The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1898-10-16
TO PREVENT COLLISIONS AT SEA.
Some Ingenious Devices for Warning Vessels of the APP
preach of Other Ships.

1t is not likely that an accident like
that which sent the Bourgogne to the
bottom of the Atlantic will again oc-
cur. That tragic event has reawakened
the constructive genius of inventors all
over the country, and as result the
patent office in Washington has been
overrun with applicants for patents on
devices for preventing collisions at sea.
Some of these devices are highly in
genious; others are highly absurd.
Nearly every principle of physics, OPP
! tics, acoustics and other kindred sci
ences has been called into play by
these inventors, with the result that We
now have signaling instruments which
depend on the sharpness of human
hearing or eyesight, on steam, heat,
electricity, fire, in short, on everything
which may be utilized as a force. Even
fog is to be dissipated by means of
electrical influence machines, and at
the instance of no less a parsonage than
Professor Oliver Lodge of Liverpool
university.
The most promising inventions de-
part radically in principle from those
already in use. In other words, mari
ners heretofore have depended on
sound as a means of signaling to
avoid collisions. But the alterations in
I
countered at sea. are so great that this
means is not be depended upon. The
sound waves from a fog horn in a
lighthouse, for instance, may, often be
heard a mile and half distant; then
they may die away until they are in
audible at the distance of a mile; af-
forwards they may be heard plainly
again at two miles. The sound in fall
ing upon the water at an angle seems
to bound into the air, and then to fall
on the water further on, after which it
may rebound. This action, however, is
by no means regular. The inaudible
belts are sometimes wide; sometimes
very narrow. Therefore, while we have
the siren, the eOphone the topophOne
and other phonetic contrivanceS, their
scope is limited, because of the inabil-
ity to control the sound after it has
left the instrument. Of these various
phones now in use the pneumatic fog
horn is perhaps the best. 1t is operat-
ed by compressed air. The horn has
two or more horizontal tunnels, which
revolve constantly on pivot, thus en-
deavoring to send a. prolonged blast to
all points of the compass.
Some years ago Edison proposed to
use compressed air on vessels as a
means of signaling, and avoiding col
lisionS. He proposed to overcome the
difficulty of the uneven alterations by
transmitting sound under water. His
scheme would make it necessary for
every ship on the ocean to be fitted out
with separate apparatus for this pur-
pose. The plan was to construct in the
end of each vessel a diaphragm. Back
of the diaphragm was to be a hollow
chamber connected by a valve with a
compressed air pump. The compressed
air was to be used periodically to in
dioT 1f.cc
causing it to sound a note under water.
Water is a very good conductor of
sound. Sound will travel for miles be-
meath the surface, and it could be re-
ceived and recorded on instruments in
the hulls of vessels near to the ship
from which it came. The plan at least
seems to be feasible, and it has the
double advantage of denoting the ap-
proach of vessels one to another, and
of enabling them to signal necessary
information by means of a modified
system of dots and daShes.
The most promising results in the
way of signaling at sea seem to arise
out of the electrical manipulation of
heat. By means of thermopiles it is now
possible to record the approach Of one
vessel toward another by the heat
which the newcomer transmits through
the atmosphere. When the climatic
conditions of the ocean are taken into
consideration it may seem more than
marvellous that any instrument could
be constructed that would be influenced
by the heat of an approaching vessel
while the latter was yet out of human
sight and hearing. If we turn to our
physics" however, we shall find that
Ganot describes a delicate thermopiIe
which was sensibly affected by the heat
of candle a quarter of a mile away.
Another instrument became affected by