To Run the World with Wireless Waves

With the radio, nothing is impossible!

This is the assurance given to the world by scientists who are constantly experimenting with the mysteries of wireless waves. And as to the trans- mission of power they point to airplanes, automobiles, trains and ships sent speeding through air and over land and water without the aid of fuel; factories in spotless towns drawing their power out of the very air; farm implements operated by distant waterfalls these may seem to be incredible things — miracles!

But forward-looking experimenters with radio do not deem these things to be impossible. Fifteen, even ten, years ago, a man whose every statement was qualified by editorial warnings to the effect that he was a dreamer, prophesied a score of wireless miracles, and one by one they have become realities. Scientists today declare that "what has been done by electricity will be as nothing when compared with what the future has in store for the development of the radio." And only the other day this or that specific thing which was predicted came to be tested and ap- proved and put to the service of man.

"The present limitations in the transmission of power by wireless," Nikola Tesla says, "will be overcome, in two ways — through the adaptation of underground conductors insulated by power, and through the introduction of the wireless art."

Hooper, "the father of navy wireless"; Culver, hitherto the head of air service radio and now of the War College, experts in the Bureau of Standards, in the Signal Corps, in the Patent Office, take as commonplace, now, things that seem to be miracles.

Power is transmitted even now by radio, but is not transmitted efficiently enough to warrant commercial exploitation. "It is perfectly simple," scientists say, "to control power by wireless. It would be easy to set all the clocks of a a radio message across the Atlantic, and you realize the absurdity of saying that this or that will not come to pass. And when we can transmit power in quantity by wireless everything in the world of power and locomotion will be changed."

"We'll be able to run anything," another added. "Vibrations in ether pervade the thickest stone walls. Messages have been received in the lowest levels of deep mines. You can imagine whole communities working to the tune of wireless waves."

"Waves in the ether," another goes on, "mean everything to life on this planet. Waves in ether, the medium that is assumed to pervade all space, even though it is occupied by matter, activate the world. Among waves whose lengths are shorter than sixty-five thousandths of an inch are those to which are due photography and the marvelous results of the X-ray. Longer waves, up to about double this length, are visible to the eye and are called light. Still longer waves we detect by feeling, and they are known as heat. Similar waves ranging in length from one hundred to eighty thousand feet, produced by electrical means, are the ether waves that are utilized by, and render possible, the wireless telegraphy and telephony of today. We don't know actually what these waves are. We don't know what electricity is, or sound, or light. We do know certain laws in accordance with which ether waves operate, and that certain things will result when we do certain things with these phenomena. It is precisely the same with reference to the transmission of power by wireless. We think we will find laws by which we can make wireless transmit power in quantity."

Every time a wireless message is sent, as Donald Wilhelm points out in the Illustrated World, power is transmitted enough power to activate a receiving instrument. It is known that the power transmitted is proportionately greater when the distances are diminished. Accordingly, in order to increase the range of radio, in other words to increase its power, inventions calculated to increase its efficiency are in order. Consequently, though most inventors are thinking in terms of communication rather than power, there are a thousand and one experts at work on the tremendous problem of transmitting power by wireless.

Mr. Wilhelm says that, although he is not privileged to tell all that he is informed is going on behind the scenes in Washington, it is common knowledge that some definite trends of experimentation are in order. One result is that high-power stations, by using improved sending and receiving apparatus, have been able steadily to increase transmitting power.

It is explained that wireless waves are like the waves created by disturbance of the surface of a pool. They spread in all directions. "But," as one expert explains, "when they can be confined to a range of five degrees or so, results better from 10 to 30 per cent. in efficiency can be secured."

When wireless waves are concentrated by any device, the road to transmission of high power is in order. "Wired wireless," wireless dots and dashes and telephonic messages sent along wires bearing high or low currents, is a good illustration. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company is now regularly using wired wireless on some of its principal lines and getting five or six times more use from those lines than ever before.

Wireless, in short, heretofore has progressed in two phases — that of communication and that of control, such as the direction of the manless battleship "Iowa," and the direction of aerial torpedoes and planes.

Increasing efficiency in these fields leads the scientist to the inevitable field of transmission of power. When that field is conquered, and ex- perts believe it will be conquered, the world will doubtless be in large measure run by wireless.

All means of mechanical locomotion will then be supplied, perhaps, with power by radio. Airplanes, automobiles, trains and ships will be driven by radio. And then, if one is willing to let the imagination run, farms, mines, factories. will perhaps work industriously to the pulse of miraculous ether waves.