Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1909-12-03
EDITORIAL
PANAMA EDITORIAL TRIP.
Letter No. s.

'aA.lsl1AJ . Letter No. s..
Everything is kept serupulously
'Ss clean, there are n" grease spots on
the handrails etc to smear you as you
walk about inspecting the machinery.
a number of Cinnamon are kept
.stsbusy wiping off and keeping the var
-z1ious parts shining clean. Beyond
the complex array of engines, is to
a be seen the five huge boilers, into
a. which perspiring Cinnamon are
heayipg those black diamonds which
a, scoaxes all this multitude. of wheels to
sss keep up their spinning. z
Now some description of the Wireless
Telegraph Outfit with which the ship
Il is equipped, alIusion to which has al
~ ready been more than once made and
which we looked into and had ex-
planned by the urbane Operator, Mr..
.zJ. Meyuiers this evening, who by the
3 way tells us that several years ago
he swung the Morse keys at Luce
81 dale. BAN "1s
80 Wireless Telegraphy was adopted
by the United Fruit Co. about two
ed years ago, and all their boats are
now equipped with this convenient
ba method of hail while on the high
sSseas. The apparatus on board ship
differs but little from a Wireless
Station on land. The two tall masts
II of,the ship are improvised as the
poles from which to stretch the wires
e. of which there are six running right
20 along parallel with one ano her
about foot apart. On these wires
=, the messages, thrown out from other
4. ships or from land stations impinge,
81 and are conducted down stairs into
bEthe cable-office From them also
are sent cut those that our Operator
= turns loose, His office is fitted up
very, much like. telephone and tel
egraph office combined. There's the
table at which he sits and writes and
ticks off the mystical dots, and there
too he presses the delicate receivers to
his ears to. catch the. faint ticks from
!, some faraway transmitter. He has a
. shelf ON which are arranged numer-
,alously cefled and powerful battery.
ba1Fhen large dynamo is fasten ed to
va the floor and derives propelling force
from the great engine room of the
ship far below. The voltage which
all, this electrical paraphernalia will
develop is something scareful. The
sdinstrumentsfor sending have a cli-;k-
Ger like the ordinary Morse key, but
.Tathe sound which it with the mechan-
ism to which it is hitched makes, far
= exceeds the former in volume and pc
o,culiarityq for itssereech can be heard
aadistinetly as the blast of the huge
sawhistle, all over the ship, and while
sdclose listening will reveal the pauses
and rises and falls of the Morse or
Continental Code, just as one sing
ing through a comb makes some
bakind of semi-intelliglble song, but
the rasping noise is so loud and pen
etrating that one rarely notices its
infections Its an almost indescrib-
liable kind Of fuss. It reminds me of a
Sound which might be described by a
cross, or blend of an emery-stone on
81 agsteel saw and the whining and shrili
sysquealing of q planer-mill
5ese His explanation of the principle of
the projection and reception OF the
waves of the Wireless Outfit, was
that it performed like, pebble drop
ped into the. water, i. e, the sound
IS waves, went out with uniform inten-
8ssity in every direction from the SEN
riding station and gradually grew
fainter and fainter as the distance
became greater and greater. He
showed us a regulator for adapting
the instrument to certain distances
in either sending or receiving. 1t re-
10 minded me of the sliding bar on a
vzpostsoffice scale, and had mile figures
ION its bar-face. Shove this out an
inch say and the instrument would
bobe ready for 200 mile operation in
any direction and would easily pick
up any message in the air sent out
from anaoutfit similarly or closely
sstheretosreguIated. And so on The
maximum sending capacity now under
favorable conditions is 800 miles, but
they hope to improve the distance
feature. I saw him hail and exchange
taTks with several ships and land
l.stations long before we got in clear
sight of them. In fact he more often
than not called when there was
nothing to be seen as they talked be-
fore we got in anything like range
ofsfhe eye k5A7s lSA