Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1915-08-20

just at present young
Hammond is getting
greater publicity than his father. 1t
seems probable that the German
army technicians have appropriated
his thermit shell, which will gnaw its
way through steel Orders. His wire
fess-controlled torpedo for harbor de-
fense 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 Steinmetz.
Thls is considerable progress for
even young American to make in
hVe 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 10, 1883. He is there
fore twenty-seyen 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 a 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
LAYER 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 delegate by APP
pointment Of the United States gov
eminent to the Radio-Telegraphic con-
vention at London.
He is, moreover. the treasurer and
chairman Of the committee on mem
bership of the Institute of Radio-Engi.
neers, a member of the advisory COM
mittee OF the aerodynamic laboratory
or the Smithsonian institution. and
member Of the Royal Society of Arts
OF London.
All this Mr. Hammond has done
with three years still to go to the
thirty mark-not by being an infant
prodigy, but by hard work, by driving
every nerve and fiber of his wiry 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 distracting atmos-
phere Of beautiful little slate-roofed
laboratory situated In the side Of
crag overlooking the water at Glouces-
fer. Mass. Here he has conducted the
important experiments which may
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 a great distance by
means of wireless waves.
Mr.. Hammond is not the first person
to control water craft at a 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 DOS
sible to guide by wireless a torpedo
making a greater speed than eight
miles an hour, and even then It 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 SS knots, or
38 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.
If congress win appropriate the
money a number of wireless plants
and torpedo units to be directed By
radio will be constructed. One of the