The Daily News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20. THE WONDERS OP WIRELESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 168, 25 October 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20. THE WONDERS OP WIRELESS.

Already the world speaks familiarly of "wireless," which has helped to revolutionise the despatching of messages. Airships at high altitudes have been able to keep in constant touch with the earth, there is no doubt that marine accidents have been avoided by its use, and criminals have been caught by its aid. This wonderful development in the transmission of messages has taken place in the past fifteen years. Scientists explain that the wonder of radio-tele-graphy is in its perfect simplicity. The great Lord Kelvin decribed the wireless received aa an "electric eye," because the human eye is sensitive to vibrations of light emanating from the sun. Man learns to apply Nature's natural law a to the uses of commerce. Marconis system of telegraphy consists in setting in motion, by means of a transmitter, certain electric waves, which, passing through the ether, are received on a distant wire suspended from a mast, and registered on the receiving apparatus. Throw a stone into a quiet pond, and watch the waves which are instantly

formed and spread out in every direction: the water does not move, except up and down, yet the wave passes onward indefinitely. Before Marconi stepped into the arena electricians knew how to incite I electric waves, and had been experimenting in trying to control them. Few people seem to be heard of in connection with radio-telegraphy besides Marconi, and it seems possible that in attributing the invention of the coherer to him his celebrity assumed: larger proportions than that of other electrical scientists. The' coherer is a small glass tube, about two inches long and as thick as a lead pencil. It is plugged at each end with silver, and filled with finely powdered fragments of nickel and silver. The waves from the transmitter, when received by the coherer, draw the particles of nickel and silver together; they immediately become a good conductor of electricity, and a current from a battery near at hand operates the Morse instrument, and prints out the message from the transmitter in dot and dash. The mcchahism, however, has in turn been improved, the instrument now used being known as the magnetic detector. This apparatus is composed of a small box containing a simple clockwork apparatus, operated on two small ebonite pulleys. The message, when received at the mast, passes to this apparatus,;, and' thence to an ordinary telephonic receiver ove£ the operator's Kgad. What the operator !bears-is really a reproduction of the sparking of the

transmitter at the other end, and from tliis series of dashes'he reads his message. Marconi did not, as a matter of j fact, invent the coherer at all. At any rate, it was one of many wave detectors that had been discovered, Professor Eranley, who completed the coherer in 1t593, admitted that it was not the absolutely essential detector. The magnetic detector also attributed to .Marconi was the work of Professors Rutherford and Wilson, who applied it five years previously to its use by Marconi. A writer who credits Marconi with the production of everything of essential importance in [wireless telegraphy, says that without secrecy no system of wireless telegraphy could ever attain any degree of importance, or even hold its own against the older cable communication. To do this Marconi adopted, for long-distance work, a system of tuning—that is to say, he so constructed a receiver that it would only respond to a transmitter radiating the same number of vibrations per second. The importance of this system can scarcely be be over-estimated. All the ships of a fleet can be provided with instruments tuned alike, so that they may communicate freely with one another without fear of the enemy reading their messages—an impossible feat unless the secret of the ,tunes were known. This is the great secret of the Marconi labyrinth, the -marvellous working of which has so astonished the general public. Marconi certainly invented a tuning apparatus, but for nearly a decade before its invention the principles of tuning were definitely understood. Sir Oliver Lodge applied the system to wireless telegraphy three years before the arrival of the Marconi invention. It is obviously incorrect and misleading to apply the word "Marconi" to every phase of the wireless system of telegraphy. Mr. T. Vincent Smith, the director of the British

Radio-Telegraph and Telephone Company, upsets all preconceived notions as to the secrecy of specific radio-telegraphic services. He has pointed out that every wireless station must be licensed, and is | allowed certain power, and must emit a wave of certain definite length, which may not varv more than 10 per cent. But the receiving instruments are capable of being constantly tuned to receive any wave in commercial use. According to the International Berlin Convention (to which every civilised Power is signatory) every system must intercommunicate; therefore, as all receivers are able to alter their tune at will, it follows that there not onlv cannot, but may not, be secrecy in wireless telegraphy. The essence of tunin,? in modern apparatus is that we can all work instantaneously without interference w.ith one another, hut the operator has only to swing round his tuner and he will synchronise his received in turn with all the stations which may be working at that time. I ===^==^===