COMING WONDERS OF WIRELESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 294, 8 June 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

COMING WONDERS OF WIRELESS.

POSSIBLE happenings. With the study of electricity still in its infancy, and liardlv a century since the first crude experiments of Franklin (writes \\ illiam lvu.-.sell, vice-president, of the Americain Wireless Association), it is now possible— To receive and transmit wireless messages over move than 1000 miles. To talk from 'moving trains pvev wireless telephones. To direct the movements of torpeuo boats and aeroplanes by wireless. To hurl powerful discharges of artificial lightning across a space of aClft. The electricity of to-day is able to direct invisible electric forces to any point of the compass he may wish. All he needs to do now is to strengthen this invisible electric force, aiul there will be at his disposal the greatest destructive power in the universe. At present efforts of both aviators and electrical experts are turned towards the wireless transmission of telegraph and telephone messages to aeroplanes. In warfare, as aircraft are adopted, the advantage of getting immediate and accurate reports of the enemy's movements from airship scouts will be of the utmost importance.

A commander in the field, of even thousands of miles away, can give orders via wireless for quick movements of troops, or changes in position, or manoeuvres in attack or defence. There is also a possibility of constructing a gun which will concentrate and direct a strong force or beam of electric energy sufficient to intensify immediately to destroy an enemy's airship, or even a battleship at sea. This possibility is now so strong that the German Government has already put naval experts to work. Imagine a fleet of these destroyers flying over a ship in action! One points its electric gun at an enemy's ships. He presses the button, and zip, puff! nothing but silence; the once present ship is no more! It has been completely volatised and turned into gases and vapor—or into its original , element—so quickly that the imagination is stunned at the rapidity of the action. Think of the terror of a war such as this a war of silence—deathly silence! There would be no shrieking of shells and thunderous crashing of guns—nothing but silent," terrific, invisible forces, so intense, so destructive that it brings terror to the mind even to think of them. To compare these electric guns with the ordinary modern gun which we think so powerful, would be like comparing a boy's toy cap pistol with one of our best 13in guns; and even then we should fall short of the inconceivable force 6f these electric discharges. This vibrating, silent, terrific force, which, although invisible, is ever present and all around us, we know very little about, yet its terrible power we faintly see in tremendous lightning Hashes and crashes!

Imagine the enormous power of a condensed, concentrated field of electricity many times the power of that lightning flash! Then you will get an idea of the force of one of these guns. I have seen in power bouses which generate our electric current an entire section of the power leads blow out (continues Mr. Russell), melting thick porcelain walls and casings instantly. Yet these discharges, powerful as they are, are mild compared with what a perfectly controlled and concentrated electric force would do.

Great lightning holts liave torn down buildings and smashed to pieces solid masses of masonry and steel girders, and yet these lightning flashes are not nearly as intense in destructive powers as the bolts and beams of force which man will probably be able to create in the near future.

Everyone who Ims had the experience of being near a place struck by lightning can realise the terrific power'of a lightning discharge from the clouds, which travels with inconceivable speed, far surpassing the speed of our mightiest shells. If one of these guns, pointed from an airship (lying over a city, were pointed at any of its mighty buildings, it would melt the steel girders and cause the buildings to collapse. In warfare now we can at least tell the direction from which the enemy is tiring, but from an electric gun we would never hear a sound or see a Hash. There would be nothing 'out -ilence and destruction all around us, and we should be helpless to strike back, unless we knew where the enemy was.

A. city would be wiped off the map as if by a gigantic invisible hand, and in a dark night, with the enemy's airships hovering over us in the darkness, we could not have any chance of defence. An operator can sit in his wireless station six miles away from a submarine boat fitted up with the wireless control. He presses his wireless key, which sends the wireless currents up the aerial wires. These, wires radiate powerful electric energy. This electric energy travels practically instantaneously over tilt! six miles, it strikes the aerial of the submarine boat, ruiis down the wires, and operates a ''relay" which starts the engines, and the submarine starts on her journey, controlled by an invisible force.

Another tap and the submarine is submerged. The submarine keeps on going all the time until she has come within 100' ft of a target resembling a battleship which is floating on top of the water. Two quick taps of the key from the distant station and the submarine, which is still under water and unseen, starts to turn in sharp, sweeping circles, getting nearer to the supposed battleship. As the submarine gets nearer the battleship target three more taps from the wireless man's key makes her slow up speed, and as she gets alongside of the battleship one long tap is given to the key, and the invisible electric force discharges a torpedo, which rushes against the battleship and explodes, blowing the target to atoms.