Future of New Wireless Phone.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 29 May 1914, Page 2

Future of New Wireless Phone.

YOU CAN TALK TO ANYWHERE. ■ The wireless telephone has come, for they are talking daily now between Rome and Tripoli, which is 700 miles away. The investor is Dr. Riccardo Moretti, a modest man, twenty-six, a Roman by birth. Moretti, though a student of medicine, has been .studying for eight years the problem of applying the Marconi system to the telephone. He has kept his labours a secret, but he has been greatly helped by the Government, which has given him free' use of the military radiotelegraph stations in different. parts of Italy for his experiments. The general principle of the invention is to set up a succession of electric waves which follow each other with the same speed as the vibrations of the human voice, and i transfer these vibrations to a . re- j ceiyer. Dr. Moretti explains to us that "The chief feature of my invention or discovery, by whichever name you J call it., is that it will enable the human voice, and in fact every other \ sound, to be transmitted to distan- \ ces to which there is practically no ' limit. We talk now 700 miles away, but we are only in the first stages of our work. It must be noted that for ordinary interurban work and short distances my system does not supplant that of the telephone as it now exists. Therevolution worked by the electric telegraph will be small compared with that of my discovery when it has become established." Tiials of* the invention have shown that the human voice is transmitted with peculiar accuracy, retaining the natural inflections. • The speaker's idiosyncrasies of voice are easily distinguished at 700 mile,s, the maximum distance yet attempted, and < musical' notes can be tieard with precision. Within the next few years, perhaps, says Dr. Moretti, a first-night opera will be transmissible simultaneously to rtll European capitals ; the 'din of battle in one corner of Europe will resound through four* continents, and we shall converse with relatives and friends across the ocean as if they were in the adjoining room. In explaining his invention Moretti points out that wireless telegraphy has made such rapid advances, because the Hertzian waves set up for it are produced by electric discharges .which follow each other in comparatively slpw succession. To utilise.these Iw.'ives for the telephone the discharges mist be more rapid than the vibrations .of the human voice. Once this is attained it only remains to trnn.srnit the waves to the domain of sound by a microphone. So far the microphone used in connection with the Bell telephone is the only one which has proved to be of practical use for