WONDERS OF WIRELESS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5077, 19 January 1927, Page 4

WONDERS OF WIRELESS.

GREAT POSSIBILITIES. PICKING UP OLD MESSAGES. What happens to a wireless message once it has been transmitted ? Does it stay in the air ? Does it wander off to some other planet ? Is it always in the ether, or does it 'fade away into nothingness ? An English shcientlst believes that no .wireless message dies, but goes on through time chasing itself round the. earth. And he believes that he will be able, years hence, to pick up messages sent out years ago. It is the opinion of a famous scientist, a man whose work iii connection with wireless has gained him worldrenown, that wireless waves are always in the ether, and that with proper instruments —so delicate that a fly might throw them out of .action—-it will be possible to pick up fragments of messages that are a week, a month, even years old.

Are we on the verge Of another discovery ? (asks a correspondent in the Sydney Sunday Times). Will wave lengths prove# obsolete, so that individual stations operating on the same wave will no longer be interfering with each other ?

It is a story full of possibility—one that may add another chapter to the glowing record of wireless history and romance.

Working an a small island in the River Trent, nejar Nottingham, is an engineer. He is modest, and makes no extravagant claims for the. invention that is absorbing his attention, possibly because the company that employs him stipulates in ite contract that he must not speak publicly upon any of his inventions or discoveries.

It is sufficient to say that the apparatus he has erected out of the proceeds of savings from his moderate salary is attracting the interest of two of the world’s greatest scientists, and it is likely that ’funds will be, made available so that he can perfect his delicate instrument. The commercial value of the invention, when it has been perfected, will be summed up tersely and practically into “a receiver that, is more delicate than anything known hitherto,” but, to the romanticist, it will open a world that even Jules Verne never 'foresaw. It might even mean that history in the 'future will be learned by wireless —that secret war history will be made available for the first time. WHAT IS THIS INVENTION? It can best be explained by a description of the circumstances that have led up to it. It is a popular scientific theory, with considerable practical evidence to support it, though insufficient to prove it, that the earth is surrounded by a met Hie belt,, at a distance variously estimated at from 5 to 100 miles above the surface of the earth. If this belt exists (and some day aircraft may be invented to allow of personal investigation I), it would naturally be. a conductor of eltctricity, thus making it impossible 'for any electric waves to get beyond it. T.he acceptance of this 'fact, of course, means that the. the°iy Of communication with some other planet is ruled out, and those who belie,ve in messages to Mars will naturally not accept the theories of the Nottingham engineer and many eminent scientists. Our young inventor, therefore., working upon this theory, came to the conclusion that any message once transmitted always remained within the area formed by the earth and the metallic belt, constantly circulating round the world. It was, he maintained, only a matter of constructing a sufficiently delicate set and these signals could be picked up days,

months, and even years after they had been transmitted. News has now reached the Sunday Times from a private, but thoroughly reliable source, that this experimenter has been successful in picking up a portion of a broadcast programme that had been transmitted a month before reception. ROMANTIC VALUE. Naturally, this achievement only consisted of a few odd soundsi —sufficient, it is claimed, to identify the programme —and a lot of atmospherics, and that is where the principal difficulty lies at present. The more sensitive tjie receiver the greater the atmospherical interference. Mr T. E. Fiske, the managing-direc-tor of Amalgamated Wireless, Lt,d., considers the report to be one of exceptional interest, though he advises people to accept it with reserve. It, is an age of discovery, he points out, and scientific men—wireless experts particularly—have, learned not to treat seemingly impossible discoveries lightly. Mr Fiske admits that, theoretically, the engineer’s claim is possible, but says that if the latter has achieved anything he must have overcome a large number of incidental difficulties, such as wave length interference. He said it was logical to presume that, if the experimenter had, for example, picked up Nottingham broadcasting station a month after transmission, he would be liable to interference 'from any station which had worked on that wave length during the month, irrespective of whether it operated in England, Canada, Australia, or anywhere else in the world. If that problem had been overcome it was a discovery of exceptional importance.

The commercial value of the main discovery would be that the more delicate receivers would enable messages to be sent more economically, as less power would be required for transmission.

Mr Fiske also- says that the value of picking up “old messages” will be, one of romantic value only.

Still, one could feel a great, thrill upon picking u pa secret wireless message despatched by Germany at the beginning of the war. NOTHING IMPOSSIBLE. Mr C. T. Macurcan the well-known wireless expert, was very careful to emphasise that in this age of wonders it would be futile, to talk of impossibilities, but said he regarded the present experiment as highly' improbable, and believed that the experimenter had been honestly misled. He pointed out that a wireless signal travells at the rate, of 186,000 miles a second, and the power dwindled rapidly. A message that could be picked up a month after transmission would have, travelled, roughly, 23,000,000 times round the world. He, therefore concluded that if the discovery had been made, the inventor had eliminated static, which, of course, is the dream of every scientist.

Otherwise, he imagined the instrument, would be. so sensitive—23 million times more sensitive than anything at present known —t,hat it would be able, to record in England the\sound of a. man brushing his hair in Australia, an operation that, creates a static electric charge.

Again, unless static had been successfully abolished, the instrument would be so sensitive, that a fly passing it would create sufficient static charge with its wings to throw the whole instrument out of gear. “The abolition of static interference would be one of the greatest, scientific discoveries imaginable,” concluded Mr Macurcan , “and I must again emphasise that nothing is impossible. However, in the light of electrical knowledge to-day, I would say that I

think th© discovery improbable.” Signor Marconi has, nevertheless, frequently expressed belief that we should soon be able to eliminate atmospherics, and if this can be done the static electric charge may also be overcome ; in fact, it, may already have been overcome.

The inventor told the Sunday Times correspondent that it will probably take five years to perfect his instrument, at the present rate of progress. In the meantime readers can contemplate upon its possibilities.