Wireless Telephony - Tesla Differs with Marconi Over Limit of Distance

Special Dispatch to Democrat and Chronicle.

New York, March 5. — It develops to-day that William Marconi and Nikola Tesla are at odds over the question of wireless telephony. Mr. Marconi declared that two or three miles was the limit of distance for telephone messages without wires. Mr. Tesla insisted that he had talked through the air with a person eight miles away.

“I was never able to send spoken words by wireless apparatus a greater distance than two miles, and gave up the experiments with the telephone on that account,” said William Marconi, to-day, when questioned concerning the probable success of the tests made by the signal corps of the United States army. A dispatch from Washington had said the signal corps had lately overcome difficulties that had long checked its progress, and had succeeded in sending a distance of 450 feet without wires messages uttered in clear, speaking tones that would ordinarily have carried a distance of only thirty or forty feet.

“The only thing astonishing about it is that it should be considered astonishing,” said Mr. Tesla to-day. “I have sent wireless telephone messages eight miles and many telephone men have sent them several miles with little effort or preparation.”