It had been reported in the Pittsburgh Dispatch that the wire manufacturers, Emerson and Medgley, of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, had completed and supplied to the United States Navy Department a section of wire torpedo netting, 20 ft. by 20 ft. square to be subjected to a test in competition with a similar section of English netting. The English netting had up to that time been considered the best manufactured, and the United States Navy and all other navies had of necessity been using it.