RADIO BEAMS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 30 August 1927, Page 3

RADIO BEAMS

CARRY POWER MIGHT BE “DEATH BAY.” —Beams of radio power, criss-crossing a city like searchlight rays and carrying light and power as wires do now. were discussed as future spectacular demonstrations of present power transmission by radio shown hy Dr. Harvey C. Rentschler and Dr. Phillips Thomas to the New York Electrical Society a few days ago. 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 disk of metallic tungsten, among the most infusible of all metals, was heated white hot in an instant by the invisible rays. That radio-power beams of a special variety might prove to be the long-imagined “death-ray” was mentioned, not as a fantastic dream of some modern Jules Verne but as a sober scientific possibility. HEAT FOR HOURS. Radio waves like those used in broadcasting, except of shorter wavelength, can be deflected from metal mirrors to make narrow beams, like the beams from automobile headlights. Dr. Thomas generated before the society, waves of this type, not in beams but as short as 240 centimeters 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 parallel beam of radiation ten centimeters 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 light 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 half-wave 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'.gain, suppose it should happen that this four-inch beam of highlyconcentrated 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 be directed to any desired spot, with dire results to the target. It would constitute the so-called “heatray” employed with such deadly effect by the Martians in H. G. Wells’ wellknown story of their descent upon the earth. RADIO FURNACE. The radio furnace demonstrated to the society, by Dr. Rentschler 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, can not 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 remarkably inflammable metals with radio power and in a vacuum, Dr. Rentschler has made them in metallic form and in some quantity. Two 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 hade these peculiar metals available, they are expecteed to find uses, Dr. Rentschler said, in industry. Another use of the radio furnace is