Scientific Achievements in the Past Year

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 15, 16 April 1908, Page 13

Scientific Achievements in the Past Year

* The question has been asked whether 1907 is to go down to posterity as the year of wireless telegraphy, or as tttat of the aeroplane. Certainly its advances as applied to present-day uses and conveniences ..nave been most marked in these two directions, though .there are several other things (says an America© Paper) worthy of mentioning in outlining the marvels or the year The accomplishments in wireless telegraphy, the bast understood field of invention, have been greater than the most sanguine had- anticipated. It all- culminated lowar-d Ihb close of October. On the 23rd of that month, at the Marconi sbaticn in Glace Bay, N. 8., a message was sparked over to- Clifden, Ireland, the reply coming back in a few seconds under an even five minutes. Four days later no less than 14,000 words were thus transmitted in the course of usual commercial •business. It is a fact that ' ■ r Wireless Telegraphy has been made the actual, practical, easily available servant of everyday life. Count Aico, of Berlin, electrical expert, predicts that the wireless 'phone is next .to/arrive. With pole 30 feet high he has demonstrated the' possibilities of talking through the air at distances ■b£ from two to three miles., and the newest ships of- ihe German najvy are to be equipped with his instruments. The British home fleet is hard at work along the- same 1 line, and rerort has it that American vessels on their trip ro\nd the Horn are similarly fitted out. Lyons, France, announces that electrical energy may be transported ,wtith'out wire. Naturally the secret oi this is closely guarded 1 , buti that there is. more in • it tham mere gossip is certain. Actual patents were registered in August, and -a syndicate of French capitalists formed "to finance the work, Auguste 3£illy standing at its head. "During the experiments at the Chateau dv Cret', near- Lyons, a full-sized trolley car was propelled some 200 yards along the raOs by the ' wireless ' method. Telephotography, by which accurate like-

""nesses _majr be transmitted by wire from place to place, ' arrived ' in. 1906 '; telestereogr&phy, a similar idea,though working upon purely mechanical lines, has been for a month, an public and practical use. Belin, a Frenchman', who invented 1 the latter method, is "claiming to satisfy all commercial requirements before another summer. dFirofs. Korn, of Munich, and Stern, of Berlin, who hold patents on the earlier mode of telegraphing pictures, have made remarkable demonstrations ', "last February Korn sent Ms photographs 640 miles in six minutes, thus beating Ms rival, apparently, -whose most successful experiment covered only 328 miles. Man sdems to have" shown even more interest in carrying himself through, the . upper air than in turning it to his account as a mere medium for messages. Lounl Zeppelin, Santos-Dumont, Col. Templar, of the Twentieth British Royal Enigimetfrs, Capt. Chandler, U.S.A. ; Herr Erbslob and Henri Farmaau have all contributed to the vast advance made by the twtfive-month in this, direction. It seems scarcely too much to say that » The Problem of Aerial Navigation is solved The dirigible balloon as an accomplished fact. Its adaptability to wholly practical uses is only a matter of detail. iSantos-Dumont states that his new hydroplane, a sort, of floating windmill, can do sixty miles an hour, burt he has yet to prove his statement. Experimenting on the Seine,- October 2d, he came witdiin twelve miles of the rate he has set. as his goal, lb £ to bl added, however, that, so far, only < rate » has been achieved, not distance; something more than 600 . yards is the longest stretch yet covered. The hydroplane is driven by a .propeller revolving m tiie w«f. is 30 feet long, though weighing less than- 200 pounds being constructed of a light bamboo frame, covered with a silk and' rubber envelope. Twicei during the 12 months just elapsed, too, has man proved the ease with which he is, some day, to travel under water, as well as on it. In October the 1 U ' sub-marine boat of the German navy surpassed all records for submarine trigs', travelling, submerged ■ 600 knots under stream. , .Recently engineers marched dry-shod from Brooklyn to the Battery, New York, under East Raver. The under-water tunnelling of the year might, indeed, fittingly be dwelt on upoa for the wonders it has alone accomplished. Dr. Schlick's gyroscope apparatus for removing, or at least greatly minimizing, a .vessel's motions, will properly be written down in any list of recent achievements ol man's brains. It consists of a fly-wheel ar bout a yard in diameter, oscillating on trunnions and majcing up to 300£> revolutions a minute, ;nd is placed in a compartment immediately ahead of the boilers. Tried on some of the " British torpedo-bfoats it. has proved highly successful, ' its practical effect being to extinguish rolling almost instantly. Louis Breanan, of London, using the self-same gyroscope principle upon which Dr. Schlick's invention is based, makes it possible for a locomoitive to travel on one rail. When the Royal Society gstve Mr. Brennan his reception Ms engine ran on a single wire rope as easily as does thp ordinary machine on twin railsi If the airship as materially to afiect the future of war, so well may this monorail. It can bfc laid with as much expedition as the fielfl telegraiph, and can be used to convey men or ammunition to 'all j>arts of the field of operation in the shortest time.