May 2, 1904, considered the question of control of wireless telegraph.

The report considers specific points. It states:

2. The questions are:

Whether or not all wireless telegraph stations belonging to the Government on or near the seacoast ought to be under a common control?

If so, which Department of the Government can best exercise the control?

What is necessary in order to control private seacoast wireless telegraph stations?

3. In all this discussion the term "seacoast" includes all wireless telegraph stations capable of communicating with ships at sea, whatever their actual distance inland, and includes the Great Lakes and the insular possessions of the United States, as well as the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific coasts.

4. The following facts must, in the opinion of the General Board, form the basis of the decision:

5. The principal defect of wireless telegraphy, the liability to interference, renders some central control indispensable to the integrity and effectiveness of any wireless telegraph station. Without control over the placing of other stations, any wireless telegraph station may be rendered absolutely useless either by accident or design.

6. The control of all wireless telegraph stations belonging to the Government can be accomplished by Executive order. In order to control private stations, general legislation by Congress will be required, both because wireless telegraphy bridges the boundaries between States and because it stretches beyond the territorial limits of the nation.

7. The principal use of wireless telegraphy is now, and long will be, at sea-between ship and ship, or ship and shore. On shore other means of communication always exist, often better, always possible substitutes. The common telegraph or telephone, or the heliograph, permanent or portable, is everywhere available to the soldier or meteorologist. Permanent outlying stations can be connected by submarine cables. Although wireless telegraphy may be an added convenience, on shore it never can be indispensable. But from ships at sea, out of sight of flags or lights, and beyond the sound of guns, the electric wave, projected through space, invisible and inaudible, can alone convey the distant message.

8. In the present state of the science, development and experiment must be carried on largely at sea. We know as yet little of the limitations or possibilities of marine and transmarine communication. The Navy is the only Department of the Government that has facilities for this branch of the work, and, irre

REPORT OF NAVAL BOARD.

145 spective of what is done by other Departments, the Navy must, in its own interest, continue to experiment and to communicate between its ships and the shore.

9. To the Navy, wireless telegraphy is absolutely essential. All the battle ships and larger cruisers, perhaps even torpedo boats, are or will be equipped with it-as foreign navies are to communicate with each other, as well as with the shore.

10. The Navy has already 20 wireless telegraph stations on the seacoast and proposes to establish no less than 60 more. The Navy has already made arrangements to receive at its stations and to transmit over the land telegraph lines wireless messages from passing merchant vessels. The Army has 2 stations in use in Alaska and 2 others for experimenting, and has considered placing 1 at the Golden Gate on the Pacific coast. The Weather Bureau has 2 stations and proposes to erect 7 more. All these stations, except the 2 in Alaska, which are for communicating with each other, are for the purpose of communicating between ships at sea, or in a few cases outlying islands and the mainland. Several of the Army and Weather Bureau stations interfere, or will interfere, with those of the Navy.

11. From these facts it appears clear that it would be in the interest of all to put the seacoast wireless telegraph stations belonging to the Government under the control of one Department. That control must extend to the determination of sites, and probably to the choice of systems, in order to prevent the several Departments from frustrating one another's efforts. It does not seem to the General Board that there will be much difference of opinion on this question.

*

14. * * *

*

**

*

(1) It is absolutely necessary in time of war that the observers stationed to receive messages from the fleet should be subject to military law-that is, enlisted men of the Navy. Civilian marine observers, however skillful in reporting merchant ships, could not so well be trusted to distinguish the wireless messages of friendly from hostile men-of-war, or to transmit accurately technical naval signals, and could not be trusted at all with the secret signal codes of the Navy. Whoever mans the seacoast stations in time of peace, the Navy must man them in time of war. (2) Unless the Navy mans the stations in time of peace it will not have the trained force ready to man them in time of war. Practice with instruments on shipboard alone will not suffice. The man to be trusted at a seacoast station in time of war, alert to detect the unexpected, must be familiar with the usual local business in time of peace. The opportunity for training the signal men is no less important than testing the apparatus.

16. The subject of legislation to control private wireless telegraph stations on the seacoast is of growing importance to the Government because of the increase in the number of them and their liability to interfere, maliciously or accidentally, with the Government's stations. In order to safeguard its own interest, both in peace and war, the Government must have some means to prevent the erection of a private wireless telegraph station within the range of interference of one of its own. It would not be wise, in the opinion of the General Board, for the Government to undertake to manage all the seacoast wireless telegraph business of the country, nor for an industry of such growing commercial utility to be controlled directly by a military branch of the government. The Department of Commerce and Labor, now charged with the administration of the Light-House Service, the Coast Survey, the Inspection of Steamboats, and the jurisdiction over merchant shipping generally, would perhaps be the most natural one to control private wireless telegraph companies. The law should clearly give the Government priority of right and prohibit the erection of any private station without the approval of the Government.

International agreement, 1903.-There was an international agreement on certain points between several states at a convention held at Berlin August 4-13, 1903. Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, Spain, and the United States signed the protocol as follows:

FINAL PROTOCOL.

The delegations to the preliminary conference concerning wireless telegraphy designated below:

Germany, Austria, Spain, the United States of America, France, Hungary, Russia, are unanimous in proposing to their Governments to examine the following general bases for an international convention:

ARTICLE 1.

Exchange of correspondence between ships at sea and coastwise wireless telegraph station opened to general telegraphic service is subject to the following rules:

SEC. 1. All stations whose field of action extends to the sea are called coastwise stations.

SEC. 2. Coastwise stations are required to receive and transmit telegrams originating on ships at sea without distinction as to the systems of wireless telegraphy employed by said ships.

SEC. 3. The contracting states make public the technical points of nature to facilitate and accelerate communication between coastwise stations and ships at sea.

INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT, 1903.

147

However, each of the contracting Governments can authorize stations situated in its territory, under such conditions as it may deem proper, to utilize several installations or special arrangements.

SEC. 4. The contracting states declare their intention to adopt, in order to establish the tariffs applicable to telegraphic service between ships at sea and the international telegraphic system, the following bases:

The total charge to collect for this service is established by the word. It comprises

(a) The charge for transmission over the lines of the telegraphic system of which the amount is that fixed by the international telegraph regulation in force attached to the St. Petersburg Convention.

(b) The charge pertaining to the marine transmission.

The latter is, as the former, fixed by the number of words, this number of words being counted according to the international telegraphic rule as indicated in the paragraph above (a).

It comprises

66

1o. A charge called 'charge of the coastwise station," which goes to said station.

2°. A charge called "charge of the ship," which goes to the station installed on the ship.

The charge of the coastwise station is subject to the approval of the state on whose territory it is established, and that of the ship to the approval of the state whose flag the ship carries.

Each of the two charges should be fixed on the basis of equitable renumeration for the telegraphic work.

ARTICLE II.

A regulation which will be attached to the proposed convention will establish rules for the exchange of communications between coastwise stations and those placed on board ship.

The prescriptions of this regulation may at any time be modified by common agreement by the administration of the contracting Governments.

ARTICLE III.

The rules of the telegraphic convention of St. Petersburg are applicable to transmission by wireless telegraphy in so far as they are not contrary to those of the proposed convention.

ARTICLE IV.

Wireless telegraph stations should, unless practically impossible, give priority to calls for help received from ships at sea.

ARTICLE V.

The service of operating wireless telegraph stations should be organized, as far as possible, in a manner not to interfere with the service of other stations.

ARTICLE VI.

Contracting Governments reserve to themselves, respectively, the right to make special arrangements themselves, having for their object to oblige the companies operating wireless telegraph stations in their territories to observe, in all their other stations, the prescriptions of the proposed convention.

ARTICLE VII.

The prescriptions of the proposed convention are not applicable to the wireless telegraph stations of the state not open to general telegraphic service, save in that which concerns the clauses which Articles IV and V are intended to cover.

ARTICLE VIII.

Countries which have not joined the proposed convention will be admitted at their request.

Done at Berlin August 13, 1903.

(Then follow signatures of delegates for Germany, Austria, Spain, the United States of America, France, Hungary, Russia.)

DECLARATION OF THE DELEGATION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

While engaging itself to submit the above bases to the examination of its Government, the British delegation declares that, in view of the situation in which wireless telegraphy finds itself in the Unted Kingdom, this delegation ought to maintain a general reserve. This reserve relates especially to section 2 of the first article and to the application of the rules of Article V to the stations indicated in Article VII.

Done at Berlin August 13, 1903. (Signatures follow.)

DECLARATION OF THE ITALIAN DELEGATION.

The delegation of Italy, while agreeing to submit to the examination of its Government the propositions contained in the final protocol of the conference, ought, agreeably with the declarations made by its members in the several meetings, to make on account of the Government the following reservations:

ART. I, SEC. 2. It would accept the proposed text only on condition of the following addition being made: Provided, that all these systems give a known guarantee for good working in re