his station atop one of the skyscrapers on lower Broadway, our operator may be compared to the spider, sleepless, vigilant, ever watching for the faintest tremor from the farthest corner of his invisible fabric.

"On a quiet night like this," the operator explained to our question, "we reach the equator

on the south and beyond, the arctic circle to the north; then, say, two thirds across the Atlantic, and far beyond the Mississippi to the west.

air is comparatively quiet just now, but things will soon look up. The evening is our busy time, you see."

It is difficult to realize the extent of this great area which may be covered

in an instant by the click of the wireless instrument. The fastest ocean steamer would take more than a week to travel from one wireless boundary to another. The operators within ready call can report all extremes of weather. The message from some northern station telling of a raging blizzard arrives at the same instant a steamer in the tropics complains of intense heat. One vessel reports a breathless calm, while another message is interrupted by the violence of the storm and the rolling of the ship. And, too, the operators thousands of miles apart talk and joke with one another as though they were in the same

room.

It is an unusual favor to be allowed to spend the night in the great station. The operators must, of course, be guarded from interruptions. At any moment of the day or night, a faint click may bring word, perhaps, of some vessel in distress, or other vital news, and the man at the key must listen in perfect silence and with the most anxious attention. The assistant operator, for there are always two on duty, having explained this, fitted to our ears the receivers connected with the delicate apparatus which mysteriously picks up the flying messages.

and out of New York harbor naturally have a great deal to talk about. Add to this the vast volume of commercial work flying from city to city, and the messages between Government stations. But it is the incessant chatter of the amateur wireless operators which swells the chorus. "I should say there were 75,000 amateurs scat

Varian

The air seemed suddenly alive with humming, clicking sounds. Probably nowhere else in the world is the air so charged with wireless vibrations as above New York. At times there are as many as a score of messages flashing back and forth. The great fleet of steamers passing in

tered about the country," the operator explained. "The amateur messages we pick up here may be counted by hundreds, and, of course, there are thousands of amateur receiving stations listening to what we say."

There came a sudden interruption. Out of the maze of messages the experienced ear of the operator had caught a particular click intended for him. He bent quickly over the complicated series of dials and levers before him, turning the arrows this way and that. Instantly the wireless chatter became blurred and gradually died away,