Young Wizards of the Airwaves Wireless Telegraphy— "writing from afar," in this early decade of the twentieth century, was considered a tremendous advance over the telegraph wires of my grandfather's day It also was regarded as being in advance of the telephone, which even today still requires cable, or wire. Wireless telegraphy is the parent of modern radio communications. In those days the dream was to carry the human voice without wires. Just as the telegraph of Morse gave way to the telephone of Alexander Graham Bell , wireless telegraphy was to give way to wireless telephony, or radio. As early as 1906 the Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden successfully transmitted the human voice and music on the mysterious radio waves. A few years back I was fortunate to talk to Group Captain Ronnie Stewart —now deceased—at his home in Ottawa when he was Private Secretary to the then Governor General, Lord Tweedsmuir . As a boy Captain Stewart had been one of Dad 's group of signallers. Without hes¬ itation he reached back seventy odd years into the past and recalled names, details, and incidents as clearly as if they happened yesterday: In the old days, Ernest Auld , Keith Rogers and Harold Pickard were interested in wireless and "Bunny" Weeks and I became interested as well. Keith was the mainspring and he was far advanced in the theories of wireless. I wish I could share with you the excitement and enthusiasm that came alive in Group Captain Stewart as he recounted the first time he heard the human voice without wires in 1911! The best I can do is to quote his own words: /'// give you this as a never-to-be-forgotten experience of mine. One day in 1911, on an April Saturday morning. The fog was heavy—it had been raining and drizzling all night, and damp¬ ness was everywhere, and I was adjusting my wireless set, when to my amazement and astonishment, I heard a neighbour order¬ ing her groceries! Now that was the spoken word, to me, — without wires/ / doubt if there are many people, living today, who have had that experience so far back. 13