Part 100

This photograph makes us appreciate what a wonderful aid is wireless to navigators. On Easter Sunday, 1914, the U. S. Revenue Cutter “Seneca,” patrolling the North Atlantic, found these two gigantic icebergs in the regular steamer lanes and sent out wireless warnings to all nearby steamships.]

RAILROAD WIRELESS.--ANTENNA ON CARS.]

City side of Scranton station, Lackawanna R.R., showing aerial of wireless which communicates with trains.]

Photo by Stefano

WIRELESS RECEIVING STATION IN U. S. ARMY.]

The Man Who Invented Wireless Telegraphy.

Communication without wires for thousands of miles across oceans, from continent to continent, is a far cry from sending a wireless impulse the length of a kitchen table. That is the development of twenty years.

To properly trace the development of wireless telegraphy, however, it is necessary to go back eighty-three years to when, in 1831, Michael Faraday discovered electro-magnetic induction between two entirely separate circuits. Steinheil, of Munich, too, in 1838, suggested that the metallic portion of a grounded electrical circuit might be dispensed with and a system of wireless telegraphy established. Then, in 1859, Bowman Lindsay demonstrated to the British Association his method of transmitting messages by means of magnetism through and across the water without submerged wires. In 1867 James Clerk Maxwell laid down the theory of electro-magnetism and predicted the existence of the electric waves that are now used in wireless telegraphy. Dolbear, of Tufts College, in 1836, patented a plan for establishing wireless communication by means of two insulated elevated plates, but there is no evidence that the method proposed by him effected the transmission of signals between stations separated by any distance. A year later Heinrich Rudolph Hertz discovered the progressive propagation of electro-magnetic action through space and accomplished the most valuable work in this period of speculation and experiment.

Just twenty years ago, at his father’s country home in Bologna, Guglielmo Marconi, then a lad just out of his ’teens, read of the experiments of Hertz and conceived the first wireless telegraph apparatus. This was completed some months later and a message in the Morse Code was transmitted a distance of three or four feet, the length of the table on which the apparatus rested.

Satisfied that he had laid the foundation of an epoch-making discovery young Marconi pursued his experiments and filed the first patent on the subject on June 2, 1896. Further experiments were carried on in London during that year and at the request of Sir William H. Preece, of the British Post Office, official tests were made, first over a distance of about 100 yards and later for one and three-quarter miles.

During the year following Mr. Marconi gave several demonstrations to the officials of the various European governments and communication was established up to 34 miles. In July of this year, 1897, the first commercial wireless telegraph company was incorporated in England and the first Marconi station was erected at the Needles, Isle of Wight.

On June 3, 1898, Lord Kelvin visited this station and sent the first paid Marconigram. A month later the events of the Kingstown Regatta in Dublin were reported by wireless telegraphy for a local newspaper from the steamer “Flying Huntress.” In August of that year the royal yacht “Osborn” was equipped with a wireless set, in order that Queen Victoria might communicate with the Prince of Wales, who was at Ladywood Cottage and suffering from the results of an accident to his knee. For sixteen days, constant and uninterrupted communication was maintained. Then on Christmas Eve was inaugurated the first lightship wireless service, messages being sent from the East Goodwin lightship to the lighthouse at South Foreland.

This photograph shows how wireless messages are prepared for direct transmission across the ocean. The dots and dashes of the telegraphic code are punched on tapes by skilled operators, thus insuring accuracy and a permanent record of each message. Five or six operators, and sometimes more, are steadily preparing these tapes, which are pasted together and run through a machine which operates the key at each perforation. A speed of 100 words a minute is thus obtained.]

Three months later the first marine rescue was effected through this installation. The steamship “R. F. Matthews” ran into the lightship and lifeboats from the South Foreland station promptly responded to the wireless appeal for aid. The most important wireless event abroad during the year 1899 was the establishing of communication across the English Channel, a distance of thirty miles.

The American public next learned something of Marconi’s invention, for in September and October of that year wireless telegraphy was employed in reporting the International yacht races between the “Shamrock” and the “Columbia” for a New York newspaper. At the conclusions of the races, the naval authorities requested a series of trials, during which wireless messages were exchanged between the cruiser “New York” and the battleship “Massachusetts” up to a distance of about 36 miles. On leaving America, Marconi fitted the liner “St. Paul” with his apparatus and when 36 miles from the Needles Station, secured wireless reports of the war in South Africa. These were printed aboard the vessel in a leaflet called “The Transatlantic Times,” the first of the chain of wireless newspapers now published daily on practically all passenger steamships. Six field wireless sets were dispatched to South Africa about this time and were later of considerable service in the Boer War.

The year 1900 brought the first commercial wireless contracts. By agreement with the Norddeutscher Lloyd, Marconi apparatus was installed on a lightship, a lighthouse and aboard the liner “Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.” On July 4th the British Admiralty entered into a contract for the installation of Marconi apparatus on thirty-two warships and shore stations and the erection of the high power station at Poldhu was commenced.

~WORLD WIDE USE OF THE WIRELESS~

Work on similar station at Cape Cod was begun early in 1901 and on August 12th the famous Nantucket Island and Nantucket lightship stations opened to report incoming vessels by wireless. Heavy gales in September and November wrecked the masts at both Poldhu and Cape Cod stations and these were replaced by four wooden towers, 210 feet high. Important experimental work was then shifted to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and on December 12th and 13th, signals were received across the Atlantic from Poldhu. This to Marconi was a great achievement and the forerunner of the present day trans-atlantic service. But with the announcement that the long dreamt of feat had been accomplished a flood of vituperation from scientific men was let loose. It was nonsense; it was deliberate deception; the reading was in error, were among the comments. Another prank of the “young man with a box,” one scientist termed it. It is amusing now to recall this extraordinary treatment, but it was hardly so amusing to the young inventor, then in his twenty-seventh year.

But in spite of the skepticism, developments followed rapidly from then on and in 1902, the year in which the American Marconi Company was established, full recognition to wireless telegraphy was given by the various governments.

The wonderful growth of the Marconi system within the last twelve years is well known to all and does not require detailing. But in view of its youth as an industry and its inauspicious beginning, a glimpse into what the present day Marconi system comprises may be interesting.

More than 1800 ships are equipped with Marconi wireless and its shore stations are landmarks in practically every country on the globe.

Press and commercial messages are transmitted daily from continent to continent direct.

Shore to ship and ship to shore business each year runs into millions of words.

Marconi wireless within seventeen years, has become an absolute necessity in the maritime field, an invaluable aid in others. Regular communication has been established with icebound settlements and desert communities, and official running orders transmitted to moving railway trains. Its service is dependable under all conditions and embraces activities and locations inaccessible to any other telegraph system. Continuous service is maintained and wireless messages for all parts of the world at greatly reduced rates are received at any Western Union Office.

The direction finder and wireless compass are recent Marconi inventions.

A wide variety of types of Marconi equipment are designed for the merchant marine, warships, submarines, pleasure craft, motor cars and railroad trains; also portable signal corps sets, apparatus for aircraft, cavalry sets, knapsack sets and high-power installations for trans-ocean communication.

How Does a Fly Walk Upside Down?

There is a little sucker on the end of each of the fly’s feet which makes his foot stick to the ceiling or any other place he walks, and which he can control at will. It is made very much like the sucker you have seen with which a boy can pick up a flat stone--a circular piece of rubber or leather with a string in the middle and more or less bell shaped underneath. A boy can pick up a flat stone with this kind of a sucker by pressing the rubber or leather part down flat on the stone and then pulling gently on it by the string. When he does this he simply expels the air which is between the leather part of the sucker and the stone, which creates a vacuum and the pressure of the air on the outside part of the leather enables him to pick it up. The fly has little suckers like these on each of his feet, and they act automatically when he puts his foot down. Of course the sticking power of each foot is adjusted to the weight of the fly, just as the sticking or lifting power of the boy’s sucker is regulated by the weight of the stone or other object he tries to pick up. If the weight of the object is sufficient to overcome the sticking power which the vacuum creates, the stone cannot be lifted.