WONDERS OF WIRE= LESS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1013, 31 December 1910, Page 13

WONDERS OF WIRE= LESS.

, OVER 1500 STATIONS LISTED. DISCOVERY OF NEW USES. (New York Tribune.) "Let your imagination; perform all the scientific gymnastics it may and you need havo little fear that .it will get bej'ond the latent possibilities in the transmission of electrical currents without wires," said an expert ill that field the other day. "Even wo men who are working on theso ' problems every day expect to be surprised now and then by the successful manipulation,of the wireless current in some new and startling way." ■ If the expert expects to be surprised 'now and then" the man in the street should eat ready to drop his jaw and elevato nis eyebrows ovcry few days for tho same reason; It's little more than a decade sines Marconi signalled by wireless, at;.. Flat-holm and eight years since wireless communication was accomplished between Cape Breton and Cornwall. 'Already wo have creivless battleships, cruisers, and submarines, tho lighting of incandescent lamps by tho wireless transmission of an electric current, and a crewless dirigible. A few days ago it was reported that a young college graduate, a son of John Hays Hammond, had made important discoveries in the field of telautomatics, or the: wireless control of automata, tho assertion being made that ho had_ attained ■ absolute selectivity, thus doing away with tho interference that is common to' tho ordinary wireless systems. By a special mechaiiism . tho young inventor believes lie "mi differentiate a single wave or impulse into more than • a thousand separate mechanical movements and thus control any ordinary mechanism by' wireless waves.-. Universal Supply of Electricity.' : President Ferranti of - the Institution of Electrical Engineers, lecturing .in London a few days ago, explained : a scheme for a universal supply of electricity for all purposes, at a sixteenth of tho 1 present cost, and declared that when electricity was understood more fully it would probably' bo-.manipulated so as to control , tho weather, producing or _ preventing rainfall when 'and where it was wished. He advocated the establishment of a few big centres for the retail-distribution of electrical energy, ,'all the coal being converted into electricity at those places, thus saving 90,000,000 tons of tho fuel annually and producing among the byproducts enough ammonium sulphate to fertilise all tho cultivated land in England. r Tho groat increase in the commercial use of tho wireloss telegraph is littlo realised, also. Tho publication of tho United States Government's wireless telegraph directory,- gives tho number of officially listed stations as 1520. This total includes shoro stations and ships, but does not take into consideration the warships of foreign nation's.; Tho list omits also, tho stations equipped and operated by amateurs, whose numibors rival those of professionaloperators, and against whose pernicious and unlicensed activities strict legislation has been advocated'in Congress. The American Government has installed powerful apparatus ■in shoro stations capable of • transmitting messages thousands of miles, Last month a. now long distance record for. wireless transmission was made, when William Marconi, of the Marconi Wireloss Telegraph Company, successfully received. messages direct from Glace' Ba.v Nova Scotia, and from Clifden, Ireland, at tho.high power station then'noaring' completion in tho Argentino. Republics the distance covered being about 5600 miles. '• .. * . . ■

Startling Applications. In the wireless telegraph field, which has reached a ■ more pcrfcct stage of development than any of tho other forms of wireless eleptrical. transmission, many start-ling applications, havo been made. Two Biuted States war vessels on opposite sides of CentralAmcrica.'. woro recently in communication by wireless from ocean to ocean,-although the intervening mountains wero from 2700 to 5000 feet high. Wireless telegraphy as a means ol communication between moving trains and dispatching. offices has proven satisfactory, although ThomA. Edison years ago put into operation- aii apparatus—different from that of Marconi—by which telegraph messages could bo transmitted from a moving train through tho air to the telegraph wires paralleling the tracks. Daily papers aro now published on most ,of tho big transatlantic liners throughout their, voyages, tho nows being transmitted to them by* wireless from tlio stations at South Wellfleot, Cape Cod, Clifden, Ireland, and Poldhu, on tho English. coast. Brokers at sea, unable to get rid of thogambling fever, despite the blood clarifying'salt air send in big buying or selling orders by . wireless, and make enough sometimes to pay for several ocean trips. -

Rescuing imperilled boats at sea by the aid of the wireless lias become almost a daily occurrence. The relief of the steamer Republic, which'was wrecked off Nantucket, and from which one thousand, persons were saved, set tho high water mark in tho humanitarian uses of the invention, and the- steamer Ohio, with two hundred passengers; tflo steamer-Slavonian with 410. passengers, and the steamship Antilles, with 100, are among tho vessels that havo since been saved from destruction at sea by the uses of the wireless. '' Other Uses of Wireless. ' Tho wireless telephone" is ' an' out-, growth of tho wireless telegraph that has been. successfully applied in many places between shore stations and vessels, although , its development is not yet so far ahead as that of tho telegraph. The transmission of electrical energy without wires and its application thereafter to i varioiis forms of machinery is being' rapidly developed by investigators in this country and in Europe. Boats and airships are propelled aiid steered,' cannon are fired, torpedoes, dispatched long distances under 'water, portraits aro transmitted or a moving scone contemporaneously reproduced and machinery ' set in motion through tho air by the wavc-pro-ducing inventions. All those things have been actually . accomplished and their practical application to .commercial and warlike uses rests only with the ability of the-inventors to perfect their apparatus. When power in quantity can be transmitted, tho aeroplane and the dirigiblo. may bo used 1 ' to transport freight and passengors with a speed and certainty that will annihilate all competition. When tho heat of the earth's interior, the rays from the sun, or tho ocean waves and tides havo been harnessed and mado to produce their energy for tho uso-of men, the engineer of tho aerial express can sit at tho switch-board in his office ..on'.the ground and drive tho air-craft 'round tho world till doomsday without'fear of interruption through lack of energy. Boforo him he will spread out a chart, and so plot the courso of tho vessel he.is guiding that he can bring it to a safo landing-placo thousands of miles away.. Or, if an accident happens to the mcchanism of the airship, so that it is forced to descend temporarily and rest on the earth, tho operator will at onco become awaro that something .of tho sort has occurred. Ho will immediately I get . into, communication , with the crew

of tho stalled ■ birdsliip •by means of tho wireless telephoife. .Ho will learn accurately what has happened-to thopropelling machinery or to tho mechanism for receiving the electrical impulse, and dispatch an aerial repair car bearing ■ the necessary : materials .and tools to tho spot within,a few minutes. iAs he directs the work 3f repairing tho vessel a complete picture, of tho scene, tho situation, of the airship on- tho ground, tho, fright of, the passengers whoso heads are thrust out of the cabin windows, the careful.work of the.guards in reassuring them..and;of the mechanicians at_ work on the engines or propellers, is revealed-to. him plainly aa tho image is thrown oil a huge white screen .that rises beforo liiin. Assistance in Freight-Carrying. The carrying, of freight by all vessels that aorivo their electric motive power by wireless from sub-stations on the .earth may be among the greatest. industries of the future. Tho Wright flyer who served a dry-goods firm the other day by carrying £200 worth, of silk m an aeroplane from. Dayton to Columbus, Ohio, put that typo of craft to such a uso for the first time .in aerial history. TVith inventions already successfully operated by wireless that permit men. not only to be carried through the air but to write, talk, hear, see, and act at _ points _ indefinitely remote from their physical persons, the notion' of Buddhist philosophers that man can project his astral self to a distance and occupy two. places, at the same time seems not so much a .fancy as a. prophecy.