Omaha daily bee., 1899-04-14
put up at the receiving and sending sta


put up at the receiving and sending sta
tons.
Described by the Inventor.
In an address recently delivered before
the British Society Of Electrical Engineers
Mr.. Marconi gave the following details OF
bis system OF wireless telegraphy:
Il find he said. that with parity Of
other conditions a vertical wire twenty feet
long Is sufficient for communicating one
mile, forty feet for four miles, and eighty
feet for sixteen miles, and so on. An In
stallation is now working over a distanca o.
eighteen miles with a vertical wire eighty
feet high at each installation station"
Horizontal wires, added to the vertical
wires, curiously enough, he said, reduced the
efficiency rather than added to It. The
stations to which Mr.. Marconi referred as
having vertical wires eighty feet high are
those at Alum bay, Isle Of Wight, and a..
the Haven hotel at Poole. on the mainland.
eighteen miles away. At each station a
pole 100 feet high was used to support the
aerial conductor, which consisted OF stranded
copper wire. insulated with rubber ana
tape. The current used was from six 20
nine amperes at fourteen volts. and the
spark made was regulated to one cent?
metre in length. The first tests we're made
at the beginning OF last year. between the
Needles hotel at Alum bay and a steamer.
the height Ct whose mast was sixty feet.
Readable signals were obtained UP to a dis
lance OF eighteen miles. In describing the
principal experiments made since, MIR. Mar
CAM said, in part:
I'm May OF last year Lloyd's desired to
have an illustration of the possibility Of
signaling between Ballycastle and Rathlin
island at the north of ireland. My assist
ants. Mr.. Kemp and the late Mr.. Glanville.
installed the instrument at Ballycastle and
at Rathlin island. The distance between the
two positions is seven and a half miles,
Of which about four are overland and the
remaining across the sea. a high cliff also
intervening between the two positions. At
Ballycastle n pole seventy feet high was
used TO support the wire, and at Rathlin a
vertical conductor wa supported by the
light house eighty feet high. Signaling
was found quite possible between the two
points, but It was tn ught desirable to bring
the height of the pole at Ballycastle to 100
feet, as the proximity OF the light house to
the wire at Rathlln seemed to diminish the
effectiveness Of that station.
following this, in July We were re-
quested by a Dublin paper, the Daily Ex-
press. to report from the high seas the re.
suits and incidents # the Kingstown re-
gatta. In order to do this we erected a
land station, by he Mind permission of the
harbormaster at Kingstown, IN his grounds,
where a pole 10 feet high was placed. a
steamer, the Flying Huntress, was char
tered to follow the racing yachts, the in
struments being placed in the cabin. The
height Of the vertical wire attainable by
he mast was seventy-fve feet. A telephone
was fixed from our land station at Kings
town to the Express office in Dublin and
as the messages came from the ship they
were telephoned to Dublin and published in
succeeding editions Of the evening papers.
From Ship TO shore.
The relative positions OF the various
yachts were thus wirelessly signaled while
the races were in progress, sometimes over
Il distance OF ten miles, and were published
long before the yachts had returned TO
ha.JOr. During the several days the system
was in use between the tug and the land
station over 700 messages were sent and re-
cetyed, none requiring to be repeated. Or
trying longer distances it was found that
with a height of eighty feet on the ship
and the same height as already stated on
land 1t was possible to communicate UP to
a distance of twenty-five miles and il is
worthy of note in this case that the curva-
ture Of the earth interviewed very consider
Oy It such a distance between the two
positions.
I'm December Of last year my company
thought 1t desirable to demonstrate that the
system was quite practical and available
for enabling Geographic communication to
be established and maintained between
iightships and the shore. This, as you are
probably aware. is a matter Of much i'm
portance, as all other systems tried so far
have failed, and the cables by which some
three or four ships are sometimes connected
are exceedingly expensive, and require
special moorings and fittings, which are
troublesome to maintain and liable TO break
in storms. The officials of Trinity house
offered us the opportunity OF demonstrating
to them the utility of the system between
the South Foreland lighthouse and enc oil
the following light vessels, viz, the Gull, the
South Goodwin and the East Goodwin. We
naturally chose the one furthest away-the
East Goodwin, which is just twelve miles
from the South Foreland Lighthouse.
THE apparatus was taken on board in ar
open beat and rugged up in one afternoon
The installation started working from the
very first without the slightest difficulty
The system has continued to work ad
mirably through all the storms, which dur.
ing this year have been remarkable for theil
continuance and severity. On one occa-
sion during a DIG gaze IN January a very
heavy sea struck the ship, carrying part
OF its ulwarks away. The report OF this
mishap was promptly telegraphed to the
superintendent of Trinity house, with al
details OF the damage sustained.
THE height of the wire on board the ship f
eighty feet, the mast being for sixty feet o
it's length OF iron and the remainder o
wood. The aerial wire is let down anon,
: a great number Of metal stays and chains
I which do not appear to have any detrimental
effect on the strength of the signals. Va,
| rious members Of the crew learned in twC
> days how to send and receive, and, In fact
how to run the station, and owing to tn,
! assistant on board not being as good
! sailor as the instruments have PROVED
3 TO be, nearly all the messages dur
ing very bad weather are sent an,
5 received by these men, who, previous