WONDERS OF WIRELESS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 158, 29 July 1909, Page 4

WONDERS OF WIRELESS

LIGHTS HOUSE WITH ELECTRICITY, BUT DOESX'T USE WIRES.

Omaha, Neb., May 10. Lighting Willi electricity without tlie use of "ires was successfully accomplished Dr. Frederick 11. .Millener at the En -■trieul Jixposition now 111 pro-iM-css lit the Oiuiilw Auditorium. The doctor is witli the Union i'ucilic as experimental electrician, and is working on a call wireless signal for the control 10l trains. One year ago In the Union Pacific shops in Omaha Dr. Millener constructed an electric truck to travel about the yards by wireless. This truck is started by wireless and goes four speeds ahead niiil four speeds back without any power other than the wireless. By an apparatus somewhat similar to that used with the truck the switch at the Omalm Auditorium is opened and closed. The lighting of the Auditorium is something that is beyond the power of any person 'to explain. Through the courtesy of General Glassford at Fort Omaha"the wireless apparatus there Is put in operation. Then at the Auditorium, six miles away, by an instrument construoted by Doctor Millener, the electric waves are gathered, brought into the Auditorium, where after the electric power from the lighting plant has been cut out they pass to tin I switchboard and out over the wires and through the hundreds of lumps.

The marvellous lighting of 4000 incandescent lights at Omaha by current sent through the air from a generating wireless plant live miles distant (states one journal) marks another new era in I electricity. The first telegraph line in America was opened between Washington and Baltimore on 24th May, 1844. To-day the United States has more than 200,000 miles of line, comprising more than 1,250,000 miles of wire, in the operation of which 30,000 persons are employed at an annual salary of more than £2,800,000. The first telephone line went into commission in Boston in 1877. To-day the United States is talking over 3,400,000 telephones, or one for every twenty-three inhabitants. There are 40.000 telephone operators, and the annual total wage income is £2,200,000. The -wonderful accomplishments of the last half-century may read like fiction, but the greater possibilities of the near future actually smack of Aladdin and his wonderful lamp. And yet there are men who will tell you that there are not as many opportunities for boys as there used to be.