TREES AS "WIRELESS" CONDUCTORS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 72, 18 December 1920, Page 11

TREES AS "WIRELESS" CONDUCTORS

That trees may be'utilised for purposes of wir&less telegraphy first suggested itself to Major-General Squier when difficulties were met with in tho telcplione_ and telegraph installations in connection ■ with army manoeuvres in California'in the dry season of 1901. This opinion ho found opportunity to put to test during'the war, when the United States, as a precaution against submarine cablo inteiruptioria, was organising receiving stations to pick up and receive radio messages from. European stations; In the eourso_of tho establishment of a chain of stations across tho United States,'it was found possible to Tcceivo signals from European stations by laying a small wire netting on-.tho ground beneath a tree and connectinglan insulated wire with a nail driven into the tree well within the range of the tree top. It was further found that a "tree antenna" of this kind acted as a "multiple recciviiifpsct," find also that tclcphoinc transmission through tho tree antenna was capablo of being received by another tree antenna. The author concludes from .his researches that from tho minute an acorn is planted it. becomes a "detector" and a of "electromagnetic waves." Thus trees appear in a new' light—to tho i physicist they are, and have- been froni their 'beginning, pieces of elcctrical apparatus capable of receiving, conducting, and out tlio long electro-magnetic waves used in radiotelegraphy. Science truly recreates tho romance which it destroyed. The legend of tho talking oak may be no longer believed,- but we now know that though dumb, the treo is a wonderful listener to the secrets which radio-telegraphy whispers through space. '