Marconi

Guglielmo, goo-le-el-mo mar-ko-ne (1875-), an Italian engineer and electrical inventor. He was born near Bologna, Italy. He was educated at the universities of Bologna and Padua. While a student he took a deep interest in electricity, and early occupied himself in devising apparatus for sending electrical messages without direct conductors. He interested the English government in apparatus for sending wireless telegrams. In 1899 he succeeded in sending messages across the French Channel from Boulogne to the English coast, a distance of over thirty miles. In the same year he visited the United States exhibiting his apparatus. In 1901 he set up apparatus at St. John's, Newfoundland, and succeeded in exchanging wireless messages with a station in England. The Anglo-American Cable Company, which had been granted a telegraphic monopoly of the service between Newfoundland and England, required Marconi to abandon his Newfoundland station. He set up his instruments at Table Head on Cape Breton Island and completed his experiments successfully. While Marconi cannot be said to have invented wireless telegraphy, he has the honor of having made it a practical success. Although the method has not yet supplanted the use of ocean cables, it has been adopted widely for use in conveying messages between the land and ships at sea. Transatlantic ships with suitable apparatus may now be said to be in telegraphic communication with the mainland during the entire voyage. The details of wireless telegraphy are too technical for description here. See Telegraphy

Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A. D.), a Roman emperor. He was one of the ablest and most humane of the Roman emperors. Several severe contests were waged during his reign both with foreign and domestic foes, but cruelty, deceit, and inhumanity, so characteristic of many Roman emperors, do not appear to have stained his record. During his reign an army returning from Asia Minor and the East brought home an Asiatic plague. It is said that one-half of the population between the Euphrates and the Atlantic was swept away. The subsequent decay of the Roman Empire is attributed in part to the pestilence. Marcus Aurelius, as he is usually called, was a genuine heathen, carefully instructed in the doctrines of the Stoics. Though unfavorable to the Christians, whom, in fact, he persecuted, he has left behind a volume of Thoughts which breathe a lofty spirit, approaching at times the teaching of Christ Himself.

Love men; revere the gods.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

All that is from the gods is full of providence.

All is ephemeral,--fame and the famous as well.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

As emperor I am a Roman, but as a man my city is the world.

That which comes after ever conforms to that which has gone before.

Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.

The best way to avenge thyself is not to become like the wrong doer.

Let not thy mind run on what thou lackest as much as on what thou hast already.

From my mother I learned piety, and abstinence not only from evil deeds, but from evil thoughts.

A wrong-doer is often a man that has left something undone, not always he that has done something.

In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; "I am rising to a man's work."

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.

Suppose that men curse thee, or kill thee, . . if a man stand by a pure spring and curse it, the spring does not cease to send up wholesome water.

If thou workest at that which is before thee, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly, without allowing anything else to distract thee, but keeping thy divine part pure, as if thou shouldest be bound to give it back immediately; if thou holdest to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with thy present activity according to nature, and with heroic truth in every word and sound which thou utterest, thou wilt live happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.