20 MARCH 1926, Page 10

SPECTABILIA

As I read in my morning paper on Monday that during the week-end people in London had talked with people in New York on the telephone- from their -home, my memory flew back twenty-eight years. During a stay in the Isle of Wight I was walking across the downs near Totland Bay, not far from Freshwater. Near the edge of the cliffs I noticed a little shanty with a couple of poles. Outside was a solitary young man, wearing a green baize apron, 'doing mysterious things with scientific instruments. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was communicating with Hurst Castle on the other side of the Solent without wires. The man was Signor Marconi. How little did the average layman then foresee the great development of radio- telephony. * *