Branly; and, finally, that
the general arrangement was that established by M. Popoff.
The persons who thus rather summarily judge the work of M. Marconi
show a severity approaching injustice. It cannot, in truth, be denied
that the young scholar has brought a strictly personal contribution to
the solution of the problem he proposed to himself. Apart from his
forerunners, and when their attempts were almost unknown, he had the
very great merit of adroitly arranging the most favourable
combination, and he was the first to succeed in obtaining practical
results, while he showed that the electric waves could be transmitted
and received at distances enormous compared to those attained before
his day. Alluding to a well-known anecdote relating to Christopher
Columbus, Sir W. Preece very justly said: "The forerunners and rivals
of Marconi no doubt knew of the eggs, but he it was who taught them to
make them stand on end." This judgment will, without any doubt, be the
one that history will definitely pronounce on the Italian scholar.
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