8/12/2019 Wireless Telegraphy 1899

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WIRELESS T E L E G R A P H YSAVES LIFE

The sending ofmessages by the Marconi system does not require the use of the electric current inthethat the ordinary telegraph or telephone does. The signals are flashed from one station to the othermeans ofHertzian waves, as they are called. These waves, namd after Professor Hertz of Carlsruhe,their discoverer, are magnetic waves having the same velocity as light, say 185.000 miles aProfessor Hertz thinks they are identical with light except that the wave-lengths themselveslonger than the ordinary lightwaves. So much for the transmitting medium. Whenever an electricas from an induction coil, is made to jump back and forth between two electrodes or poles thesewaves are produced. They radiate from the producing pointinall directions, and with a properlyreceiver at a distant point we may intercept enough of them to make them serve as a signal, toey intelligence, just as our own ear catches the radiation of sound waves when a voice calls from aBy starting and stopping the Hertzian waves, and thus causing corresponding starts and stopsthe distant station. Marconi is able to transmit messages by the Moise telegraph code.

S S telegraphy ha Justdemonstrated its practicabil-ityby aiding In the rescue ofFereral people threatened withdrowning at sea.Not very lone; ago Pljrnorshowed the scientific worldhe could send teletrrams acrossChannel without the use ofHad the crew on the sinking Hght-nnt hoen prepared to use wrelessin calling for help they musthave perished.inridpnt which forcpri thi crucialok place bpiwpon one of the G

new apparatus was soon to be the. meansof pavinp their lives.Tn the fog ofApril 2S last a passing vps-truck the lightship and continued onher way. After a t ime the rrcw of tli^lightship discovered t ha t the blow was ais one, Mnd thHt their ship was* sink-inr.Wh a t wh? to ho done? M;iko for thedlstani shore as fast s they could, withIsk of being \ u 2 5 a 0 . - w n o i oui ii thnd :irrl thf- Bouth Forelandseveral milr-s away.lightabipa and the South Forelandwere fortunately equippedthe necessary apparatus for theof messages through thothe space of waters betweenwhen the t ime of need came. Theyimerieux, near ]Jouiogne. on thecoasi opposite, formed the sys-stations which had been estab-by Marconi and his co-workers aime before, the accident for theirtests. Theee tests were still goingthe two mainland stations,t imes with the lightship. Intheof the scientists they were beingbymembers of the crow, whomore or less proficient inand receiving messages.little thought that tho curious

That thing? Good enough for experi-ment, but willitavail in the hour ofneed?We can tryit. We have spoken withit and heard it speak before. Why notnow?Anxious faces group around the tableon which stand the receiver and trans-mitter of the wonderful new system oftelegraphing wthout wires, inwhich laythe only hope of safety for the crewA hand touches the commutator of thebigRuhmkorff coll. Th e primary currentIs turned on and at omv the long teii-lnch spark leaping between the- poles ofthp secondary wire, shows it to be inor-der and ready for the work. Then thespark oscillator isconnected and adjustedand the signaling begins.As rapidly and steadily as the anxiousmind can dictate and the trembling handtouch the manipulator the intense chargegenerated in the Instrument is sent IntoThat far they can know it goes. Does itgo farther?It oes go farther; itdoes all that it is

expected to do. From the wire anothermedium, invisible and immaterial to thehuman ?rense as itmay be, takes the mes-sage signals.With each electric wave from the in-strument below charging the wire thereis set up in the air about it a series ofundulations akin to those by which soundand light are propagated through space,and these-t moving away inconcentricwaves in every direction from the wire,carry the signals to the point desired.There a cunningly devised and skillfullyconstructed, delicate instrument will re-spond'to their imnulso and make knowntheir presence t listening ears.First the manipulator sends out by theMorse system of signals. South Foreland'scall, VVV WVARE YOU THERE SOUTH FORE-LAND?No answer. Repeated again and again,each time with Increasing fearful anx-iety. Awful suspense. Seconds seem in-terminable.

Then comes a response:READY,GOODWIN PROCEEDHELP. WE HAVE BEEN STRUCK;ARE SINKING.South Foreland received the call forhelpall right and ina few minutes had dis-patched swift tugboats to the rescue qfthe sinking lightship sinking in the seaand fog ten miles away.And that's the way wireless telegraphydemonstrated Its success and introduceditself to the workaday world last week.Why is this a more practical test andwhat does itprove more than the demon-strations conducted byMarconi himself?For several weeks past scientists havebeen carrying on regular communicationsbetween the stations oneither side of theEnglish Channel, some thirty-fourmilesapart, at all hours of the day and night,during sunshine, fog, rain, snow andhailstorms, with entire satisfaction, evenwhen the wres of land lines refused towork.Marconi even won the approval of roy-

alty itself bysetting up a station at O ---borne House, on the Isle of Wight, andhaving her Majesty converse bysignalswith the Prince of Wales on his yacht,equipped inlike manner, at the tim theyacht was some miles away from theisland.Everything that he had hoped orclaimed was satisfactorily realized. In-deed, while hlB experiments were goingona vessel passing out struck on the sand-bar near one of the Goodwn lightships,which called assistance from land byhissystem.Marconi, a practician, as he calls him-self, isbut a pioneer inthe applicationofthe principles enunciated by Hertz.Others are in train to follow Aready aBelgian experimenter claims to hay suc-ceeded intelephoning without wires, andwe must learn to use our ethereal earsas well as our ethereal eyes.The Goodwn lightship incident willgiverenewed impulse to inventors and experi-menters inthe new field.

tn the Operating Room for Receiving and Sending Dispatches by Wireless Telegraphy.

M a c h i n e s in tlje Main O f f i c e fo r Receiving and Transmitting th e Picture

H . n . K O n L S A A TChicago T i A D . r t E m i D .

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Pictures Successfully Sent by Telegraph at Last .The New York Herald has just perfected a systero by which portraits have been reproduced by telegraphbetween points over 1000 miles apart The cities chosen were Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, NewYork and St. Louis. The tests were so severe that there isno possible doubt now but what the prob-lem of sending pictures by wire, the same as messages, is at last successfully solved.

upeclal to The Sunday Call./ >rVILIZATIONwas shoved aheadany notches by the New York I V I L I Z T I O N was shoved andaxMsty notches by the New YorkHerald on Wednesday night, and anw milestone planted when a pie-V / ture of the first pun tired at Manilawas telegraphed from NewYork toChicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia and Bos-ton simultaneously over a single wire bythe Herald.And then, after this miracle, other pic-tures were flashed back by telegraph fromt ho se c i t ies over the single circuit to NewYork.Itwas no experiment, but the practicalcommencement of the Herald's new busi-ness enterprise of telegraphing pictures,drawings, autographs and designs of allknd;.; by wire as ifbut ordinary tele-graphic messages.Th e machines had been tested and foundto be Inperfect order when 6 oclock, thehour set for the lone: distance picture telegraphing feat, had arrived.The correspondents of the far-awaynewspapers to receive the Herald's light-ning art service were on hand to observeth practical workingof the new system.The machines are a little larger thanone of Edison's phonographs mounted ona cabinet stand.F. Crane, the artist, produced the pic-tures to be sent. They were plainlysketched on sheets of tinfoil six by eightinches square.The newspapers connected with the longdistance circuit were: St. Louis Republic,Chicago Times-Herald, Philadelphia In-quirer. Boston Herald. The preliminaryadjustments of the machines had beenmade.Click click rattled a telegraphsounder beside the machines. Superin-tendent Flynn,incommunication with themain telegraph office of the bigdowntownPostal building, said they had made upthe circuit. That is. they had got all theoffices of the five bigcities connected onone wire running directly into the news-paper offices, east and west.Click click went St. Louis. ThenChicago's 'lickclick whs followed byPhiladelphia, and Roston. The duplexwires had neen balanced the machinesharmonized, synchronized, and Mr. 'rane. the telegraphic art superintendent,said the picture on the little cylinder,runby clockwork, was ready for sending.Again Click click

All ready, answered St. Lou is andChicago, a thousand miles away, as Phila-delphia rind Boston tick-tacked back thesam message.Correspondents and editors hoveredaround the machine. A bombardment oran electrocution could have excited nomore interest.W e start inlive seconds, click-clackedSuperintendent Flynn at the telegraphkey wth his racing watch in hand.One. two, three four, fiver,o Theswitch was closed. the starting but-ton pressed, and away went the picture o rDeweys Manila gun, over rivers, moun-tains and prairies instantly in the twin-kle of a pretty girlseye into the busy,roaring newspaper offices half across thecontinent.God's lightning flashed back from Chi-cagn and St. Louis, fmm Boston and Phil-adelphia that the. picture is coming; it isperfect.In each of these distant offices an exactduplicate machine of ihe one in the Tler-

aid office was receiving the sketch fromthe whispering wire.Next came a pictureinreturn from eachof these offices. Th e St. Louis Republicsent a sketch of Senator Major, the re-former, known as Missouri's LexnwFrom the Chicago Times-Herald camea picture of McKnley and Kohlsaat, theeditor.The Philadelphia Inquirer sent a sketchof three men arrested for counterfeiting.M O W TH E MACHINE WORKS .

A T la st the miracle is accomplished.The Herald is successfully tele-graphing pictures longdistances bywre.Instorm and sunshine, over riversand mountains, across big Statesand w de continents, your portrait or acopy of nir 10,000 oil paintingyour lostEvangel lne may be shot through spacein a lightnings (lash.It is a marvelous invention, but as stm-

pie as itis wonderful.After telegraphing by hand had beenin practice for several years it was dis-covered that the .lots and -'dashes In-dented In the slip of paper In Chicagocould ho reproduced hy running the stripof paper under the k*y.Its on this principle that the phono-gTaph of to-day reproduces it? records;the little invisible dots on the white cyl-inder when run under the bit of steelwhich originally made them will repro-duce the song or speech at the other endof the wire.This principle applied In telegraphingpictures works equally well. Adrawingis made on a sheet of tinfoil wrappedaround a cylinder In the machine similarto the wax cylinder of a phonograph.InChicago there is a twin machine reg-ulated to work in perfect harmony withthe Now York machine. InChicago, in-stead of tinfoil, a sheet nf carhon orman-ifoldcopying paper is placed between twoblank she, ts of paper. Th e New Yorkcurrent is turned on and the littlpneedleor platinum point above the revolvingcylinder inNew York breaks the circuitwhen it touches the ink outlines of thepicture.The needle in the Chicago machinewhich reproduces every pulsation madeInNew York prints the Pamo kind of arecord on the carbon paper because thesteel point beats hard on the cylinder,and th us th e picture in NVw York isfaithfully copied hy electricity in Chi-cago. The simplicityof the system isitswonder.Yet experts have been year? inperfect-Inga machine that would be of practicalcommercial value. Mr.Ernest A. Hum-mell ofSt. Paul i s t he inventor. He setup his first machine in the New YorkHerald office inJanuary ISPR. when a pic-ture ofMayor Van Wyck was sent over asix-mile circuit without difficulty. Later,pictures were sent to the Herald fromCamden N. J., and Key West, Fla.The success of the machine long agopassed beyond experiment.Nothing is uncertain about the process.Whatever is drawn on the tinfoil here isabsolutely reproduced at the other endof the wire, regardless of the distance.The extraordinary possibilities of thisinvention seem incredible, yet they havebeen demonstrated beyond doubt.

Telegraphing W ith th e T y p e W riterT E L E G R P H Y with the typewriteras a sending and a receiving instru-ment lias begun inChicago, and theMorse alphabet, with its dots anddashes, will soon be abandoned.

From two independent sources hasthe art of telegraphy been advanced, andin thenear future there is promise ofcon-flict and litigaionover patents. The twomen who have perfected the great im-provement in telegraphy reside in Chi-cago.Simultaneously with thp announcementthat .John S Thompson has perfected hisapplication of the typewriter to the elec-trical current of a single wire came theInformation that for almost a month theInvention of another Chicago man hasbeen indailyuse in the workroom on the.twelfth floor of itsbuildinginChicago Inthe receipt and sending of messages, It

is s.-.i.l to have passed the stage of ex-periment and established Its utilityunderall the varying conditions to which aslerdfr telegraph wire is subject by heatnnd rold, wind and rain, bad and goodinsulation.

vThe telegraphers' typewriting machine,as it is used inthe Western Union office,sits on a desk partiallyboxed. At tachedto the bars operating: the types are aseries of pinions engaging with a train ofcircular clutches, which In turn are op-erate by the current running throughthe telegraph wire. The strikingof a keyen the typewriter exerts a strength ofcurrent which at the other end of thewire, whe the r a yard or 1000 miles awayacts upon the particular clutch that pullsdown the bar of the type correspondingto the key touched.Just what device is used is kept a se-cret from prying eyes. Inthe Thompsoninvention the current is regulated byelectro-magnets, whose armatures arewound with wire of different gauge inorder to secure evenness inregistering byactuating the current. To each type baris attached the magnet which operates itthrough the spring armature. The differ-ent gauge of wire permits a quick re-sponse to the touch of the type at theother end of the wire.

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, STTNDAT, MAT 7, 1899. 19