WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY AT SEA.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 3625, 23 August 1901, Page 4

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY AT SEA.

The development of wireless telegraphy is evidently making rapid strides. Only vesterdav a cab:e message announced that the Cunard liner Lucania had.telegraphed without wires to New. York through the Nantucket lightship, a total distance of 287 miles. The Lucania, it may be ncted, is the first Atlantic liner belonging to Great Britain sailing between Liverpool and New York to be equipped with the Marconi appliances. At her masthead, 115 feet high, a small spar two or three yards long projects, and from it there hangs a wire leading to a small house of wood on deck —a mere hut. Inside this deck-hcuse are concealed batteries, where electricity generated on the ship is stored. A; current of low force or pressure passes from the accumulators through a coil, and its intensity is enormouslv increased. The coil is capable of giving a 10-inch spark. Prom its terminal knobs a succession of sparks issue in a stream, which appears to be continuous, but they are really passing with intervals immeasurably small. Here is one of the vital parts "of the process. By means of the intensity coil ordinary..vibrations of the current are transformed into electric waves. The sparks can leap inches; the waves can leap miles. Situated on shore, miles away, is. the receiver, an instrument of such delicacy that electric waves incapable of moving a hair arouse its susceptibility. The electric pulsations from the ship's masthead set up a current in the silver and nickel fittings in the receiver, and with the help of a relay, print Morse signals conveying the ship's message. The condition of the weather has nothing to do with it.. Whether the message grides over summer seas, or ploughs her way through a raging tempest, matters not a jot;, the fiercest storm cannot break the continuity of the electric waves.. The Marconi Company have given practical proof ,of their faith in the new sea telegraphy by offering to instal ft in any first-class steamer on the great ocean routes at their own charge, relying upon future proceeds for their reward. They claim, and the experiments have already indicated, that by the use of wireless telegraphy between ships and lighthouses the safety of travelling must be enormously increased. Moreover, the fact that the Government of Great Britain, Germany, and France have adoptel the Marconi system shows that its utility is meeting with wide recognition. To the imaginative mind it suggests great -possibilities. • "If ever mankind telegraphs to Mars," remarks the "Daily Telegraph," "it will be with-those millionmile waves; but that' is a problem that we can leave to the next century, or the next millenium."