The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-08-26

| Siege guns and all the equipment to
make up three full batteries, together
with store wagons, ammunition wagons
and ordnance stores, were received by
/ the army department yesterday on the
Lurline, the first shipment to these
! Islands of mobile guns for the use of
the artillery branch of the service. The
materials viii all be transported to
Fort Ruger and deposited in the Battery
/ Harlow classmates until further orders
=, The war materials were described in
| Tuesdays issue.
Uncle Sam After Him.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 12.---The War
Department is looking for a man who
claims to be Lieut.. Earl B. Mcfarland,
! and who, it is charged by the recruiting
i officer at Pittsburg, passed worthless
checks in that city on May %. The
penalty for impersonating United
States officer is $1,000 fine and three
years in the penitentiary at hard labor
Only recently in San Francisco an i'm
poster confessed to the impersonation of
Lieut. Harry King.
lowing incidents affecting the new case
Of imposture: Had check cashed at
Philadelphia May 26. Cashed another
in New York for 800 July 80. Passed
himself off as Lieut.. D. G. Thompson in
St. Louis, Aug. 10.
Magnet of Destruction.
A submarine Magnet which is to
be used as a weapon of destruction in
the naval warfare of the future, has
been patented in Germany and experts
believe that this country has thereby
acquired valuable asset in maritime
| operations. If their opinion is correct,
the twentieth century will have realized
fable of the Ara bian Nights - Pat
| ents, it must be remembered, are only
| granted in Germany after all aspects
| of the invention in question have been
| thoroughly investigated by numerous
| experts, all of whom incline much more
| to skepticism than to creduHty. The
mere fact of an invention being patent
| ed in Germany is thus to some extent
guarantee of certain amount of prac
| tieability.
| The weapon in question consists of a
! huge magnet far surprising in strength
any of the kind that have hitherto been
| manufactured. The magnet, which has
the same shape and form as gigantic
cog-wheel, will be connected with the
shore by means of electric cables run
ming into power station, which will
| be quite invisible from seaward, and
will be what is technically called
sunk. - The magnet will be placed
primarily at the mouths of ports or
rivers or bays which have to be pro-
tected against hostile attacks. The
effect on steel ships passing near these
magnets will vary according to the size
of the ship, but the general result, it
is claimed, would be to render them
unmanageable and entirely at the mercy
of their adversaries on the spot. The
attractive force of the magnet, accord
ing to the inventor, would be so ire
mendously powerful that all iron and
steel machinery on board would cease
to operate and would be thrown out of
gear, probably coming to standstiH
or working so erratically that disastrous
results would be produced
In the case of smaller ships, it is even
asserted that they would be drawn from
their set course by the attractive force
of the magnet. 1t would thus be pos
sible to run hostile ship of a moderate
size ashore by means of this weapon
In the case of still smaller ships, it is
! further suggested that they might be
drawn under the water blythe attractive
power of the magnet. Experts declare
that this weapon can be effectively used,
not only for home defense, but also in
offensive operations far away from
home ports. 1t might be possible, for
instance, to sink such a magnet at the
mouth of some hostile port and connect
it by submarine cables with a dynamo
ship anchored sufficiently far away to
be invisible and outside the immediate
area of danger.
The inventor of this weapon is a
German naval engineer, whose name has
hitherto been kept secret The magnet
can be constructed cheaply, and its
handling is simple. Two experts who
were asked to draw up technical re
port on this invention expressed their
opinion that it may prove so effective
as to revolutionize some of the prevail
ing methods of naval warfare. Until,
however, modern battleship has been
actually DETECTED from her course by
one of these magnets and her twelve
inch guns rendered useless by its means,
there will necessarily be some skepti-
| cism as to its value