THE EARS OF A STEAMER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 52, 1 July 1915, Page 6

THE EARS OF A STEAMER.

Professor Fessenden lias invented an electric oscillator, of which he has sold the rights to a certain European country, which lias decided to fit it to several'"'of its battleships a s a protection against attack by submarine. The Fessenden oscillator is a submarinesouhdin'jv' apparatus, which sends its signals through the water and. not through the air, the result of which is that these signals travel much quicker, as sound travels through the water at the rate of 4400 feet per second. His system of submarine signalling is really a kind of water-wireless. The Professor anticipates that in time messages will be able to be sent several hundred miles under water without any wires' or'cableS of any description. A warship equipped with this oscillator could speak to its own submarines even though the'submarines are submerged alt the time. The oscillator make's it possible for a ship's officer to hear the propellor movements of an enemy's submarine while it is miles away.. At present the submarine propellor, i movements, can be heard two miles away. In time this distance will be increased. The Professor is of opinion that the Cressy, Hogue, and Aboukir would have escaped the submarines if they had tarried the''oscillators. As soon as they detected the submarines, which would have been before the torpedoes were launched, they would have changed "their courses and gone ahead at.full speed. That would have baffled the Germans; as' submarines are slow-going .craft and only,dan r gerous'when their presence is not suspected. It is even possible that the British cruisers, knowing by dial indication the exact distance and also the direction of the submerged German vessels, could have destroyed them by launching submarines of their own.