The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1898-05-10
ELECTRICITY N War
Province of the Subtle
Agent One That Widens
EXPERTS OF HIGH ORDER
Required For Biography and
Kindred Applications.

The battle of Manila offers an illustra-
| ton of the wisdom of having experts in
telegraphy and eletricical engineering at
tached to every army or fleet. 1t ought
not to have been necessary to keep the
world so long in ignorance Of what Com
modore Dewey had actually accomplished.
If the electrical end Of his establish
ment had been cared for as scrupulously
as its strictly lighting end. ne could have
made his victory even more complete in
its moral effect by showing the Spaniards
the hopelessness of war against so in
genious a people as ours.
That the electricians are appreciated at
home is shown by the important position
given to the two experts telegraphers
! Thompson and Allen at Key West and
/ Maxwell of New York They were put in
| charge of the cable service at the two
most important points on the continent,
not simply because they were men of dis
! erection and intelligence as well. 1t should
he the care Of every commander of an
army or feet to have with him small
CORPS Of men who not only understand
the working of the telegraph key and read
messages by sound but are shrewd enough
20 do a thousand things in the way of re-
pairing and emergency work which may
be called for when no outside aid can be
procured. These men should understand
splicing wire and cable IN any condition
and amid any surroundings. They should
be of trained ingenuity in running down
| and locating breaks in the connection.
They should haveenough sobriety of judg-
ment to be able to play the censor If nee
essarv on dispatches put into their hands
| to send They should be telegraphic geo
graphers as well as everything else, hav-
ing at their fingers ends the directions
and functions of telegraph lines all over
the earth, for it sometimes becomes of
the very first Importance to send a mes
sage to the other side of the enemy's coun
try without actually passing through IT.
The use of electricity in warfare has
grown very much within the last ten or
fifteen years, but the war between Spain
and the United States promises 10 do more
to illustrate the possibility Of this branch
of science than has been dreamed of here
tofore Telegraphy and telephony will
both he called into play, to do what has
formerely been done by wig-wag signals,
sending dispatches by courier, etc. Tele-
graph wire has been reduced so in weight
that a man can transport two miles of In
sulated double conductor as rapidly as
column Of cavalry can move. This fnclu-
des the weight Of the reel for paying out
the wire, as well as Of the wire itself
The flying field telegraph and telephone
makes kit weighing not to exceed 10
pounds. and this includes diminutfve
Morse key and buzzer sothat messages
can be sent simultaneously from both in
struments.
We are likely also to try the photograph
as a dispatch vehicle By having the
mounting so arranged that a cylinder. If
captured by the enemy, could not be plac-
ed on a strange apparatus and made to
reproduce the sounds originally committed
to IT, the damage from losing a cylinder
would not be so serious as that from los
| ing a dispatch wrwitten on paper. The
microphone, which can be set so as to
! catch the sound Of an approaching foe
when 1t is too faint to be heard by the
ordinary ear. is another ingenius device
/ which will be tested. The firing of guns,
the explosion of mines and torpedoes. and
the control of a camera-shutter when PIC
lures are to be taken from kite or bal
| loon suspended in air over the enemys
works, are familiar uses of electricity,
which will be developed and extended in
our martial operations mis- season.
We have at the head Of our signal corps,
IN General Greely, an officer whose tastes
are all in line with his professional spec
! ialty. Nothing delights him more than to
| experiment and invent new methods in
! electrical field work In his report for 1894
! he drew attention 10 the increasing value
of the telephone in warfare. with special
reference TO the war between China and
! Japan, which was then under way. All
/ late wars. he said. indicate that electrical
| connections are Indispensable TO the sue
cess of any army operating on a base
apart from the general telegraph,c sys-
tenn. He records the marvellous success of
experiments madei nthe army with the
! single uninsulated bime;aIlic wire stretch
! ed on the ground through wet grass. over
which a whispered conversation was con-
| Quoted through telephones half a mile
/ the telephone could not be held close TO
/ the ear without discomfort. The war IN
| the East furnished the general with an
| excellent object lesson just at that time
when congress was in a particularly mig
/ eardly mood and was proposing 70 cut
/ down appropriations 70 an extent which
/ threatened to ruin the signal corps; for he
was able to point to an instance where the
/ japanese signal and telegraph corps, on
! the day following the battle Of P.ng-Yang.
ran into that city a flying telegraph line
/ from Seul, a distance OF 20 miles. The mill
! tary bsllon is another subject 70 which
/ General Greely has given much study 1t
was he who first officially drew the atten-
ton Of the government 10 the usefulness