SCIENCE SIFTINGS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 39, 5 October 1922, Page 46

SCIENCE SIFTINGS

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Finding Oil by Wireless: Apparatus that Overcomes Space. : An amazing claim has been made by two .French scientists, Dr. Henri Moineau and M. Regis. They declare that they have invented an apparatus by means of which they are able to discover oil-fields, not only in the ground beneath their feet, but also in land hundreds and even thousands of miles away. From a station at Clermont-Auvergne, in Central France, M. Regis has discovered an oil-field in the Rocky , Mountains in America, while from, the same position he has detected oil in Saxony, Hanover, Czecho-Slovakia, Italy, Sardinia, Sicily, and Corsica. The invention is an adaption of wireless telegraphy. It has been known for some time that great loss, of energy resulted when wireless waves of short length were used in sending messages, and it was agreed that the lower parts of the waves were absorbed into the ground. Hertz, the great wireless pioneer, discovered, that waves were affected by the various substances over which they passed, and Regis and Moineau set to work to note the effect that the different kinds of earth had upon electrical waves. In this way they discovered the machine which has given such remarkable results. It is stated that not only oil, but coal, water, and even gases can be located by the new apparatus, and it has been suggested that when such supplies have been discovered, X-ray photographs from the air can be taken to show the best spots for boring.' Genius Who Invented Coal-Gas Lighting. There is no more inspiring story in the annals of science and invention than that of William Murdoch, the Sctosman who, by his discovery of coal-gas lighting, won fame, but not a fortune. The son of a millwright of Old Cumnock, a village in Ayrshire, Murdoch was born more than one hundred and sixty years ago in a low-roofed thatched cottage. In his youth he showed ingenuity in mechanics, and a wooden horse of his own contrivance, on which he and his brothers rode to school at Cumnock, is claimed as the forerunner of the modern locomotive. • At the age of twenty-three the young inventor came to England and entered the service of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, of Birmingham. He changed the spelling of his name from Murdoch to Murdock, out of consideration for the Englishman’s natural inability to pronounce the guttural. - In Birmingham he made the .acquaintance of another genius, for the Watt of the firm was the famous inventor of the steam-engine. . ft It was when he found it necessary to light his way on his walk home from work that Murdoch began to experiment with the distillation of various classes of coal, with the result that he made his great discovery. After that he used to carry, at night a gas-filled bladder under, his arm. He squeezed the gas out with his elbow, and it burned at the end of a pipe attached to the bladder. It was in 1798 that Murdoch constructed apparatus for lighting the Birmingham works—a step which marked the beginning of the use of coal-gas for industrial purposes. Until after his forty-fourth year he was never paid more than £1 a week. But to a man of his temperament money mattered little. However, he earned £I,OOO. a year before he died in Birmingham at the age of eighty-five.

I cannot understand why those who have given them- 4 selves up to God and His goodness are not always cheerful, ■''££ for what possible happiness can be equal to that? No / accidents or imperfections which may happen ought to sfr have power to trouble them, ’or to hinder their looking. ;- upward.—St. Francis de Sales. •