The Magic of Modern Science

Radio Record, Volume IV, Issue 39, 10 April 1931, Page 7

The Magic of Modern Science

In the following article a visitor to an American research laboratory describes some of the marvels that have been accomplished in the fields of electricity and radio by present-day scientists.

e) | NCIENT alchemists and magi- >|. clans covered. their doings with such mystery that eariy science came to be known as the "black arts." Nothing could be more typical of the } change from darkness ‘to light than the invitation lettered on the office door of Dr. Willis R. Whitney, research director for the General Hlectric Company at Schenectady. "Come in, rain or shine," muy greeted the sign in bold black jevters. So I walked right in. It was the beginning of a walk into wonders more fascinating than anything ever dreamed. of the philosopher's stone. Doctor Whitney, himself a. distinguished chemist, is the leader of a group of experimenters who spend their. time trying electricity at: new tasksand the work that they have succeeded in getting out of the mysterious genii is truly magical, . Stepping into an adjoining laboratory, I ran into a near-wilderness of glass piping, test-tubes, : insulated wiring, and other laboratory accessories. The magic of this room was in a curiously shaped vacuum tube, Wires from it connected two plates which . Stood upright and parallel on a neary table, separated by a distance of about a foot. One of the laboratory men picked up a large porcelain insulator "Looks dry, doesn’t it?" Yes, it seemed as dry as the wellknown bone. He placed it in the space between the plates, turned on a switch and instantly the "dry" porcelain began to steam like a hot wet towel. "With the old baking methods many hours were required to cook the porcejain dry," he explained, casually. "Now, with this intense radiationwith a frequency of 60,000,000 cycles, five-metre wavelength-the whole job could be done in less than five minutes." The Energy of Radio Waves. THIS simple demonstration of the energy packed into radio waves wa. only a start. In another room I saw.a more powerful tube of the same type. Near it rested an enormous incandescent lamp, rated at 1000 watts. There were no connecting wires or sockets, but the moment the current was turned into the radio valve, the lamp glowed with intense light-a kind of power transmission by wireless. A fly was put in a glass tube and prought near the mysterious bulb of energy. The fiy buzzed around importantly, but, almost as soon as the radiation was turned on, it fell to the bottom of the tube dead. Then a number of flies were put in a glass jar, and through an inlet by means of tubing, ‘a circulation of air, il below the freezing point, was assed through the container. The efect was that of a blizzard-gradually _the flies dropped and lay inert. When it seemed that all the insecta ‘were frozen dead in their glass Antarctica, the yacuum tube was set up within a few feet of them, and the electric power tuxned into it. Rrovenily a fy

--a began to stir, then another, and another. Within a minute there was considerable squirming, and eventually several of the insects were flying around in the freezing temperature, for through it all a thermometer within the jar showed that. the air remained at _ thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. , Seemingly, the effect of this radiation on living things is internal. ‘The laboratory men themselves found: that, while working with the tube, they began to feel feverish. A physician was called. He noted ‘that, after ‘about an hour’s continuous exposure, the temperature of the blood rose, and in some cases the fever reached 100 to 101 de--2Tees, A recent development in medical practice is the use of artificially stimulated fever to combat certain diseases. This suggested to Doctor Whitney that

— { the new radio valve might be utilised in this field. Accordingly experiments were conducted, and the results so far achieved have given scientists confidence in an ultimate complete success. ~ Another possible application is the wireless transmission of power, but in this possibility Doctor Whitney has little confidence. "The energy rapidly falls away with distance," he explained, "and about ninety-nine per cent. of the power is used in transmitting the remaining one per cent. This is too great a cost; wires are cheaper. There is, however, areal field for the use of wireless transmission in the remote control of electrical apparatus, and here may develop an important field for the industrial application of this radiation." :

-Leagued with Doctor Whitney in this many-sided exploration of electricity are Dr. W. D. Coolidge, the physicist, and Dr. Irving Langmuir, the chemist--though one can only wonder where the one’s physics leaves off and the other's chemistry begins, so intertwined now are these basic gelences, A Super-Power X-Ray Tube. IN Dr, Coolidge’s laboratory the electronic wizards were working with a vacuum tube of a different type-an X-ray tube designed to operate at the enormous pressure of 400,000 volts. Why so powerful? yo "Because we want’ deeper penetration," answered the. young scientist who was on the job here. "Our most powerful. X-ray tube in use to-day operates at 250,000 volts, and is able to penetrate three and one-half inches of steel. But we make turbine castings many inches thick, and we want an Xray which will photograph the inner structure of the steel and show up any deep-lying flaws. Our immediate goal is a 400,000-volt unit, and when that is attained we hope eventually to get a controllable X-ray tube at 900,000 volts." Hven now, the radiation from the -250,000-volt tube is so penetrating that men in adjoining rooms would be involuntarily X-rayed through the walls if the tube were operated unshielded, Some of them hung up a jawbone on the wall in front of a holder containing’ a. photographic glass plate. When they developed the plate, hours later; , they had a photograph of the- bone, » though the X-rays in reaching it had« travelled more than thirty feet and. passed through two walls. , .. ‘The projected 400,000-volt tube: was . in process of being exhausted of tis air. Three pumps were working in series-a force pump in the basement; an oil-pump in the room, and directly beside the tube a mercury-vapour pump invented by Dr. Langmuir. Before his invention, hours were required to pump a tube down to the lowest vacuum attainable. Now, with the Langmuir mer- ~ cury pump, it is easy to attain within a few minutes a much more complete vacuum than was possible under the’: old conditions. , Dr. Langmuir’s inventive genius has shown itself in many directions, but nowhere more strikingly than in. his atomic-hydrogen fiame. pee "Just look through that window there," instructed one of the laboratory assistants, "and you'll see what it can do." "Which window?’ I wondered, glancing at the smooth wall of the adjoining partition he had indicated, and which I now saw was heavy glass, black as night. "Can anything be seen through such blackness?" "You'll see all you want to ses," he retorted with a chuckle, as he put on a heavy asbestos helmet and disappeared behind the partition. And in a ‘moment I saw-about all my eyes could stand. A flame leaped out in the darkness and illuminated the hidden interior. Ti spurted from a contrivance which the helmeted man held in his right han

\The Magic of Modern Science

(Continued from page T.) and as he directed the flame .against the side ofa fireclay erucible, the clay melted and bubbled away like butter. The hardest metals ran like water under the fury of this heat. Its temperature, 6400 degrees FWahrenheit, is the hottest that man has yet been able to produce. And it is attained, not by anything burning, but by allowing the atoms of hydrogen, which have been burst from their accustomed systems by an electric are, to recombine into molecules, The atomic-hydro-gen flame is being introduced in industry for welding metals.and alloys, such s chromium, nickel, copper, aluminium silver, as well as for ordinary iron ‘€nd steel, Research in Radio Communication. RRA0P!I0 communication, which owes so much to Langmuir’s explorations within the: vacuum: tube,- con-. tinues to be a main line of research here, At the experimental broadcasting station WGY, five miles south of Schenectady, I saw the. engineers setting up the 200-kilowatt transmitter which was put to the test last March. Remembering that the most powerful broadcasting station now operating commercially uses: but 50 ‘kilowatis, you can realise what a tremendous jump. in power has-been attained by the Schdnectady wizards. _ These five-foot super-power valves, when set in their water jackets, are \ seven and one-half feet long. So rapid is the heating of the plate while operating that fifteen gallons of water per minute are needed to cool each valve. Once a valve was left outside its water jacket. Within three minutes there was a "plunk" as it collapsed inward. Hach of these giant valves costs 1600 dollars (£320), and has a life of about 1000 hours. Shott-wave transmission also is tht _object of almost continuous experimenting at WGY. Half a dozen steel towers of varying heights are spotted over the fifty-acre lot, and many types of antenna are in use.. The beam antenna developed to communicate with the Byrd expedition in the Antarctic 4g there, It is said that the wire screen used as a reflector with this antenna increased the efficiency of transmission 3 twenty times that of the unreflected ‘ave. Another beam at-WGY points to Australia. Separate from this sending station is the receiving laboratory which stands on a high hill amid the farms north of the city. On a clear icy morning I arose at daybreak and made the eight-mile ‘trip to this hilltop for the precious privilege of talking with Australia. Mr. A. B. Hitt, the Schenectady operator, introduced me over the wireless to Mr, Pp. M. Farmer, operator in Sydney. Then, over 10,000 miles of land and ocean, we exchanged reports on the weather, discussed the fact that the elock was approaching midnight in Sydney while the working day was . just beginning in Schenectady-talked airy nothings, of course-but it was a ‘ tingling experience nevertheless. Coming out of the station into the bright sunlight, I could barely see the misty peaks of the Adirondacks only a few miles to the north, but I had just the two programmes. No other set

heard a man’s voice halfway around the globe, and had got his every word and accent clearly and _ instantly. Magic! Is there anything in the Ara~pian Nights or any dream of the old alchemists to equal this actual experience in wonder and improbability ? Such miracles the wizards of the laboratory are steadily and surely making commonplaces of everyday life.-George W. Gray, in "Popular Mechanics."