The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1918-11-08


YET at this moment the winged men,
bers Of our air cavalry take to the
clouds with the same nonchalance
that the average motorist tunes up for
a trip to the seashore Or mountains.
Robbed Of its battle dangers aviation
today stands out as an accomplished
fact, to be negotiated with ease, COM
fort and safety. Our boys after the
war will turn their garages into ham
CARS. The aerial postman breaking
records today between New York and
Washington is harbinger Of the new
era Of air transportation.
So after the war the wireless tele-
phone will be developed as casual
commercial asset and men will talk
with their business partners in Lon
don, Paris and Rome, say the scien-
lists, just as today they use the tele-
phone to communicate with Atlanta
or Chicago.
In the army and navy of the United
States this fall, radio-telephony is
playing a potent part in the business
of winning the war. Thousands Of
young men who go up to the radio
arms of the service are linking togeth-
er the fighting forces Of the nation so
that each and every separate unit is
closely united under a single guild
ance, working cohesively for the one
supreme attainment and at a moments
notice in the most intimate contact
with their military directors.
The great problem in radiO-tele-
pbony at first was the question Of
sufficient energy control. 1t was nec-
essary to develop transmitting sta
tons capable Of generating high-fre-
quency currents and radiating them so
that the currents induced in the re-
ceiving apparatus when rectified
would cause no disturbing noise in
the telephone receiver. 1t was neces-
sary also to find the means by which
the amplitude Of the high frequency
currents could be controlled and mod
ulated by the voice so that the ampli-
tude of radiated waves followed close
ly every variation in the voice.
Brought Under Control.
All Of these difficulties have been
overcome in the last few years by the
worlds renowned scientists. A sys-
TEN of control has been built up with
the pliotron as its potential pivot so
that the amount of energy in the wire
less telephone transmitter need be no
laropp thap tbot oopnopIv ucod ;u
standard telephone circuits. 1t has
been found possible to connect up this
radio telephone with the regular tele-
phone lines so that conversation may
be carried out between two people,
both of whom are connected with the
radio stations by means Of the regu-
lar land lines.
Two fields of activity for radio-tel-
ephony opened up with the develop
ment of the first wireless telephone.
The first was for long distance where
wire telephony was impossible over
submarine cables and expensive on
land. The other was for short dis.
tances between ships at sea, and be-
tween land stations.
Atmospheric Conditions.
Transoceanic communication is like
ly to be developed faster than inland
radio-telephony. 1t was pointed out
some time ago by J. J. Carly, the cleo
trical engineer whose achievement
made possible the first wireless tele-
phone messages from New York to
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, that transmits
sion across the ocean was easier than
across land because there were fewer
atmospheric disturbances.
Overcoming these disturbances is
the greatest problem we have at
hand" he said. "We do not know ex-
actly what causes them, but from our
first experiments we know that they
are greater in summer than in winter,
so are probably caused by electrical
disturbances in the atmosphere. Theo-
retically any number of messages can
be kept separate by tuning the appa-