The Wireless Officer cover

The Wireless Officer

Rating 2.9
Word count
452K words
Chapters
46

Tags

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Wireless Officer by Percy F. WestermanAuthor: Westerman, Percy F. (Percy Francis), 1876-1959,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Oct 22, 2011

Editor's review

The Wireless Officer is a young-adult adventure novel by the British author Percy F. Westerman, centered on the early technical profession of the wireless operator and bearing a distinct mark of its era. Written in English and suited to readers with some grounding in the language, it unfolds around sea voyages and radio communication, combining technical curiosity with adventurous tension. The Project Gutenberg edition is a public-domain ebook, easy to obtain free, search, and excerpt. For readers studying early twentieth-century British juvenile adventure literature, early radio culture, or using English for extensive reading in class, it is a usable primary source. It is best read not for modern-style plotting but as a sample of period technological imagination and young-adult fiction style. It suits graded English reading or thematic excerpting rather than casual bestseller-style entertainment.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers with basic English reading ability who want to try an original English adventure novel
  • Teachers and students studying early twentieth-century British juvenile literature and adventure narrative
  • Culture enthusiasts interested in early radio communication and maritime subjects
  • Teachers needing public-domain English materials for extensive reading or classroom excerpts

Not a good fit for

  • Beginners whose English is not yet fluent enough and who need Chinese notes or simplified readers
  • Readers who prefer contemporary fast-paced suspense and lack patience for old-style juvenile adventure narrative
  • People seeking practical radio technical guidance rather than literary reading

Reading tips

  1. Read the first two chapters to gauge language difficulty and narrative pace, then decide whether to read through or select chapters.
  2. Keep a vocabulary list, focusing on nautical and radio terms, to help link the plot.
  3. Read alongside contemporary juvenile adventure novels to observe how a technical role drives the story.
  4. If used in class, close-read key passages on radio communication and skim the rest.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46

FAQ

Is this book suitable for English beginners to read directly?
Not really for zero-beginners or elementary readers. The original is an English juvenile adventure novel whose sentence patterns and vocabulary reflect early twentieth-century usage and involve nautical and radio terminology. Readers with roughly intermediate English who are willing to look up words will find it easier to enter; beginners should start with a simplified version or selected passages.
What should be noted about using the Project Gutenberg edition?
Project Gutenberg provides a public-domain electronic text that can be downloaded and searched free, suitable for excerpting and classroom use. But the electronic edition usually contains no modern introduction, notes, or illustration captions, so readers need to supply background knowledge themselves. When quoting, check the edition information and release page.
Does the radio content in the book have technical reference value?
It mainly serves the novel's plot and period atmosphere, not as a technical manual. Readers can observe the role and imagination of early radio in maritime narrative, but should not use it to learn modern communication operations. For the history of technology, read it alongside specialized sources.

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About the author

Percy F. Westerman (1876–1959) was a British author known for adventure novels for young readers. Public information about him is limited, and few details of his life are available. The library holds 36 of his works, mostly naval and war stories: A Watch-dog of the North Sea and Under the White Ensign are set against naval operations in the Great War; The Nameless Island is a modern Robinson Crusoe tale of survival on a deserted island; and The Quest of the Golden Hope returns to seventeenth-century maritime adventure. He also wrote early aviation fiction such as The Dreadnought of the Air, and battlefield stories like A Lively Bit of the Front, about the New Zealand Rifles on the Western Front. His novels are tightly plotted, with attention to technical detail and discipline, and were influential in early twentieth-century English boys' fiction.

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