Wireless Telephony.

Progress, Volume IV, Issue 2, 1 December 1908, Page 65

Wireless Telephony.

De Forest, of wireless fame, has grown hold with success. Having made the record in the China Sea, during the Japanese war, in the installation set up by the Times in the steamer so famously commanded by Captain Colquhoun, a record subscribed to by the Russian and Japanese admirals, who hinted that spies are always hung, and by the British admiral, who feared he could not do anything to help his fellow countryman in case of misadventure, this inventor has now taken to telephony without wires, and is promising the world to bring the opera house to every man's private residence, for an initial cost of £3 for a pole on his roof, and an expense of four shillings a month during the opera season. For this bagatelle the customer will hear any opera that may be in the repertory of any company. Instead of repairing at 9 a.m. to the front of the opera house in the hope (often vain) of getting a place near the door, which is to open in ten hours' time, he waits calmly till he has digested his dinner, turns on the receiver, and hears the whole thing from beginning to end. No bad air, no boredom; no need, therefore, to go out for refreshment or to wish he were dead until the end of the stick's interminable song, which is beginning to be out of tune. Just lay down the receiver, and there you are — immediate relief! Cheapness, comfort, and the artistic paradise ! This is, however, in the region of promise; truly marvellous, but still only promissory. The electricians of the French Army have been doing things just as marvellous. Even more so. They have established easy communication between Paris and Dieppe, they talk comfortably with the station at Pointe de Raz, on the Bay of Biscay (Finisterre), and they are about to astonish the weak nerves at Tangier, of murderous Arabs, over-zealous German consuls, and Foreign Legion deserters, Sultans and preachers of Holy Wars. The Italians, on their side, take second place to none. They have the Professor Majorana, and they are proud of their compatriot in the decisive demonstrative way that the Latins show their pride in their own. They have gone back to the history of ancient Rome for their warrant. It is written, they say, of old — no doubt in one of the Sybilline books destroyed after the first refusals of Numa Pompilius, to listen to the ravings of the Sybil — that two sons of Italy shall be the first to write and talk across space by means invisible, both of whose names shall be of the same letters all but one. Of course these are Marconi and Majorana, which are very much nearer together than anything that ever came out of Grimm's law in the matter of philology; so what more can you want? This Signor has been working for five years by means of a hydraulic microphone, and has done wonderfully, the Italian nation declares,

though he has not gone more than three miles across space with his invisibly produced talk. But what is mere distance? And, besides, was not the Signor Majorana talking without wires five years ago, before that spurious batch of pretenders and imitators got their unholy ears in touch with the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean, which they have the characteristic impudence to call a French lake? Moreover, if the Italian Government had only been as prodigal of the national funds as these reckless, boasting Frenchmen, there is no saying how far the Signor would not have been sending his far more melodious voice in this year of grace. But what would you? At all events, the Signor was the first in the field, if not quite the farthest out. Which shows the correctness of the old Sybil, who did so much for the best King the Romans ever had. Again, has not the Signor said that his instruments are very much better adapted for long distances than those of De Forest, who has kept ahead of these Gallic boasters at any rate? He admits that the De Forest mechanism is similar, but his is the better for all that, being better adapted to great things. His instruments, we know at the same time of our own knowledge, culled from the Italian press, which is, as every one is aware who is aware of anything, the best in the world, are in use in the Italian fleet, the officers of which are able to communicate with each other quite as readily, as are the Americans, who rely for their fleet communications on the De Forest, and the English, who, to give them their due. have some merits of their own, rely on Marconi.