Daily Kennebec journal., 1913-11-17
WONDERS OF THE WIRELESS
PHONE.
Astonishing Achievements in the Al
most Magic Art of Telephonina
Without Wires

Almost simultaneously, from three
widely separated nations, comes news
of astonishing achievements in the al
most magic art of telephoning with
out wires. First of all from Italy,
where so much has been done in this
field, Prof. Vanni, the head of the
Military Institute of Wireless Teleg-
raphy, has been able to telephone over
land and water from Rome to Tripoli,
"a distance of over 600 miles.
Then Count Arco and his aids in the
great wireless company of Germany,
the Telefunken, established COM
munication from Nauen to a dozen or
more of their stations, and reaching
as far as from Berlin to Vienna. Then,
on the heels of this Elman B. Myers,
Ia twenty two year-o old inventor of
Albany, is arrested for making too
free use of the air, in defiance of the
new wireless law, it being alleged that
he had talked from Albany to. Brook
lyn, and even many times this dis
tance, his messages having been
picked UP as far as Charleston, S. C.
Finally, another young inventor
from Tennessee has devised light,
portable apparatus which you can
carry around with you If you want to
go fishing few miles out at sea, or
talk to your neighbors at the next
farm. Ali of these achievements,
needless to say, meant the develop
ment of devices wholly new and even
the discovery of quite new facts
All of these devices, like wireless
telegraphy itself, rest upon the dis
st ole ,tv;x -
German, Prof. Heinrich Hertz, nearly
a quarter of century ago. These
waves are for all the world like
light waves; in fact, they are light
waves, only very long ones. Light
waves are measured in one hundred
thousandths of an inch, and even
much less; but electrical waves may
be miles in length. Those used by
Prof. Vanni and Count Areo are ae-
tually about mile in length. But
they are of minuteness that simply
staggers the mind when you attempt
to make a picture of them
If you drop stone in quiet water.
the ripples which run outward may
have a quite considerable amplitude,
Jas a professor of physics would say.
81 tiiot IL Sou Souid loOk dt liltill Ill
cross section, they might be an inch
or even several inches from the top of
the crest to the bottom of the next
trough. Sound waves, the. waves
with which We speak and communi-
cate with our fellow men, are about
one -thousandth or even a ten thou
sandth part of these dimensions: the
loudest of them are about one thou
sandth of an inch.
The light waves and electrical
waves are almost infinitely smaller.
If you will try to think of a wave
one -millienth of an inch in height,
and mile or even a score of miles
from crest to crest, then you will get
some sort of a mental picture of the
waves used in wireless.
Or better still, take Prof yannis
amazing device. He uses what is
known as the .Moretti arc, devised by
a young electrician of Rome You
are familiar with the ordinary big are
lights of the streets which flash be-
tween two large sticks of pressed car
bon. DR.. Moretti.s arc flashes be-
tween two metal surfaces, and is so
small that you might mistake it for
little atomizer, such as you use to
spray your throat. The distance be-
tween the two surfaces, instead of
being one-half an inch or more, as in
the ordinary arc light, is only about
thousandth of an inch. Yet it was
by means of this minute lamp, inter-
rupting the current of the arc one
hundred thousand times or more per
second that Prof. Vanni was able to
throw enough energy onto the aerial
of his station to talk from Rome to
Tripoli. But how he did it. and how
all wireless telephoning is achieved, is
far more astonishing than any mere
question of dimensions.
Light waves, and electrical waves
as well. all travel at the same speed
at about one hundred and eight-four
thousand miles per second. Every
time you make a little wave, and,
therefore, if You do this as Prof.
Vanni did, at from one hundred to two
hundred thousand times per second,
each of these little waves will be
about mile long; ard they are not
millionth of an inch high. Do, you
think that even the amazing mind of
man could devise any instrument or
any methods by which these little
waves, one niliionth of an inch high,
could be clipped off in fashion to
create sound waves in an ordinary
telephone receiver? Yet this is pre-
cisely what happens.
In the circuit of the little atomizer
arc is shunted, as the electrical men
say, the secondary of an ordinary
telephone transmitter, such as you use
every day. Then the arc is set going,
you talk into the receiver. and the in
visible waves that go speeding
through space at such incredible ve-
locity and in such incredible numbers.
have their heads chopped off a little.
"a n-millionth of an inch there, with
the result that a wave, exactly like
the sound waves of your voice, is lit
orally superimposed upon the electri-
cal waves from the arc. Both sets of
waves are carried up from the room
where you are talking, by means of
wires to the high antennae which
hang from the familiar poles OF
wireless station. AS the waves rush
outward, the ether, or whatever sub
stance fills space. begins to quiyer, not
alone with these waves, but indirectly
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