ELECTRICAL ENERGY

New Zealand Mail, 22 January 1902, Page 4

ELECTRICAL ENERGY

ITS WIRELESS TRANSMISSION. A correspondent of the “Spectator” " lltes th , e following letter, which possesses a special interest in view of the recent caine message to the effect that wireless wfth sucees b<?eu seilt aclH - s the Atlantic Having been present at the experiments conducted by Messrs Armstrong and oiling in the trasniission of electrical energy without wires, 1 shall attempt with your leave, to present a few reilections on them. The results of the experiments you already know, and I shall not oflor you an unnecessary catalogue of them; you know that whereas the Mar-

coni system works through the air, the “ Armori” system, as it is called, sends its radiations most frequently through the ground or through water; and you know that these radiations have conveyed the exact inunctions of the human voice, and have proved to be powerful enough to direct the course of a torpedo. As 1 understand it, the "Armori” system professes to have two advantages over ffie Marconi system; the first is that it is better tor land use, and the second is that in the conveyance of messages it provides for a secrecy as yet not secured in practice by Marconi messages, open as thpj ai e to all the world and his receiver. In the recent naval manoeuvres for example, any ship that had a mind to seems to have intercepted the messages ot any other ship; and it is said that in one case one ot our cruisers read all the orders from a French man-of-war within whose sphere of influence” she nad came by accident in a fog.

Now to explain these two professed advantages. The Marconi rays, which pass intact over the sea, seem to lose a great percentage of their strength when travelling over woods ana towns, but the underground “ Armori" system suffers no such interruption. You might suppose that the electrical radiations, when once they had come in contact with the earth, would disperse in all directions, and be lost for all practical purposes. Nothing of the sort appeas to happen. Indeed, Mr. Oriing believes that tnc-y arrive at their destination as strong as when they started; if they lose something they also gain something, being reinforced in some way, as yet msuinciently explained, from the natural electricity of tne earth. Bo the explanation what it may, the fact is that the “Armori" system is now achieving with low voltages results formerly attained by M. Tesla only with extremely high voltages. If Mr. Armstrong may be believed, an “ Armori" message in the freedom of its passage is to an overland Marconi message as a train in the “ Twopenny Tube” is to an omnibus working its was along Oxford Street on a crowded day. And then there is the possibility of secrecy. You know the way in which when you make a particular sound in a room, a sympathetic ring sometimes comes fi om a glass globe. Well, the equivalent of this system in the pitch or tone of sound exists among electrical radiations. There are 40,(iU0 ot these electrical pitches or tones. Mr. Oriing, excellent master of the electric circus-ring, provides that all the tones shall move in their proper places without getting into one another’s way. When two tones of the same quality meet they may have dealings with one another, and when a receiver has been tuned, as it were, to a particular tone it can receive radiations which are sympathetic with it. But radiations of unlike tone will pass by one another in their underground journeys as innocently and harmlessly as a finished woman of the world can pass an undesired acquaintance.

M hat may we look forward to from this discovery? I do not pretend that the Armstrong-Orling inventions are yet in a practical working state, i am no enthusiast about fledgling discoveries; I know their high late of mortality. But no man who heard, as I did, the articulate human voice rise through a long spike, devoid of wires, which had been thrust into the ground, can doubt that here we have the beginnings of an important change. This, then, is what we may look forward to Some day men and -women will carry a wireless telephone as commonly as to'-dav we carry a card case or a camera. We shali switch ourselves on to the underground radiations thiough the medium of our walking sticks or our boots. We shall then tune up our receiver to tone number 39,451, or whatever may be the lawfully registered wireless telephone number of him to whom eve would speak. We shall hear no distracting buzzings and wranglings, no echoes, too little taint, cf other people’s business or dinners. Tone number 35,451 will go about "his business undisturbed. But to apply the invention more seriously. For military purposes should it not be extraordinarily useful? Soon it should be no longer necessary to carry cumberous coils of wire—wire which is always at the mercy of the enemy as ;t lies on the ground—and to pay them out tediously over che stern of a cumbrous trolley. The staff officer and the scout will each drive his wireless apparatus into the ground and wait for the magic couch of the sympathetic tone. It j« not even necessary to wait for perfection in the conveyance of the human voice. The smr.se code is already transmitted with more precision and greater ease, for othe>-mvc-sl,gators beside Messrs Armstrong and Oiling have been long at work on the sendmg ot unshaped sounds through the ground. A kindred apparatus which 1 examined is for the .magnifying of tele* phonic sound. A considerable multiplication ot the volume of a sound has been achieved already; we may expect tnnt some day the mouse—for which we shall set a telephonic trap—will be able to roar like any bull A ship will proclaim he • name loudly through the fog; Calais -iml Dover in hazy weather will announce Calais'!” 5 “ packet^

II the developments in telephony aie t, most remarkable inventions, those m the wireless control of moving bodies are likely to bo more immediately useful to the nation. But it must not be thought that the control of a torpedo in this wav is a ne>v thing. In 1895 one went through as many tricks as it had then learned befoie King Oscar of Sweden. In 1899 \t lesla made torpedoes perform in a like way m America. There must be other cases which are outside mv knowledge the ’ Actmaut,” as Mr. Armstrong calls his torpedo is an instrument of promise. U may be that in wireless torpedoes we , 16 solution we shall find of fhe difficulties 01 coast defence. A force of watchful and highly expert electricians a sufficient supply of torpedoes and n’-i chines for guiding them, and how many expensive fortifications might not we do without? J

One note in conclusion. You may ask whether these new; forces are sufficient only to affect delicate instruments, or \\ hetlier they may become serious motive powers. Expert electricians say that inherent limitations forbid them from Massing beyond the first stage. I take a pruffi 111 keeping my enthusiasm somewhat bG low proof; and 1 am not enthusiastic enough to contradict the experts At Hip same time, it appears that those who study natural forces are divided, nkc those who have to do with literature, into two parties. There are authors and the-e are critics. Is it not a great irony that V'° S( r Who exercise the critical faculty are fl equontly, by virtue of their excMlenfitfed m th ° very " len in the world least fitted to sympathise with the creative faculty? And this disability often continues m the case of the most advanced tW« Cts i° f i. th ,° creativ ° faculty until untn P - 10cluctR j avo been reduced to rule until, in a word, they have become “ £ Hng ta the‘ 1 ff Ml ' Armstron g and Mr Orth.e latter m particular, for his genius is of a runaway order have no mnvGY 1 They are scarcely—if i may say it 111 the polite sense I have indicated respectable. But still—who knows P