WRITING THROUGH SPACE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15551, 7 March 1914, Page 5 (Supplement)

WRITING THROUGH SPACE.

MARVELS OF WIRELESS; I VpO MABELS OF WIRELESS. POTENTIALITIES FORECASTED. jfjStfKßnuß and uncanny signals, recalling ,%'tlio wri'ing on the wall at the ancient feast o' Belshazzar, were received in a I • lull on the Victoria Embankment, London, 1 J - on a recent evening. They were the crowni , I? ing surprise in a unique meeting held to i inaugurate the ne«ly formed Wireless I Society of London. .md hundred? of men, ff and w.ime . («>•*•„ who aie accustomed to spend 1 lien I'imiic listening to voices in the air i.a«l ii.-senibli-d at tin Institute of Electrical Kiviiio«*r> to :ee and hear the latest 'v i:<"l ci> of «:ielnff They were pot disappointed. for Mr, A. A. Campbell Swiiitoii. the president of the society, had i novelties in ft "ft which provided start line tffect.i.

At 840 p in., while Mr. Swinton was discussing t-'< linn alitics. a horn placed on thr lab'' ca\e >p\oral warning chirps. Tiveity 'e. pis Liter 'lie magnified imago of 3 pen wi. ii:'<tiiitloallv tracing on the vhitiT.'-d ■•>!', <>( a darkened mom the up and dvV-'i; •tre!;i , «. dots and dashes of a special iue,s'.i v . "I greeting being wireless! J' o-' :iai.r->l from tlu: Eiffel lower in Paris, .1 .! cc of 260 miles.

1/ I' m. man.l.iii Ferric prc«cn:c au

hi. I't '1111 in - nt— i! jp ( .|: u'.ii. when suddenly, without any wnrji.c. there was a splashing of ink a:.u •' contusion of meaningless tignf. l.'ic Admu.iity had temporarily taken com mam 1 r f lie situation.

V. h.v» the confusion ceased and the Eiffel To' : "ei hid tiii;<liT<i its writing on the wa.'!, Mr l .iiMpliell Snniton announced that the m-\s. ,-c. Uans,'.utcd into English, read — (oui.naiidnnt Fcrrie rends to the worthy president and t"> his esteemeo fellow n eiril: r> of the Wireless Society nt I. ndoii his heartiest greetings. ai d the assurance of his cordial good wi !. Long live England ' and long iive the "ent ciite ordiale." Meaning of Interruption. "I have, however, a grave Announcement to make," said Mr. Swinton. " The Admiralty promised me that unless grave matters required that, they should despatch a winVs message from Whitehall their operate! should remain silent during the five minutes in which the Eiffel Tower wou'd bo fending its message of greeting. Under the circumstances it can only be, assumed that either war has broken out or that Mr. Win ton Churchill has resigned."

Mr. v.-in ton was never free from interruptions. Ho had hardly commenced his address when Paris dictated in signals which could be heard in every part oi the hall a raei-sagn to her compatriots in .Morocco. Five minutes later a small jet of flame was jumping to thj beats of some distant operator. About 9.15 an organ _ pipe took up a. challenge and re-cchoe-i with astounding ta.ithfuineps the ethereal flashes from a fourth and distant station..

The organ pipe, Mr. Swinton pointed out, was intended as a comfortable modification of a motor horn. He had been able to make a motor horn respond to distant wireless signals, and he was now considering whether he should be infringing the terms of his post office license if lie made daily and nightly motor-horn announcements of Greenwich time from the Eiffel Tower to the whole of the inhabitants of tho square in which he resided. An Alarming Prospect. Speculating upon the future of wireless t*\'ephcny, Mr. Swinton said thai he ihoiild not be in the least surprised if before long they had Mr. Lloyd George " wirelessly" teaching agriculture to agriculturists at a hundred or, may be, a thousand different meeting balk in different parts of the country simultaneously. This was indeed a horrible thought. With a little imagination one could picture to oneself in the not very distant future wireless receiving stations, net up in halls resembling picture palaces, where people would bo able to go and hear viva voce 111 the prominent speakers of the day, although they might bo hundreds of miles away. One thing seemed pretty certain. If over Transatlantic telephony became a fact it would be wireless, as the difficulties cow begetting the use of cables would be avoided. Wireless transmission of power was still the vision of some , eminent 6icentist*. How efficiency was to be got it was difficult to imagine, but it had to.be remembered that the whole of the power on the earth came from the sun in the form of electro-magnetic waves. The quantity of power thus received was prodigious, amounting on a clear day. to no lew than 7000-horse power per acre, or 4,500,000- horse power per square mile of the earth's surface. ■ The remarkable feat of recording a distant wireless message by a magnified image of. the signals on a screen was performed with the aid of extremely sensitive relays, the invention of Mr. Stanley George Brown, a vice-president of the society, a Kelvin siphon-recorder, and an elaborate optical instrument known as an epidiascope.