THE TELECROSCOPE.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXV, Issue 1275, 30 December 1898, Page 7

THE TELECROSCOPE.

♦ One of the features of the forthcoming Paris Exhibition, to take place in 1900, says the Review of Reviews, will be the. new apparatus invented by Herr J. Sz z^panik, by which objects in the natural colours can be seen hundrf ds of miles away. It is reported that the authorities of the exhibition have paid 'he inventor 1/250,000 not to part with his righ-s till the exhibition is over. Szczepanik is by no means the only person whose attention has been occupii d in attempts at tho solution of this problem. Maximilian Piessner, of Berlin, has Wen engaged in making f xperiments for some years in the samo fijld, and has published an account of the results he has obtained. In America also on several occasions inventots have clai'iHd to have solved the problem. Dr E. E. Rias, of Baltimore, claims to have invented a telepVnte, which by the use of the X rays in conjunction with sensitive seletrum, will make it possible ro convey pictures \>y telegraph. In fact, since first the idea of transporting sounds to a distance became an accomplished fact by the invention of the telephone, the possibility of doing the same with pictures b"camp a problem to which inventive sr< nius in many places turned its atter.tiov, The basis of the telephone was the conversion of sound vibrations into electrical vibration", and with the discovery that a \ibrating diaphragm could set up an electric current which, produced similar vibrations in another diaphragm at the other end of the wife, the problem was solved. So the prob'rm of the. telelectropcope is the conwrs.'o.i of light vihrations into electrical variations and the reconversion of these electrical vibrations info vibrations of li£h\ Szrzepanik does this by moans of oscillating mirrors. At each end there are two mirrors. The mirrors at one end reflect the required p ; cture, which being broken up into a numbpr of points the reflected ray is converted in f n an electric current, and is capab'o of bping conveyed as great a distance as it is possible to extend the wire. It is expected that the invention will prove a valuable aid in telegraphy, a long messnge as soon as written out would at once be photographed by means of the t electroscope and be ready, if nexl h<>, for the printer. A* an adjunct to the telephone it will enable people whilst speaking together to S*r each other, and, if enlarged and ap plied to the theatre, opera, and public meetings, would enable subscribers, without leaving their comfortable homes, to enjoy any performance they cared to. A further combination would be a combination of the; phonograph, telectroscope, and kincfoscopp, thus making it possible for any remarkable dramatic performance, opera, or elocutionary effort to be produced in all its details when rrqnired. Sill another possibility suggests itself. . Tele--graphy without wires being now an acctmplished fact, there should be little difficulty about applying the same principle to the telephone and electroscopp, thus enabling us to see and talk with four frierjds at any time or place altogether independent of the telephone companies and the much o'jured switchboard operator. The fundamental piinciple of tele- ; graphy without wires being that both the transmitting and receiving machines shall be vibrating at exactly the same rate, all that will be necessary to bring t he telelectro-phonoscope, without wires, into general use will lie that it shall have an arrangement for lowering or racing the rate o£ its vibration to any dtfinite pitch ; that each person owning one of these machines shall be registered with a number corresponding to the rate of vibration intended for his use ; then any person within workable limits,

whatever they may be, putting his own instrument to the rate of vibration given for the person with whom he wishes to communicate would (hen beable to see and speak with him as if they stood face to face. Professor Crookes has lately put forward the throiy that all thinking is the setting up by the. brain centres of vil. rations at an extremely high rate of speed. Why should nnt some inventive genius, by extending the principle of the telephone, the. phonograph, the telelectroscnpe, to tho operations of our minds, enable us to make visible, audible, and to preserve a record of those fli-eting ideas, apt illustrations, and transcendent trains of thought, which pass like scurrying cloud wracks through our brains as wn gaze on some beautiful landscape, listen to someexquisitive mnlody, or after long striving for the solution of some perplexing problem, or soul. mastering emotion, with a blinding flash we see the solution spread out before us, which we have, hardly time to realise, ere it is gone. There may be other possibilities even beyond thege ; but sufficient unto the day is the invention thereof.