The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1921-04-23
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HAsKIN, Director,
Washington, ID. G.
WRITING BY WIRELESS

written message transmitted 1000
1 miles instantaneously without wire or
cable is the. latest feat of wireless
telegraphy.
/ This wireless writing machine,
which will make it possible for a man
| in the wilds of Alaska to capture the
news of the world in written form by
merely setting a trap for 1t, so TO
speak, and by which an explorer
might locate his position on the face
of the earth by wireless, within SS
| feet of exact, is the invention OF two
government scientists working in the
| bureau of standards. Another gov
| ernment department, the coast and
geodetic survey, expects to save by the
use of it this summer, three times as
much as it cost to perfect the inyen-
ton and make two of the machines.
The whole achievement is one more
! ILLUSTRATION of the value OF s7ientiflc
research by the government Depart
ments, which gets such scanty sup
port.
The machine itself, a simple looking
affair which weighs about twenty-five
pounds, exclusive of the two storage
| batteries and the metal chronograph
drum, is the result of research work
! by Dr. E. A Eckhardt and Dr. j. Z:
Karcher. Small in size, light in weight
and easy to operate, it offers solu-
ton to many of the vexing problems
now existing in radio operation.
For example. under the present sys-
tenn of listening for the dots and
dashes with a telephone receiver, two,
three or more sending stations may,
| by sending signals out simultaneously,
mix their messages in the ether, ana
jam the air." The man at the reeelV-
ing end, listening for one particular
message. must adjust his apparatus to
| tune to a wave length as nearly as
possible equal to that of the sender
whom he wishes to catch The other
senders seriously interfere and often
cause the reeeivefSto lose or garble
parts of the message. This new in
vention goes a long way toward eliml-
mating that difficulty.
The machine was designed to meet
the need of an autographs wireless
time recording apparatus to obviate
the expensive stringing of wires to
places remote from telegraph lines and
to eliminate the lag due to reception
by ear, and recording of a signal by
hand.
How 1t Works.
The recording is done roughly in
the following manner, according to
the semi-technicaI explanation of the
inventors, 4
for the particular wave length de-
sired to be caught. AS the signals
sent out are gathered in by the an
tenna, which can be strung on any
light poles reaching about 40 feet
above the ground, oscillations are
started in a local circuit, thru an
"electron tube" This local circuit de-
rives it's power from an ordinary stor-
age battery such as those used in
self-starters for automobiles. The
starting of these oscillations releases
enough direct current energy from
the batteries to operate a small relay,
or magnet set in some respects like
doorbell, but capable of more delicate
adjustment.
This relay or magnet set, makes
and breaks power in another circuit de-
rived from a second storage battery.
This second circuit operates another
magnet set, to which the stylus issat-
ltached.
The stylus in the present apparatus
is an ordinary fountain pen. 1t is in
contact with revolving drum which
has sheet of paper placed on it. The
dots and dashes are recorded as
humps in the otherwise straight line
Short humps indicate dots, and long
ones dAshes.
The action can be readily likened to
that of machine gun which must be
cooked each time before it is fired,
which action takes places automatical-
ly and rapidly. The first circuit fires
! the gun and pushes back the hammer,
ready to fire again, so to speak. AS
| long as the circuit stays closed the
hammer" stays back. But when the
circuit is broken, corresponding to
| pressing the trigger, then the second
airy circuit is closed and the hammer
or stylus goes on its way to make a
mark.
The action of the mechanism IS
very much more selective than the
receiving action now in use. 1t abso-
| lutely eliminates any chance of the
message being garbled by wave
| length even closely approximating
those which it wishes to gather and
record.
Permanent Record.
| The record thus made on paper is
permanent. and the message can be
deciphered at leisure. In a recent
test, signals sent out from Lyons,
France, 1000 miles away, were caught
in the heart of the residential district
| of Washington, and transferred to a
record which even person unskilled
in the Morse code could readily trans
| late
The machine that morning had been
! in the bureau of standards, a few
miles away. In the afternoon it was
/ installed downtown, the antennae were
run up on light poles. and the message
caught in the drawing room Of the
house.
With this machine it is possible to
record simultaneously, with the same
pen, the SECONDS OF local Tune, as Iur-
nished by the local standard chrome
meter and compare them with the
standard time as sent out by wireless
| from observatories, without any err
rors incident to lag" of the instru-
ments.
In this way the latitude of a spot
far away from cables or wires. and out
of touch with the world, can be deter
mined to within two hundredths of n
second of time, about thfrty-three
feet, on the earths surface. This
| makes the invention extremely Valu-
able to geographers, astronomers and
surveyors.
| A machine designed to perform
much the same functions has been
turned out in France. but its COM
plexity and non-portability, together
with its high cost. and irregular ac-
tion,> prevented it from being more
than a laboratory experiment. Ser
man scientists tried to work out the