The Maui news. [volume] (Wailuku, Maui, H.I.) 1900-current, 1919-09-26
Fires Started
By Wireless

a dozen people and completely wreck
that it had passed neal a high-power
wireless plant and suggested that the
gas in the balloon might have taken
fire from a wireless spark or wave.
Whether this spectacular accident was
due to this or ONE other cause, it is
at least certain that our progress in
both aviation and autobiography is
likely often to bring wireless waves
into close touch with highly inflamma-
able gasbags carrying people and
valuable cargoes. And the Chicago
catastrophe lends immediate interest
to the announcement of a French
scientist, Mr.. George A. Leroy, of the
Municipal Laboratory of Rouen,
France, that he has proved that an
ordinary wireless telegram may actual
ly start a fire. His Investigations
were described by Jacques Boyer in
an article contributed to The Scienti-
fc American New York, June AZ.
Mr.. Leroy's discover was stimulated
by several lawsuits in which fires
were asserted to have originated from
the electric waves set up by wireless
apparatus. He showed the correct
ness of these charges, or at any rate
indicated their probability, through an
apparatus of his own, named by him
an lighting %resonator." By D its
the accompanying picture. By its
means Mr.. Leroy has set on fire COM
bustible materials several yards away.
the wave intensity at this distance be-
ing comparable to that produced at
far greater distances by the powerful
wireless apparatus commonly in use.
Writes Mr.. Boyer, in substance;
THE igniting %resonator, as set up
for Mr.. Leroy's experiments, consists
of a glass bulb with four apertures,
operated as a r~esonator of the class
ical Hertz type, but with the spark
occurring in a closed vessel, in con
tact with various inflammable sub
stances which are there submitte'; to
test. The upper aperture in the YES
sci is closed by a stopper through
which pass a manometer, a the 20
meter, and a drainage-tube with a
cock. Opposite it, the lower opening
gives passage, through heavy packing,
to a wire that supports, inside the
vessel, a light table OF mica on which
are placed the inflammables for test:
also to a second d~rainage-tube with
a cock, which meets the upper one
already mentioned.
THE entire bulb is immersed in a
bath OF oil of vaseline, itself enclosed
in an inverted bell-vat. Once this
igniting resonator was ready for ac-
ton, Mr.. Leroy projected upon it
feeble Hertzian waves, produc' =
these by means of an induction coil.
This rudimentary apparatus en-
ables the skilled eXperimenter to
show without doubt the incendiary ac-
ton of the Hertzian waves, altho
their electric intensity is a
minimum in comparison with the
power of the large wireless stations
now in service. In particular, Mr..
Leroy has set up at some meters dis
lance inflammation of combustible
materials such as %guncotton, finder,
cotton, worsted, tow, paper, etc. For
example, by his observations upon
small bales of cotton enclosed in jute
wrappers with iron bands, as his ma
terial is ordinarily packed for ship
ment, he explains in the following
fashion the mechanism of so-called
spontaneous combustion which at
times bursts out in warehouses or on
board ships:
"In the course of handling, one of
of raw cotton breaks or comes loose
under the action of shock or some
other cause and a small fragment of
the metal projects in such way as to
form a miniature Hertzain resonator.
Then, under the influence of the wire
less waves sen out from some sta
ton, sparks pass and Immediately in
flame the covering of the cotton in
their immediate vicinity. Equally, the
contact between the metallic bands of
the bales. piled one on another in a
car or packed in the hull of a boat,
may establish an electric circuit offer
ing the conditions Of capacity and
self-induction necessary for the pro
duction of the phenomena of reson-
ance, In consequences, when the cir
cult finds itself interrupted by i'm
perfect contact between two bales,
incendiary sparks, apt to inflame the
cotton, are likely to be produced"