I wrote out the description. It was received by my father
with only ten imperfect interpretations in a list of 1,000 words.
From this time forward our plans for erecting a receiver in the
observatory were pushed to a completion. We had discovered the
necessity of elevation for the senders (transmitters) and receivers for
long distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up at
the observatory, which--needlessly I think--was to serve as the
terrestrial station for the reception of those viewless waves which my
father thought might be constantly breaking unrecorded upon the
insensitive surfaces of our earth.
The eventful night came. It was August, 1890. Mars was then in
opposition. The evening had been extremely beautiful. Nature united in
her mood the most transporting contradictions of temperament. It was
August and the day had been marked by changes of almost tropical
severity, although, as we were south of the equator (the latitude of
Christ Church is S. 44 degrees) August was, with us, mid-winter. A
thunderstorm had broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusual
meteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting off
the views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lasted
an hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wide
glistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remote
shore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, and
islands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their ermine
robes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washed
country side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denuded
forestland.
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