Charlevoix county herald., 1920-01-16

ceiving station, where they were auto
matically Joined together again. so as
to form the message as originally sent.
II, for example. 1t was desired to send
from Hoboken to Washington the mes
sage, Transport Leviathan sails June
25." 1t was proposed to make use of
two lines, one running. let us say,
through Harrisburg, the other via Will
mington. The message sent over the
Harrisburg wire would be broken up
something after this fachion "t-a-s-o-
t-e-i-t-a-s-i-s-u-e-w-n-yi-t" While the
portion going by way Of Wilmington
would read: OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES
e-t-f-f-h."
ITO create still further confusion in
the mind of anyone who might succeed
In intercepting one of these sets of
fragments 1t was proposed to superim-
pose 'camoufiage' message upon the
disconnected letters, the characters of
the camOufiage message to occupy the
spaces between the characters Of the
real message. BY an exceedingly In
genious device these apparently mex
tricably intermixed and unrelated let
tiers were automatically sorted out at
the receiving station and pieced to-
gether, like a jigsaw puzzle, so that
the message appeared precisely as II
was sent.
Utilizing the Telephone.
Going step further, the inventors
of this system proposed by the same
means to install system Of telephone
communication whereby the spoken
words would be broken up just as the
Morse characters were divided, certain
sounds In each word going over one
wire and the remaining sounds over
another, to be Joined together at the
receiving station into perfectly in
telligible conversation.
Here again a wholly separate and
extraneous conversation was superim-
posed over the sounds proceeding by
each route, so that were either of the
lines tapped the listener-in would be
rewarded for his pains by hearing a
torrent of sound which would convince
him that he was listening to cOmbi-
nation of Choctaw, Chinese, the raw
ings of John Mccullough, and the
symptoms Of severe cold. Notwith-
standing the undeniable ingenuity Of
this system, the signal corps experts
demonstrated, to the unconcealed as
constituent of the inventors, that they
could overhear and understand these
craZy-built conversations as readily as
though they were being held across a
dinner table In plain English"
Products of American Ingenuity.
The successful device (Which may,
of course, use none of the principles
involved in the system just outlined)
is one Of three evolved by Yankee in
genuity from the war which Major
Powell regards as "the most important
discoveries, so far as their effect on
the peaceful interests of the nation
are concerned, which have been pro-
dueed since Morse invented the tele-
phone and Marconi amazed us with
the wireless" One of them is the
radotelephope, by means of which per-
sons on the ground can converse with
aviators; and the other Is the discov.
cry of Chief Signal officer Squire that
growing trees can be used as sending
and receiving posts for radio mes.
sages.
Major Powell's book is devoted in
the main to the man with the silver
chevrons. He wrote ii at the request
of Secretary Baker and was retained
in the service to complete it. Readers
may be sure, therefore, that he had
access to all necessary records; but
there are moments when the heavy
hand of department head becomes APP.
parent