Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/63

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The Andalusian
41

built room on the port side of the forward saloon deck.

Although the apparatus was of the old Marconi type, having been installed when the ship was built, we could send from 300 to 400 miles with it and receive four times that distance. The transmitter was formed of two 10 inch induction coils the primaries of which were connected in series and the secondaries in parallel so that while the length of the spark was still 10 inches it was twice as fat and hence proportionately more powerful.

There was a jigger, as Marconi called his tuning coil, and a battery of 18 Leyden jars made up the condenser for tuning the sending circuits. It was also fitted with a new kind of a key invented by Sammis who was at that time the chief engineer of the Marconi Company of America.

He called it a changeover switch but it was really a key and an aerial switch combined. In order to connect the receiver with the aerial all you had to do was to turn the key, which was on a pivot, to the right. When the key was turned it also cut off the current from the