The Opelousas courier., 1899-09-23
WIRELESS T%ELEGRAPHY.
WORK Or MARcoNrs SYSTEM LITTLE
SHORT OF MIRACULOUS.

Away Varied Use in Warfare-sucres.
of the Invention Is an Assured Fact,
The recent success Of Marcopi in
t~elegraphins with facility from the
South Foreland lighthouse on the
English coast to Boulogne-sur-Mer In
France without the use of connecting
wires, together with the favorable
reports of commissions appointed by
foreign governments to Investigate
the matter of wireless telegraphy in
general, and the receipt by Mr.. Mar
coni 81 earlous government orders for
me manufacture of his mechanisms,
obviously to be used in warfare, has
attracted the attention of the world.
10 those IMMERSED in the physical
conceptions of science, it appears
little short of miraculous that by
touching a lever in one place a
sounder may be affected in another
t~hirty-two miles away without the
use OF any material medium.
Wireless telegraphv, which is today
acknowledged q success for moderate
distances, with the practical certainty
OF Its application to ever-increasing
distances in the future, is due, not so
much to the inventor, Marconi, as to
careful experimentation at the hands
OF the patient Investigators who pre-
coded him. Marconi has discovered
no new law and no new fact. His
work has been merely that of an in
genious mechanician in the careful
application of facts and laws already
we'll known. The Marconi system of
telegraphy through space depends
primarily on the work of Hertz, who
proved some ten years ago in a series
OF researches, which are now classic.
the existence of electrical waves in
free space. the identity of electricity
with light, and who made it a tenet
OF modern science that the universe
IS not a universe of emptiness, but a
"plenum. His work, as we'll as the
wireless telegraphy based on it, is ex-
plicable only on the assumption that
between the particles of all material
bodies, and throughout all space to
the furthest star to be seen with the
mightiest telescope, there exists a me-
dunn whose most marked characters
tics are tenuity and almost infinite
elasticity. This medium is the ether
of the physicist. Wave motions may
be set up in this medium with ease,
their effect depending solely upon
their length. The X-rays of Roentgen
form probably the shortest of the
series; and, in their order of length,
come the actinic waves, which affect the
camera, light waves, waves of radiant
heat, then a vast unexplored space,
and, finally, the long, electrical waves
which affect the Marconi receiver.
DR.. Hertz succeeded in setting up
these electrical waves by means of a
rapidly %oscillating electric spark from
an induction coil. They vary in length
from a few inches to many feet, travel
Mt the rate of 1856, 900 miles a second,
and vary in intensity inyersely as the
square of the distance. That is at
twice the distance they are one-fourth
as intense, at five times the distance
one-twenty-ifth as intense, and so on,
rapidly decreasing as the distance in
creases.
The Marconi transmitter is simply
q Hertzian oscillator for the propaga-
ton of these waves, consisting OF a
medium-sized induction coil with the
spark passing between two perfect
spheres of polished brass half i'm
mersed in oil.
The electrical waves in ether, caused
by this rapidly intermittent spark,
start out with a frequency of some
two billion a second in a series of con-
centric, overwhelming spheres of I'M
dulation, travelling with the speed of
light in all directions and straight
through the ordinary forms OF matter
with but little opposition. Into the
primary circuit of the induction coil
is introduced q common telegraphic
circuit breaker, by which the sparks
may be made to come in the order Of
Geographic signals.
The Marconi receiver depends for
its efficiency on the discoveryof Bran
sly, that when these electrical waves
strike a pinch Of metallic filings such
filings become q conductor. The CO.
herer, the essential part of the Mar
conf receiver, consists of a small glass
vacuum tube, into each end of which
runs a brass rod tipped with silver.
The ends of these rods are separated
by q distance of about one-sixteenth
If an inch, and into this tiny space is
placed o pinch of metallic filings, pre-
ferably nickel, with q trace of silver.
Fhe coherer is in circuit with one bat
cry cell and a sensitive relay, the
nrrent of The cell being interrupted
y the filings. This relay is, in turn,
4 circuit with a larger local battery
ad . telegraphic sounder. From
sch end of the coherer there runs a
upper wire, one into the earth to in
tcept the waves travelling through
" ground, and the other high up in
d air to catch the waves that travel
tire. These waves run along the
wes and across the pinch of filings,
wch then become q conductor. When
tn filings become in this way q con-
dttor the current from tho single
ce is allowed to travel through the
fey and the relay in turn let's loose
the local circuit, which makes the
solder click.
ne matter is somewhat complicat-
edsowever, by the fact that when
theleetrical waves strike the filings
thebecome permanently a conduc-
tort least until they are tumbled
aboi or disturbed. In order to OBJ
viatshis difficulty an electrical tap
per iintroducaI into the same circuit