Omaha daily bee., 1919-06-29
By ROBERT WELLEs RICHIE.

(staff Correspondent Universal service.)
London, June 2S.-Cross roads of
the air, with an invisible traffic cop
to direct the sable wings of night
swooping aeroplanes in a voice that
carries 10000 feet up through the
void below the mapping of the
skies in letters that crack and
soarkle under the mystic drive OF
the wireless force; the business man
CT the future debating over 5000
miles from mid-ocean to his stenog-
rapher;' in a New York skyscraper-
here gre the high points in the cold
ly scientific dress of a wireless ex-
perry His name is Godfrey Isaacs
AND he is managing director of the
Marconi system in London.
Z 1t is rarely that Isaacs lets the
fublic into his condolences. When
his company projected the human
voice across the Atlantic by wireless
telephone last March and l went to
him for an interview on the phenom-
era he fatty refused, saying with
typical British conservatism that he
didn't see anything to beat a bass
drum about" So when l took his
brief published remarks at lunch
con of the Aldwych club as cue
and went to his office to request
some amplihcation of themes he had
touched upon, it was with no as
surance of success. Here is what
the managing director said:
Have Lightless Searchlight.
why, I merely mentioned the
new wireless device called the d.
rection finder-quite a simple thing
and already past the experimental
stage as to its use in conjunction
with aeroplane flights. Of course,
you know all about it."
This without the flicker of an eye
lash to betray the cool irony i'm
piled:
mo? Well, here it is in a nut
shell: The wireless directional pro-
jector is what YOU might call a
searchlight without light. 1t
throws up into the air not beam,
but a signal, which can be made
either widely dispersed or concer-
trated and which registers on an
aeroplane. wireless receiving appara-
tus just as the beam of search
light registers on the retina of the
eye.
you catch the idea? An aviator,
say, is flying by night over a fixed
L. 80 ft,,,pr h1, dou
through fog or which obscures the
earth beneath and prevents him
picking up his landmarks. Sudden
ly his wireless tells him this is
Guilford' and it continues telling
him the name of the town directly
beneath him until he has passed out
of the zone of that particular di-
regional protector. Next he knows
comes the message this is Windsor
Forest and shortly comes the flash
this is Hendon Aerdrome.' Then
he begins his wide circle for land
ing. for that is his destination.
Is Not Experimental.
mind you, this is not theory: it
is practice. It can be standardized
and put into operation tomorrow.
All over the British Isles and the
continent where aviation routes have
been and may be established in
future these aerial semaphores-if
YOU wish to call them that-can be
established. When this is brought
about no aeroplane pilot can lose his
way, even in the heaviest darkness
or Siickest fog"
Mr.. Isaacs added that it did not
require a severe stretch of the imagl-
nation to conceive in some near
future the skies over all the most
populous portions of the world
sparkling these signals from thou
sands of cities and aeroplane fleets
guided by these unseen buoys as the
argosies of the sea today set their
courses by lighthouses and whistling
lights. 1t was simply matter of
organization, he declared.
The managing director alluded to
another great advance in the uncov-
ering of wireless possibilities; this
was the perfection of a system to
prevent the tanning" of wireless
messages sent from various stations
at the same time. In narrow and
busy stretches of water such as the
channel, this confusion of transmits
sion of messages through the air had
rendered many wireless attempts.
futile in the recent past and it was
a painful matter of record that dur
ing the great war the German wire
less station at Nauen often sue
ceeded in drowning wireless spars<
from allied sources which were sent
from weaker instruments.
Collisions to Be Eliminated. /
"This all has been rectifed," said
Mr.. Isaacs. "Now no matter how
many messages are passing through
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