The Snowflake herald. [volume] (Snowflake, Ariz.) 1913-1969, 1922-06-02

INTO general use IOr cOulIueFCldt pun
poses The longest telephone cable
actually operating today is about lOO
miles Ia extent AS a matter of fact
ordinary cable telephony has not yet
taken place between England and Hol-
land. although these two countries
have such intimate commercial reia-
items that there can be no question
about the demand.
The trouble la underwater cable
telephony lies i'm the very pronounced
distortion which takes place after the
electrical waves, which are the equiv
alent of the vocal sounds, have passed
few miles through the cable. Even
in the tWenty-odd miles between Eng
land and France it has been found
necessary to place on the ocean bed
special appliances for overcoming this
distortion These appliances add con-
siderably to the expense and upkeep
of the circuit.
Now, it is curious fact that, al
though on electrical oscillation pro-
jected through an under-sea cable be-
comes rapidly distorted. an electrical
wave radiated across the ether by a
modern wireless apparatus retains Its
original characteristics however great
the distance over which it may travel.
In wireless telephony we convert
the moduIatlons of human speech into
equivalent modulations of the elec-
tricaI waves, and radiate them through
the ether until they strike the aerial
wires Of receiving apparatus. There
they are reconverted into sound waves.
such as can be recognized by the hui
man ear AS the ether is so elastic
as TO allow these electrical waves to
maintain their original form. the ques-
ton of reception is little more than
that of magnifyfng the incoming sig
nails
I. Wireless speech has already taken
place across the North Atlantic ocean,
0ut the apparatus employed was of
an experimental, rather than Il COM
.Jmercial character, and therefore de-
Velopment is necessary before one can
record transatlantic conversation as
a commercial possibility.
TO conduct uninterrupted speech
Iyer sea distances similar to that be-
aween London and New York will re-
.quire. at any rate with our present
day experience, considerable power at
the transmitting end. Until few
weeks ago might have been tempted
to estimate this power at the electrical
equivalent of over 1000 horsepower,
but the experiments which have been
engaged upon recently on my yacht,
che Electra. iead me to modify my
estimate. Hitherto. as everyone CON-
necsed with wireless is aware, we have
always found it necessary to keep
lin reserve on commercial wireless cir
SSits large amount of electrical en-
ergy Tor the purpose of breaking
through terrestrial electrical disturb
ances. The sources of these disturb
ances ate not always clear, but they
are such that at intervals during the
day. and uatahIy in the summer
months. they set up in the wireless
rereiying apparatus such din of
meaningless noises that 1t is difficult
60 read the Systematically transmitted
signal.
This new apparatus. which has been
developed by engineers of my COM
pany. makes it possible for us to sift
the mixed wireless and nOn-wireless
impulses so that we obtain on our au-
tomatlc recorders, or in the telephone
receivers only the signals sent out by
the distant wireless stations. I think