New-York tribune., 1922-10-16
Tubes
May Link N. Y.
With Niagara
Possibility Suggested When
New Transmitting Device
Proves Successful in Six
teen-Hour Atlantic Test
Science Given New Tool
Expert Asserts 1t Insures
Transatlantic Telephony,
and More i'm the Future

Possibility Of the transmission o,
Niagara's power to New York withou,
wires, by means of high-powered elec.
tron tubes. was suggested to DR.. E. F
w. Alexanderson, chief engineer of tn.
Radio Corporation Of America, yester
day by the announcement Of officer,
ofshe corporation that such tubes hat
been uses successfully for sixteen con
secutive hours yesterday in place o:
large alternators, of which DR.. Alexan
derson is the inventor, in handling
commercial traffic with Great Britain
and Germany on a wave length O.
! 10000 meters.
I'VE have seen here a new physica
| principle reduced to practice onsa larg
SCALE" he said. "Shali it fulfill til,
dreams that Edison's dynamo has no
yet fulfilled, TO carry Niagara's powe
to New York?
atlantic telegraphy has become !,
routine business, but the importance
of this demonstration is the bridging o
the ocean by few powerful vacuum
tube units said Mr. Alexanderson
'ln this case only six tubes were uset
and we can safely predict that the same
feat will some day be performed by {
oiASAS eAOCs out WHdt As tllC ASAtt
New Tool for Science
Although it has taken ten years to
get to the point where we have to-day
a transatlantic tube transmitter, in
these ten years the energy of the
vacuum tube has been increased more
than 100000 times. A few more years
of the same rate of improvement would
bring us beyond our widest dreams,
but all we need to say is that science
and engineering have received a new
tool. 1t marks a turning point like the
steam engine and the dynamo. It will
certainly give us transatlantic te-
lephony, but it will undoubtedly give US
much more"
The set itself is for the time being
composed of three 50-kilowatt 10000
volt water-cooled metal vacuum tubes,
known in the engineering world as
kenotrons, used as rectifers, and six
15,00O-volt 20-kilowatt water-cooled
metal pliatrons, used as high FREE
quency converters. For the expert
ment with the tube set one Of the new
mile and half long antenn@, sus-
pended from six towers, 425 feet high,
Of the Rocky Point station was used
and the tube succeeded in developing
and sustaining in the antenna cur
rem tof the strength of $50 amperes.
So successful was the set in opera
tion that the operators actually con-
trolling the automatic sending keys at
Cd Broad Street, in New York City, did
not know that they were controlling a
tube transmitter rather than an alter
nator until after the test was COM
pleted. An official of the corporation
said:
Operators Notice No Change
"The operators on the English and
German circuits, if they noticed a
change in the quality or the strength
of the received signal, did not COM
ment on it, so we assume that the sig
nal was favorably comparable to the
alternator signals. OF course, this is
the first time in the history of wireless
telegraphy that high-powered tube
transmitting set has operated for SO
long period over as great distance
as that between New York and Ger
many"
1t was said that while the setain it's
present stage was far from being re-
liable commercial transmitter. the tests
just concluded show that an alternative
type of equipment to the AIexanderson
alternator is on the way to aid Amer
lea in building up it's world wide wire
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