The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1915-07-24

The old rule that sons of able men
don't amount to much is i'll observed
in the United States. A notable case
in point is John Hays Hammond, Jr.,
son OF the mining engineer and finan-
cier.
Just at present young Hammond is
getting greater publicity than his
father 1t seems probable that the Ger
man army technicians have appropri.
ated his thermit shell, which will
gnaw it's way through steel Orders.
His Understandable torpedo for
harbor defence is about to be adopted
by the United States military service.
He will probably sit some day on
Secretary of the Navy Daniels new
Board OF Inventors, with Edison and
Ford and Steinmetz.
This is considerable progress for
even a 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 Francis
CO April 10, 1888 He is therefore TWEEN
ty-seven years old.
Abjures Society.
Hammond is a hard-bltten young
American, to use a 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 obstruse
calculations, endless blueprints and
suffering dynamos.
His keen, lean face and spare figure
reminds one much Of Henry Ford.
Both men are hard-headed practical
Yankees without bit of fuss or pala.
yer about them.
Reading further in our who's
Who" we find that in 1912, two years
after his graduation from the Shelf
field Scientific school of Yale Uni
versity. Mr.. Hammond was a dele
gate by appointment of the United
States government to the Radio-Tele-
graphic Convention at London.
He is, moreover, the treasurer and
chairman of the committee on mem
bership Of the Institute of Radio-En-
gineers, a member of the advisory
committee of the Aerodynamic Lab
oratory of the Smithsonian Institution
and member of the Royal Society of
Arts of London.
Succeeds Through Work.
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 fibre of his wiry body
at full speed.
MI. Hammond has an office in low
er Broadway, New York City, but has
done most Of his work in the more
inspiring and less distracting atmos-
phere of a beautiful little slate-roofed
laboratory situated in the side of a
craig overlooking the water at Glou-
cester, 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
telautomatics, as the branch of cleo
trical science to which Mr.. Hammond
has devoted himself is called. Telau-
tomatoes is the control Of mechanical
movements at a great distance by
means of wireless waves.
Mr. Hammond is not the first per-
son to control a water craft at dis
lance by wireless. But he is the first
man to do this effectively. He has ia
ken out more than one hundred pat
ents to protect his inventions. Incl
dentally he has spent fifty thousand
dollars in experiments.
Until Mr.. Hammond improved on
the previous devices. it was not pos
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 a hostile wireless apparatus
The young inventor has solved bith