Sec. 7
The apparatus which enables the electric waves to be revealed, the
detector or indicator, is the most delicate organ in wireless
telegraphy. It is not necessary to employ as an indicator a
filings-tube or radio-conductor. One can, in principle, for the purpose
of constructing a receiver, think of any one of the multiple effects
produced by the Hertzian waves. In many systems in use, and in the new
one of Marconi himself, the use of these tubes has been abandoned and
replaced by magnetic detectors.
Nevertheless, the first and the still most frequent successes are due
to radio-conductors, and public opinion has not erred in attributing
to the inventor of this ingenious apparatus a considerable and almost
preponderant part in the invention of wave telegraphy.
The history of the discovery of radio-conductors is short, but it
deserves, from its importance, a chapter to itself in the history of
wireless telegraphy. From a theoretical point of view, the phenomena
produced in those tubes should be set by the side of those studied by
Graham Bell, C.
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