An Interview with Signor Marconi.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIII, Issue 7323, 26 September 1898, Page 4

An Interview with Signor Marconi.

Signor Marconi's Improvements in his wireless telegraphy system, and the steps which have been taken to work it on commercial lines, are regarded with enormous interest The city man as he enjoys his holiday stroll on Bournemouth Pier, and watches the afternoon sunshine reflected from the chalk cliffs behind the Needles, little dreams that over bis 'head, and maybe actually through him, are passing to and fro, between Bournemouth and Alum Bay, 14 miles away, electrical waved, gome long others short, spelling sentences in the Morse code, at the rate of a dozen words a minute. But that so it is ; and Signor Marconi was good enough to welcome me at one of his tests. The Signor and his assobiates were testing a number of sensitive tubes,' the tubes that are sometimes called coherers, and that intercept and receive any electric waves set in motion at the other station 14 miles away. In order to do this messages were being sent backwards and forwards. The one just come in and recorded in short and long dashes of an ordinary Morse instrument, worked., by a 12-cell battery, was an Inquiry as to whether the Bournemouth staff could see a Spanish "cruiser in the offing. Observing that It was then very misty, and that vessels conld hardly be distinguished more thaha mile or two away, I suggested the reply thatit was too foggy. Signor Marconi disconnected' ths sir wire

from the receiver and attached it to the sender. A lOfn ~ coil and a Morse key form the sender, and as the Signor pressed the key for short or long : period9, electric placed abont an inch apart. These set up the Waves that were to be tapped by the finder at Alum Bay. The rapidity; of the signalling surprised me, but Signor Marconi observed that it was very slow, but that he was not trying yet for opeecL " How fast, then, do the waves travel. asked the Dally Mail representative. "As fast as light," was-the reply, and the inventor named the precise number of thousands of miles per second. The moment the message had been sent the conductor was removed to the finder, and there was a pause of perhaps minute. Then the Morse receiver began to tick and,the tape to unwind, bearing a reply in Italian which the Signor translated. Some one in the island regretted that he could not stay to call and see the Signor. In fact, message, after message was reeled off, and though Signor Marconi explained that it was hot a fair test for the Dally Mail, and suggested a day on a tug boat and a visit to Alum Bay and Swanage, at which latter place, 18 miles from the island, a third station is being erected, I was completely satisfied. " Passed the experiment stage, I said. " That's clear." " Oh, yes," said Marconi, in his quiet voice and excellent English. " Long ago. We are preparing apparatus now for foreign Governments." " What distance do you consider the waves will extend ? ' " I don'ts know," said Marconi, shaking •his head. "But we propose trying' across to Cherbourg, 60 miles over the Channel." " How does the weather affect the system ?" ' Not at all. In fact, the foggy and stormy weather gives us the best results, if anything." "Your signalling is not confined to land ?" " Oh, no. We have had good results between a ship and the shore, in bad weather too." ~ "Ah ! That might be extremely useful?" "Yes. We don't know yet by any means the full value of the wireless telegraphy." ""Sour electric waves, of course, travel in directions from the wire as a centre. Have you succeeded in getting them to go only In the direction you wish ? Otherwise any one with a receiver apparatus could take your messages." "Just so ; bub I have overcome that. That is satisfactorily arranged for." "Yes," said one of the assistants. " We can send the waves like a beam of light, so that unless you happened to be in the line of the beam you couldn't take the message." What struck me most was the simplicity of the whole thing. The apparatus in the room was in a very small compass, and outside there was nothing but the vibrating wire tp set up its own .waves and catch those set up elsewhere.