WORLD WORKED BY WIRELESS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 144131, 28 June 1913, Page 7

WORLD WORKED BY WIRELESS.

POWER FOR INDUSTRIAL PURPOSES. A world which would he driven by the electric waves transmitted by wireless telegraphy —railways, motor cars, ships, cooking ranges, sewing machines, and all manner. of household work — that is a scientist’s vision of the future. Rut it is not so much a dream ns you would bo inclined to think. For the first step towards this magical world has been accomplished. Briefly, it is the concentration by means of reflectors of a number of tho radiations of electric power which are given out when the wireless transmitter is at work, thereby enormously increasing the power. This remarkable achievement has been accomplished by Mr. T. Thorne Baker, P.C.S., a leading British scientific expert. And the possibilities it has opened up are FAR-REACHING AND TREMENDOUS. At the present time M. Nikolai Tesla, the well-known inventor, has a huge wireless tower in the course of erection in the United States from which ho hopes to obtain sufficient power to enable’ him to drive all sorts of machin-. ery. It is a most ambitious idea, and one whose realisation also seems to be a vision of the future. It is sufficient to say now that Mr. Thorne Baker’s discovery has made the first step towards its completion possible, and that the idea is not by any means a chimera. As wireless telegraphy is now, the electric waves are given off .in a huge circle when the transmitter is working. They are sent out far and wide, and tho power when it is finally received somewhere is usually only some billionths of the original power transmitted. It is naturally of an EXTREMELY SENSITIVE CHARACTER when it is secured. A telephone receiver fixed up at the receiving station records it better than any tiling else. So delicate is it that Mr. Marconi is making a receiver in which the received current passes through a silver quartz fibre, abotu 10,000 th part of an inch thick. A number of scientific inventors have been hard at work for some time endeavouring to ‘collect and concentrate the power which is invariably dispensed when a message is sent. Galletti has succeeded in transmitting an amount of energy by wireless which is sufficient to record a longdistance message on a mechanical inker ns a cable message is at present recorded. Bellini and Tosi have succeeded admirably in directing the course'of signals, but at the expense of WIPING OUT ALL OTHER SIGNALS in all other directions but the one required. Mr. Thorne Baker has been working on his experiments for twelve months. When he began everything seemed hopeless; then success came suddenly. “The idea I thought of,” said Mr. Baker, “was to have reflectors which would turn the electric waves out of their course, so that the radiations proceeding in various directions would concentrate or focus upon the distant receiving station. “Every idea had failed miserably until the present idea was tested of employing two high-frequency ‘magnetic wails,’ one each side of the main radiating aerial.’ (In ordinary wireless station the aerial consists of long wires high above the ground which, when excited by the wireless apparatus, radiate the signals into space in all directions, so that they can be picked up by any station within range.) “Thee©- ‘magnetic walls’ —I have no better name for them —appear to TURN SOME OF THE SCATTERED RADIATIONS out of their course, with the result that when they are in use very much stronger signals an© received than can possibly be obtained without them. “If the receiving station is at such a distance that the signals are too faint to be heard, tne moment this method is employed loud and clear signals aro received, although the same amount of power is used. “The manner in which the ‘magnetic walls’ are connected with tho transmitting station is, strangely enough, tho reverso of what one would "think it ought to be theoretically. Until this point is satisfactorily elucidated, experiments will not be tried on any large scale. “As the concentration of the power sent naturally impoverishes the signals transmitted in other directions, the system provides an excellent means of directing wireless massages so that they cannot he intercepted by stations outside the zone of concentration.”