The St. Mary banner. (Franklin, Parish of St. Mary, La.) 1889-1931, 1915-10-09

Just at present young
Hammond is getting
greater publicity than his father. 1t
seems probable that the German
army techncians have appropriated
his thermit shell, which will gnaW its
way through steel Orders. His wire
iess-controlled torpedo for harbor de-
Tense is about to be adopted by the
United States military services He
will probably sit some day on Secre-
tary of the Navy Daniels new board
Of inventors, with Edison and Ford
and Stenmetz
This is considerable progress for
even young American to make in
five years out of college. Hammond
follows right after his dad In that un-
official gazette of celebrities, who's
Who in America" We learn there
that the inventor was born in San
Francisco April Is, 1885, He is there
fore twenty-seven years old.
Hammond is a hard-bitten young
American, to use phrase of Sir Ar
thur Conan Doyle. Just at the tango
age" when with his fathers great
wealth he could cut wide swath in
gay and frivolous society," he has de-
voted his days and nights to abstruse
calculations, endless blueprints and
sputtering dynamos.
His keen, lean face and spare figure
remind one much of Henry Ford.
Both men are hard-headed, practical
Yankees. without a bit of fuss or pa
laver about them.
Reading further in our who's
Who" we find that in 1912, two years
after his graduation from the Sheffield
Scientific school of Yale university.
Mr.. Hammond was a delegate by APP
pointment of the United States gov
eminent to the Rado-Telegraphic con-
vention at London.
He is, moreover the treasurer and
chairman Of the committee on men,
bership of the Institute of Radio-Engi-
neers, member of the advisory COM
mittee Of the aerodynamic laboratory
of the Smithsonian institution. and a
member of the Royal Society of Arts
of London.
All this Mr.. Hammond has done
with three years still to 90 to the
thirty mark-not by being an infant
prodigy, but by hard work, by driving
every nerve and fiber of his why body
at full speed
Mr.. Hammond has an Office in lower
Broadway. New York city. but has
done most Of his work in the more
inspiring and less distractng atmos-
phere of beautiful little slate-roofed
laboratory situated in the side of a
crag overlooking the water at Glouces-
ter, Mass. Here he has conducted the
important experiments which NAV
mean much to America some day in
repelling powerful enemy
Nikola Tesla was the pioneer in tel
automatics, as the branch of electri-
cal science to which Mr. Hammond
has devoted himself is called. Tel
automatics is the control of mechani-
cal movements at great distance by
means of wireless waves.
Mr.. Hammond is not the first person
to control a water craft at distance
by wireless. But he is the first man
to do this effectively. He has taken
out more than one hundred patents to
protect his inventions. Incidentally
he has spent $4,000 in experiments.
Until Mr.. Hammond improved on
the previous devices. it was not pos
sible to guide by wireless a torpedo
making greater speed than eight
miles an hour and even then 1t was
impossible to prevent the Interference
of hostile wireless apparatus.
The young inventor has solved both
these difficulties. He can control a
boat or torpedo making SO knots, or
3S miles an hour. Wireless transmit.
tiers much more powerful than his own
have tried in vain to check the direc-
ton of his boat.
The secretary of war. Mr.. Hammond
recently announced. has recommended
that the Hammond system be pur-
chased by this government and be
kept as an American secret
Il congress will appropriate the
money q number Of wireless plants
and torpedo units to be directed by
radio will be constructed. One Of the