Notes About Wireless

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 282, 8 November 1924, Page 12

Notes About Wireless

Items of news, comment, suggestions etc., will be welcomed tor publication in this column.

ROMANCE OF WIRELESS. A BROADCAST ADDRESS. (By Sir Oliver Lodge.) During Liverpool week at Wembley, at the request of the Mayor of that city, Sir Oliver Lodge broadcasted an address in the couise of which he said: — The romance of wireless chiefly consisted in the fact that we were for the first time constantly using the ether of space as a vehicle for messages. We had long unconsciously used it—not when we spoke to each other, for then we only used the air—but when we smiled or winked, or nodded, or. on a larger scale, when we signalled by means of flags or semaphores, or when we flashed Morse signals by the heliograph. We were also employing the ether (though few people Knew it) in ordinary telegraphy. The wire did not really 1 convey the message, it only directed it■ to its destination. The power was j transferred, not directly by the electrons, but by their electrostatic fields— | that was, by the space intervening between them, a space which, like every other space, was full of ether, and which in a cable was limited to the annular channel between the metallic core of the cable and its outer sheath. If the voltage applied was too high, it was the insulator that was damaged, not the core; and if the insulator was punctured, the message was stopped. Discovery of Wireless Waves. When a rapidly alternating source' was used, however, true waves could be emitted into the space surrounding the wire. Portions of energy were broken off and shot forward by their own momentum, travelling with the belocity of light; not with the velocity of light in free space, but with the velocity of light; not with the velocity material—which might be about half the speed attainable in free space. The existence of these waves conveyed by wires was demonstrated, and their wave-length roughly measured, in experiments made by him at the top of Brownlow Hill, in Liverpool, in the University College, which was now the University, of Liverpool, ,in 1887-88; and the theory .of such waves was deduced from Clerk Maxwell’s work. Just about the same time, that exceptionally great physicist Heinrich Hertz—who died much too young—made the far more striking discovery that these waves could be generated and detected in free space, without any guiding wire at all. Electricity had momentum as well as elasticity; and those two requisites sufficed for the transmission of waves. Electric and magnetic effects occurred together; they, were inevitably associated. The electric part gave the elasticity, or the recoil; the magnetic part gave the inertia, or the momentum. And, combining the two, as Clerk Maxwell showed, we had all the prerequisites for the propagation of waves.

It was by this means that we saw: it was thus that we received light from the sun. in the sun the ether was set quivering by the vigorous oscillation of its electric charges. The waves travelled out in all directions into space; and a minute fraction of them was utilised to stimulate the sensitive receiving instrument located in our eyes. Thus the human race and animals had all along been utilising the properties of tho ether to convey information. The eye was our etherial receiving •instrument; it was unconscious wireless telegraphy, an unconscious utilisation of the ether. MAKING THE ETHER “TALK.” But now we had taken a further step, not in any way more remarkable, but witii more understanding of what we were doing, under conditions, therefore, which were more liable to attract our atention and stimulate our J surprise, instead of the eye as detector, we constructed artificial instr u- | ments, whereby, we had to deal with much longer waves, though otherwise l of precisely the same character as those with which the eye was com- ‘ petent to deal. We translated those i signals into auditory vibrations, that was, vibrations of plates and of the ; air, and so made them accessible to the ear instead of to the eye. And we had constructed other ingenious artificial arrangements for producing and modifying those waves, in accordjance with the vibrations of the human I larynx. The pending and receiving stations were different from those that had arisen in the course of evolution; they were artificially constructed, and, accordingly, were better understood; but in essentials tho process was the same. Waves were generated, and then modulated, in the ether; they travelled out in all directions; and some small -fraction of them was utilised to stimulate the receiver and produce what we called a sound. We had in fact made the ether “talk,” or, rather, transmit speech. Through the ether we could, as it were, speak round the world. It was certainly an amazing achievement; and all honour to those who had made it possible. Humanity, had attained a new instrument, a new weapon, a new mode of conveying thought, a new method of intercourse between the nations, almost annihilating space. Surely it would be a weapon of peace, surely it would promote better understanding. The commonwealth of nations, often called the British Empire, was peacefully disposed. They, with our cousins across the Atlantic, constituted the same race, speaking the same lan- j guage; they were now welded together i by this new method of communication. I And if they only set their face to the 1 right and determined to preserve the peace of the world, they would succeed. The ether welded the words together into a cosmic system of law and order. Let it weld all humanity together, so that they could face their common difficulties in a spirit of co-operation and mutual trust.