owned by the Germans, was suspected of sending coded messages regarding ship departures from the eastern United States. Apgar's wireless recorder which could record wireless signals onto wax cylinders and his ampliphone circuit were the two instruments that would be used to decipher messages being transmitted by the German station owned by the Atlantic Communications Company. This was a subordinate to the Telefunken Corporation, a brokerage business firm in Germany. The station had to renew its license annually. In 1914 the U.S. only granted it a temporary license; in case the station violated the U.S.' neutrality the license could be revoked quickly. The station was still allowed to transmit, but U.S. Navy radio officials were brought in to censor out-going messages. The U.S. had become suspicious of the operation and was trying to make sure that it's neutrality was not being violated.

Although the government had censors listening full time, it was much too difficult to detect any deviations in the Morse Code messages seemingly being sent out and the ones that actually were. The messages being sent were too simple and innocent, not to mention that the cost of sending messages was $1.00 per word. Some of the messages seemed ridiculous, "Myra has dyptheria," or "Send always invoice before shipping knives," and resulted in even tighter censorship. This, however, did not phaze the Germans one bit, because the code that they used involved only one word or one space out of each message. The coded messages could be spaced out over a period of hours or even days. With no way to record and compare them, the Germans could have gone on indefinitely sending secret messages to their waiting submarines on the positions and other pertinent data on the allied ships.

The Secret Service was called in to continue the investigation as there was no F.B.I., and they in turn inducted Charles Apgar into the Secret Service. The Chief of the Secret Service, William T. Flynn, really did not know much about wireless. He contacted Lawrence R. Krumm, chief radio inspector of New York to ask his assistance in the investigation of Sayville. By coincidence, Krumm and Apgar happened to be well acquainted. On June 5, l9l5, Krumm wrote a letter to Charles requesting a meeting.

June 7. Charles recorded messages for four hours a night from 11 p.m. until 3 a.m. On June 21st all of the recordings were sent to Flynn in Washington. He in turn gave the recordings to Secretaries Lansing, Redfield and David after they were decoded. These men eventually ordered the takeover of the Sayville Station.

Next followed a cover-up both by the government of our country and the station owners over what had actually happened. On July 1st the three Secretaries went into conference on the Sayville matter, and on July 7th, they informed Herman Metz, president of the Atlantic Communications Company that the Navy Department would soon take over the entire operation of the Sayville station. On July 15,1915 this was subsequently accomplished. They were still allowed to do their business - reporting stock quotations and transactions - but the Navy did the actual sending of messages. When the press questioned Dr. Frank, secretary of the Atlantic Communications Company about the takeover he denied any operations that violated the neutrality of the country. He also commented about the wireless recorder saying that it physically impossible to record messages sent out by wireless on a phonograph cylinder.

Obviously Frank made this statement so as to avoid as much of the blame of the takeover as possible. Interestingly enough Apgar had in his possession a letter which showed that Frank's company, if not Frank ,himself, knew of this process five months beforehand and requested one or two of the recordings.

On this letter was a memo by Apgar that he personally delivered two of the records to the Atlantic Communications Company of which Dr. Frank was at this time secretary and treasurer. Of course there is a slight possibility that Frank really didn't know about the recorder, but this is dubious since in his position he would have had access to any information about such inventions. Unlike Frank who was German, Herman Metz, the president of the company, was an American businessman. Immediately after the takeover, Metz, who had appointed himself Chairman of the Board of Directors during the takeover procedure made the a statement affirming the neutrality of his company: Metz later issued a statement of his intention to cooperate as fully as possible with the government operators. It appears that Metz was a patriotic American who had been deceived by some devious German spies. The government learned that Metz's interests in the Atlantic Company were strictly business and that he had had absolutely nothing to do with the technical operation of the Sayville station.