AMPLIFYING POWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 551, 2 January 1929, Page 14

AMPLIFYING POWER

THIS SOUNDS GOOD Radio enthusiasts will take more than passing interest in the claim made by Mr. William Harrison, an elderly man of St. Helens, England, that he has invented an electrical machine that will enable a whole home or office to be lighted from a tiny battery, and six lamps to be burned at the cost of one. Cr. Thomas Wood, of St. Helens, is griving Mr. Harrison financial support. The new machine, it is said, turns low-tension accumulator power into high-tension current on a big scale. It converts static power into current. It will amplify power in absolute opposition to every theory held on the subject in the electrical world to-day. It has been doing this for six months (it is claimed) in Cr. Wood’s own office. Cr. Wood said: “We have discovered, or Mr. Harrison has discovered, something that is entirely new in the electrical world, and which operates contrary to all accepted notions in regard to the idea of amplifying electrical power. In my opinion it will be of tremendous importance to the trade of this country, for the amplification of electrical power by this new means will inevitably entail a reduction in costs. It will probably mean a new standard of life for the whole country* and do untold good. “It is an invention ;vhich is directly contrary to accepted belief with regard to electrical power amplification. As a matter of fact, when we applied for our patents, these were refused at first because the Patent Office authorities were perfectly convinced that we were attempting to do something that was utterly impossible. We then offered to demonstrate the machinery in full working order to prove our claims, and only when we offered to do this were we allowed a provisional patent. “Mr. Harrison has been working on it for 16 years. When he had discovered, as he thought, the secret of the conversion of static power into current he came and told me that he had made one of the most important discoveries of the times. He interested me, but I would not touch it until he had actually demonstrated before my eyes, and beyond any possible doubt, that the thing was all that he claimed it to be. There is not the slightest doubt that it will emerge from its trials successfully, for it has actually been operating during the last few months in this very office.” Cr. Wood then pointed to various appliances, including a long series of 200-volt lamps which all his visitors had seen burning steadily in the office during the last few months, and which had been operated either from a small low-tension battery or from an electric light switch with the interposition of Mr. Harrison's new machine. Any part of the circuit has been open to inspection all the time, but the machine, of course, which is the vital part, is concealed in a very small box.

RUSSIAN RADIO The “Electrical Review” stated in a recent issue that broadcast radio telephone stations in service in Russia, and in the course of construction at the beginning: of 1928, numbered 64. The wave-lengths used ranged from 60.12 to 1,700, ten stations using 100 metres or over, while the power used ranges from 0.02 to 40 kw. A factory in Leningrad has just completed a 25-kilowatt broadcasting station -which can also work as a telegraph station with a power of 35 kilowatts. Progress in Russia radio has shown remarkable stimulation during 1928.