POWER BY RADIO

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 15, 28 October 1927, Page 2

POWER BY RADIO

WONDERS IN STORE ooo PREDICTIONS BY IXPERT. Beams of radio power, criss-crossing a city like searchlight rays and carrying light and power as wires do now, were discussed as future scientific possibilities, following spectacular demonstrations of present power transmission by radio shown hv two Westinghouse engineers, Dr Harvey C. Rentschler and Dr Phillips Thomas, to the New York Electrical Society, at the Engineering Auditorium, New York City, recently.

Electric lamps, held up by Dr. Thomas in empty air, glowed brightly although not connected to power wires. In a novel radio furnace displayed by Dr Rentschler, chemical reactions possible only in a vacuum were initiated by radio waves. A dise of metallic tungsten, among the most infusible of all metals, was heated white hot in an instant by the invisible rays. That radiopower beams of a special variety might prove to be the long-imagined ‘death ray" was metitioned, not as a fantastic dream of some modern Jules Verne but asa sober scientific possibility. MARVELS OF BEAM. Radio waves like those used in broadcasting, except of shorter wave-length, can be reflected from metal mirrors to make narrow beams, like the beams

from automobile headlights. Dr. ‘Thomas, who is research engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, at East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., generated before the society waves of this type, not in beams but as short as 240 centimetres or eight feet, which is only about one-hundredth of the wave-length of the shortest waves ordinarily used in broadcasting. Dr. Thomas predicted that still shorter waves will be produced, capable of being concentrated into narrow and powerful beams. "We may visualise," he said, ‘‘a paralle] beam of radiation ten centimetres or four inches across, along which is_ being sent ten kilowatts of energy. What sort of effects shall we find? Will this be a means of delivering energy for heat and lights to individual houses?

‘Tesla had a similar idea many years ago. Later improvements in the radio art make it interesting to consider such a possibility once more We may imagine each house furnished with a halfwave oscillator in line with a parallel beam from a sending station, so that heat and light may be obtained very much as at present, by simply turning a switch, but without the costly transmission wire equipment now required. A BEADLY RAY. "Again, suppose it should happen that this four-inch beam of highly-con-centrated energy should render conducting the air through which it passes. Then ordinary electric power could be sent along the beam as though the beam were a_ transmission line. The beam could ke _ directed to any desired spot, with dire results to the target. It would constitute the so-called ‘heat ray’ employed with such deadly effect by the Martians in H. G. Wells’ well-known story of their descent upon the earth." The radio furnace demonstrated to the society by Dr. R¢ntschler, who is Director of Research of the Westing--honse Lamp Company at Bloomfield, |New Jersey, U.S.A., is designed to concentrate large amounts of radio power within a small space, rather than to send it for long distances over projected beams, Certain metals, although long known to the chemists, cannot be prepared usefully in metallic form by ordinary methods, because these metals are combustible when in fine powder, taking fire in the air like tinder whenever they are heated. By conducting the heating of these remarkable inflammable metals with radio power and in a vaenum, Dr. Rentschler has made them in metallic form and in some quantity. ‘T‘wo of these metals, thorium and uranium, belong to the group of radio active metals including radium. Now that the use of the vacuum radio furnace has made these peculiar metals available they are ¢€xpected to find uses, Dr. Rentschler said, in industry. GOLD AND SILVER INTO GAS. Another use of the radio furnace is to turn metals like gold and _ silver into gases, so that their individual atoms can be weighed. These metallic

atoms are so tiny that more than ten thousand billion billions of them are necessary to make an ounce. Some of them are capable of existing in free condition only for a_ ten-thousandth of a second or less. Nevertheless, the radio furnace permits them to be studied and weighed, with results of important value, Dr. Rentschler said, to atomic science. ‘ °