Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1920-11-04
NEW ELECTRIC WONDER
Worlds biggest Wireless Plant. TbOus.
and Words N Minute

1T is not so very long ago since Jim
the village telegraph operator learned to
take twenty words a minute. This
stamped Jim as an expert in his day
and soon he was in the Hoyt's Corners
station of the valley railroad at a sal
airy of S55. month. That was Jim's
future. From the village operator he
went to the big station and from there
to the train masters office. Many of
our noted railroad presidents rose from
Jim's humble station and many of us
have at one time or another toyed with
the keys and wondered what kind of
ears Jim had to make sense out of the
strange clicks which came over the
wire.
Then came the dawn of the wireless
age only few years back. Remember
the sensation when somebody announc-
ed that wires were not needed to record
the dots, dashes and silences? Then
on came Marconi and Carly and a num-
her of others and soon we had transatlan-
tc communication by wireless. His
tory repeated itself for the Jims of
another generation began all over to
do what Jim did as boy. They bought
toy radio outfits and rugged uup fire
less apparatus on roofs and quickly
we were again a nation of operators,
The war interrupted all this amateur
ish delight and all hands turned in to
wireless as a practical means of
communication. 1t was greatly i'm
proved and much was learned from
fields of foreign development.
Now comes the super achievement!
Wireless wave words at the rate of
100 per minute. Try to talk a thou
sand words a minute; see If you come
nearer to fifty than you do to one
hundred. No human being can receive
messages at the rate of a thousand words
per minute. They had added some five,
ten or fifteen to Jim's record of 20 but
that Is the limit Of human capacity.
In a great plain on Long Island, near
New York, they are going to build
plant on a plot ten miles square. When
completed the work will cost ten mill
lion dollars. 1t will be possible to sig
nal around the world from this plant.
1t will be five times as powerful as
the famous station at Nauen or the
French station at Bordeaux. The gener-
al Electric Company of Schenectady
which designed much of the apparatus
is also credited with the receiving in
strument witch makes possible the rec
ord of 1000 words a minute.
The instrument Is partly a photo
graphic apparatus. A light weight mir
ror flutters in electromagnetic tune
with the minute electric impulses COM
ing from the big steel towers out in
the field. The oscillations vary just
as Jim used to vary his dots and DASH
es. The mirror then reflects beam OF
light on a moving, senstized tape. The
tape goes through a developing fluid
and then Just as on a stock brokers'
tape you read off the message. There
to in nta nd 6ash
inch of the tape. The receiving opera
tor can read this message at the rate of
so to 100 words a minute.
The great value of this new inven-
ton Is that 1T will allow a great num-
Der of messages to be sent during the
day when atmospheric conditions are
best suited for wireless This Is be-
tween 4 and 10 o'clock in the morning.
new electric marvel has been added
to the category of wonder achievements!
ments
At the Wise power plant in California
Is the latest single discharge water
turbine in the world, being about TWEEN
ty thousand horsepower. To get some
idea of the power OF sucH q machine,
imagine a string of horses six abreast and
six miles long; that would be the equiv
alent of horsepower vested in that
one unit However, this record Will
soon be broken.
There is to be installed in the Kern
River a new plant with aunt OF twenty
three thousand horsepower. Later on
this record will be broken for the great
Western Power Company at its new
Caribou plant where a thirty thousand
unit will tie installed
California has developed In hydro
electric energy, per capita, six times
.,,ore than the rest Of rest OF the United
States. Miracles have been wrought In
pumping water on to the vast arid lands
where barrenness formerly reigned SUI
preme. Fertile fields of barley and pro-
life orchards now flourish on land pre-
viously inhabited by jack rabbits.