THE ROMANCE OF INVENTION

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXL, Issue 6164, 9 January 1904, Page 6

THE ROMANCE OF INVENTION

(Weekly Scotsman.) One of the mosft- Ist-mcing fentures of modern life is the extent of tne part played in it by that mysterious force, electricity, so übiquitous, and so undefinable. Yet the use of this world-power sprang from a tiny seedling. Like many other fundamental facts, it was discovered by the Greeks, who saw that amibsr when rubbed would attract lighter bodies to it. This knowledge survived the middle ages, when chimeras such as magic and alchemy absorbed the attention of student and empiricist alike. Dr Gilbert, one of Queen Elizabeth's physicians, was the first to increase the meagre acquaintance of his contemporaries with frictional electricity and magnetism. Franklin- proved the existence of atmospheric electricity by his famous experiments with the kite. Then in the last year of the eighteenth century Professor Vplta demonstrated that what his rival, Dr Galvani, took for animal electricity was in reality induced by chemical action. By means of a strong current from a Voltaic battery, Humphrey Davy first produced! the electric light in 1812. Faraday, in 1857, perfected the first dynamo, an event which revolutionised electric lighting and made it a practical and commercial success. Oeirsted , , the Danish philosopher, four years after Waterloo, found that the Voltaic current would deflect -a magnetic needle; and there we have the germ of the electric telegraph. A really practical instrument was not invented until 'Moree produced his in 1Q37; and even then his invention was not publicly adopted until 1844. In the following year a murderer was arrested owing to the promptitude of the telegraph, and the world began to waken up to the fact that a new messenger was at their call to transmit their despatches with the celerity of lightning., . , . : ; The laying of tsie. first Transatlantic cable in 1558. extended the scope of the telegraph Immensely, its: usefulness is still growing. • Nowadays the telegraph clerk has

been superseded because the messages traveS faster than he can niaJce the signals, 'and the wires would beomly partially employed. So mechanical and automatic contrivances have been introduced whereby in the duplex and multiplex systems no fewer than sixteen messages can be worked simultaneously, which means a capacity of fromSOO to 800 wordu per minute. But even this high rate of transmission has been exceeded by the ingenious methods of Messrs Pollack and Virag, two ■ Hungarian electricians. On their system th© , message is despatched by means of a pinched (Wheatstone) taps, and is registered by means of a synchronously vibrated light which marks sensitised paper. When tested, the hitherto unheard-of velocity of 155,000 words per hour, or 2580 per minute, was attained. The, telegraph was considered marvellous enough in its time, but wiiat can be said of transmitting messages through apace. A very few years ago it would have been , considered to partake of the- supernatural— to be something akin to the occult.. Even when that enterprising young Italian,. Signor Marconi, came to England in 1896,. wireless electric signalling was considered merely a scientific fad. Morse had signalled across the Susquehanna in 1842, but that was by induction. It required the discovery of Professor Hertz in 1887, that a strong electric discharge causes.far-miching ■waves in the subtle ether, to prepare the way for 'experiments in wireless telegraphy. After much patient endeavor, and encouraged by increasing success, Marconi in December, 1901, arranged to have a series of signals flashed from Poldhu in 'Cornwall,. and 'had the satisfaction of tearing corresponding "ticks" in the telephone at hisstation in Newfoundland at the other side of t-hei Atlantic. This brings us to the telephone proper. To the inventive genius of Prof. Graham Bell, a Scottish-American, belongs the honor [ of producing the first telephone in 1876. The marvelteue* extent to which its use lias spread will perhaps be beet indicated by the fact that in 1901 telephonic messages to the number of 8Q? millions were transmitted in th,e United Kingdom alone. A sign of the times was the organisation in 1893 , at Buda-Pesth. of a telephonic ''newspaper"—that is, a system of ringing up subscribers with th& news of the hour. Still another development is the electrophone, by mears of which one can enjoy a ' concert or the play, a sermon, or a political speech without leaving one's own _ house. Experiments are being made in the direction of wireless telephony. Earth connections have been tried,, but without success; and the employment of rays of light in Prof. Bell's photophone limits its sphere of utility. From th& transmitter one naturally turns to the recorder of sound, the phonograph. Although the latter, is not electrical, the two instruments are intimately connected, being the simultaneous- outcome of the parallel acoustic researches of the rival Yankee "wizards," Edison and Graham Bell. The phonograph or graphophoiie is xiow in much demand as an automatic entertainer, and is used to a certain extent for -business purposes. The telephonograph ie a combination, of the telephone and the recording phonograph, the latter taking the messages and obviating personal attention.. Soon after the dynamo was invented it was found that if an electric current "was passed through it, it was converted into an electric engine. This led to the design of special electric motors for various 'purposes, such as fans, light machinery of all sorts, and latterly, tram-cans and trains. Electric car systems especially have multiplied amazingly and are to be found in all the principal towns m the world. Not satisfied with the economical transmission of power,, electrical engineers set themselves to cut down- the cost of generation. Natural forces, such as •waterfalls J have been used, and even .gigantic Niagara has been bent to the yoke. ißy means of canals and a vertical tunnel or penstock, 160 feet deep, a turbine is actuated .by ths column, of'water 7£ feet thick, generating 5000 horse-power. Twenty or more of these, turbines are ceaseless'y driving electric generators, from which the. current is led to far-awray Buffalo. The potentialities of electricity appear to be almost illimitable. The discovery or applied inventiveness of Professor Rontgen is second only in importance from a surgical and humanitarian point of view to the discovery of anaesthetics. The "X" rays they are called—the very name signifies the, weird mystery attached to 'them. Suppose "we were to visit a demonstration, or seance of these electrical emanations, we should enter a darkened room and see a Crookes vacuum tube—a glass bulb, traversed by an electric current, which permeates it with a rarely soft ajjaline glow._ You stand between the tube and & sensitive fluorescent screen, and I, you see on the latter the outline of your own body, the shadowy palpitating'shapes of heart and lungs and the bolder darker framework of the skeleton. Substitute a photographic plate for the screen, and a permanent record can be made. Its invaluable uses in detecting foreign, matter in the body are well known.Since Haas Lippersheim, of Holland, in 1603, made the first practical telescope, much Inas -been done by such men as Sir David Brewster to perfect that eminently useful instrument. Finality has surely been reached in the mammoth telescope-which has !be-en> such a, centra of attraction aft the Paris Exhibition. The great tube h 180 feet long, 59 inches in diameter, and weighs 21 tons. Being far too unwieldly to revolve in the •usual equatorial dome, the telescope was fixed horizontally. The heavenly bodies were brought into the field of vision by means of a mirror 6£ feet in diameter, and weighing nearly four tons. The astronomical image's were projected from the eye-piece on- to a screen, where the wondering spectators could inspect the lunar solitude .with as much facility as if the moon were only thirty-five miles away. The spectroscope, which, by rendering possible the comparative analysis of light" enabled scientists to ascertain the elements present in the different members of the solar system, was an epoch-marking invention. Y&tasan optical ins trumenFthe present perfection of animated pictures appeals more directly to the popular imagination. _ It is now possible to behold a living moving record of any notable function or stirring event on land or sea. The. views taken of public events of national importance, such as a Coronation procession, are historically invaluable. The latest application- of the living picture is to show forth the marvels of the microscope, the squirming eel-like or* ganism in a drop of -water, and so on. The conquest of the air is without doubt the most difficult and still'the most fascinating problem that confronts modern inventore. There seem at present to be onlytwo ways of solving it. The method adopted by Sa-ntos-Dumont and Count Zeppelin is to use the lifting power of a balloon, which:, of course, mors or less at the mercy of a strong wind. Sir Hiram Maxim and Professor Langley, of Washington, on the other hand, have been experimenting with aeroplanes or huge kite-like structures propelled: by light; and powerful'motora. The contrivance' designed by Count Zeppelin, -which included a cigar-shaped balloon, and cost over £20,000, was- tried over Lake Constance in the year 1900. The net result "was to attain a speed of six mike an hour against the wind. On October 19th, in the same year, M. Santos-Dunion t succeeded in navigating a somewhat similar airship round the Eiffel Tower, Paris, thus securing the Deutsch award. Messrs Maxim and Langley have to contrive not only to propel their aerodromes, but to lift them, a problem they have not yet successfully solved. Dr F. A. Barton, in designing a steerable balloon for the War Office, proposes to combine both systems. Space does not permit us to dwell on .such intensely interesting inventions as the apparatus for liquefying air at a temperature of 312 degrees below zero; or the perfection of warlike appliances, both offensive and defensive. Such a brief resume of even the most striking facts of the wide world of invention is necessarily incomplete. Finally, we observe that there Is to-day an electric locomotive in Germany capable of travelling at the astounding speed of 130 miles per hour. To-morrow we may be able to perform our long journeys by motor cars, sending our luggage by the ordinary or mono-railway, or we may be able, as the inventor of the turbine forecasts, to the Atlantic in three and a half days. We may taketo submarines ac a means of avoiding sea-sickness or to. aeromobilee —as the most modern of word-comers call them—to ' avoid the congestion of city traffic. j All this and much more may happen, but to set- our doubts at rest, what is needed is

that desirable but most impossible of instruinvention to enable us to take a glimpse into futurity. Yet the possibilities of invention would appear to 'be almost infinite i in fact, they are really bounded by the uui-niate dtstinies of the. human race.