Cassier's Magazine, December, 1903, pages 183-184:
Current Topics
IT is now three years since we were promised in no qualified terms transatlantic wireless telegraphy. At intervals that may be said to have corresponded more or less with marked depression in the wireless stock market these promises have been repeated with increased emphasis; and in full page advertisements the public has, among other things, been informed as to the exact prospective earning capacity of each transatlantic wireless circuit, which earnings never fail to show a clear 10 per cent. profit annually on the entire capital stock of the company. These earnings, be it pointed out, are based on the possible earnings of a circuit working every hour of the year at a rate about equal to the best speed of the Atlantic cables, which is assuming a maximum of business to be handled which the Atlantic cables have not yet found forthcoming. Probably these cables are not operated to their full capacity more than five-sixths of the time, exclusive of Sundays. The comparison is also made with the cable service as if transatlantic wireless telegraphy were an accomplished fact, whereas not only is this not so, but there is probably not at present a single wireless telegraph circuit in any part of the world where the business offered for transmission is sufficient to keep it occupied every hour of the twenty-four at the rate of speed mentioned, nor is it likely that there is in operation to day anywhere a system of wireless telegraphy that can be relied on to work without interruption twenty-four hours of the day,--all of which is said without desiring to detract in the slightest degree from the immense importance of wireless telegraphy in its proper sphere. But the foregoing facts profiteth the advertising and press agents of wireless telegraphy nothing. Their business is to facilitate the transmission of stock to the pockets of prospective investors, and indeed,--we trust the remark will not be considered unkind,--this appears to be the part of the business now being most energetically carried on by many of the promoters of wireless telegraphy.
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THE rein which some of these gentlemen give to their imagination is well exemplified in one instance where an installation consisting of a flag pole, a wooden building of the dimensions of an automobile shed, containing a small oil engine, a dynamo machine and the other ordinary apparatus of a wireless outfit, are alluded to as "a magnificent station" at Blanktown. When, however, the short time that has elapsed since wireless telegraphy was introduced as a new art is considered, one wonders not so much that transatlantic wireless telegraphy is not yet an assured practical success, but that the art has already attained a degree of practicability whereby it is possible to communicate between passing vessels, and vessels and the shore, with fair regularity and precision. For these results unstinted credit should be given to the inventors of the various systems; and it is, perhaps, quite possible that if these inventors were allowed to pursue their preliminary investigations and experiments to a conclusion without undue pressure to show immediate practical results of some kind, the actual progress would have been even greater than it has been. Sooner or later the possibilities and limitations of this art will be better understood, at which time it will be assigned to the work for which it is preeminently adapted, and the brain-wearing attempts to show its adaptability to purposes which are already better performed by other methods will be abandoned.