A REVOLUTION IN TELEPHONY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2985, 31 May 1911, Page 85

A REVOLUTION IN TELEPHONY.

THE REMOVAL OF THE OLD-TIME LIMIT OF ONE MESSAGE ONE WIRE. We now talk from one telephone to another through the ■ medium of an unbroken' wire that connects the sending instruments with the receiver. If we use a “party line,” the other parties must wait until we are done. II it be a longdistance line, it may be necessary for us to wait if the line is “busy.” One message at a time over on© wire is the limit But that limitation is now to be removed by a discovery of Major George 0. Squier, assistant to the chief signal officer’ of the United States army. For a number of months the War Department has bad a wire working between its laboratory on Pennsylvania avenue in W ashington and the Bureau of Standards seven miles away, taking several messages _ srmmtaneously and over the same wire, in both directions. Moreover, this does not m the least interfere with the use of the wire: for sending telegrams while the con vernation is passing over it. “We did nob invent anything here in the department,” says the modest man' who has worked out the system. W© simply adapted instruments that can be bought anywhere in the open markets. The whole thing is so simple that it is a wonder that nobody did it before ; but, when we investigated at the Patent Office, we found that no such attempt had been made. That is why they gave us such a broad patent.” . Here, in non-technioal language, is the explanation of the system'. An ordinary wireless message (whether telegraph or telephone) flashes into the air and produces “waves of ether,” just as a stone thrown into a pond causes a series o| ripples or waves. These waves of ether travel in ever-widening - circles, and arc eventually caught by the wires that are suspended above a receiving statc.on, and thence conducted downward to the receiving instrument, where they are heard as the clicking of the telegraph or the sound of the telephone. The new system patented by Major Squier is, in a- certain sense, a misnomer for it is a wireless system with a ware. The wire serves the purpose of conducting the “waves of ether’ ’ (that is, the convernation) in a straight line instead of in ever-widening circles. The voice does nov travel through the wire itself, but through “a skin of ether” that envelops the wire ; it gives them direction instead of containing them like a water pipe contains water —and so it is that a number may pass along the wire at the same time, on the same or opposite direction®. All that is necessary, apparently, is that an ordinary wireless "telephone instrument be connected with the transmission wire, with a “ground return.” It is not yet known just how many messages may be earned at one time. This discovery means that a large number of long-distance conversations can be carried on over long circuits without stringing additional wires. Every telegraph line in the country can be made into a long-distance telephone system by the simple process of hitching wireless telephone instruments to its wires. Indeed, there is every prospect that within a short time people will talk from London to Chicago over a wire. We may even send a whisper direct from London to Peking, or actually, transmit a spoken message round the world! A most remarkable fact about this new invention is that Major Squier has thrown his patent open to the public. Haying spent a year of the Government’s time, and £SOO of public money, in research that led to the discovery, he decided that he had no personal right to the invention. “I did not want to be mixed'up in any question of having profited by Government time and money,” be said. “The Government pays me a salary. If we are doing .anything’up here that is of benefit to the public, the public is welcome to it.” This is singular language to come from any Government office, and bears witness to a new spirit in public life upon which Washington is to be congratulated.