Nations Interested in Marconi's Suit

Some of World's Greatest In- ventors on Hand to Testify at Wireless Hearing.

JUDGE VEEDER WELL POSTED.

Learned Opinion in Infringement Action Last Year Attracted Wide Attention.

The story of the greatest romance of modern scientific achievement, that of communicating through space without wires, is being told in a wealth of fascinating detail in Brooklyn just now before Judge Van Vechten Veeder in the United States District Court in the hearing of the suit for infringement of patents brought by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America against the Atlantic Communication Company and others, representing in this country the great German Telefunken wireless system. Since the be- ginning of the war the latter has been maintaining the only communication between this country and Germany through its large station at Sayville, L. I.

Many of the world's greatest inventors, pioneers in the development of the wireless, headed by Guglielmo Marconi himself, are on hand to give testimony in the suit, which probably will require two months in the hearing. The international aspect of the case is indicated by the names of these experts. They include Professor Braun, the noted German inventor; Nicola Tesla and Professor Pupin of Columbia University. Count Von Arco, another famed German scientific inventor, who also was wanted as a witness, is detained in Europe on account of the services he is rendering the field for the German Army in superintending the latest phase of warfare, including the use of asphyxiating gases and other deadly inventions perfected by him.

Co-defendant with the Atlantic Communication Company are August Merchens, Paul Schnitzler, Karl George Frank, Paul Pichon, Charles C. Galbraith and Robert H. Armstrong, the latter of the firm of Galbraith & Arm- strong of New York.

Learned Opinion By Judge Veeder In Former Marconi Suit.

The story of scientific achievement forming the background of the suit, which brings to America another phase of the contest between Britain and Germany, is told by Judge Van Vechten Veeder in one of the most learned opinions ever handed down from the bench, on March 17, 1914, in upholding the claims of the Marconi Wireless Company of America in its suit for infringement of the same patents against the National Electric Signaling Company (the Fessenden System)—a decision which on account of its scientific accuracy delighted the hearts of wireless experts throughout the world and caused it to be circulated internationally.

In his opinion Judge Veeder traces the origin of wireless telegraphy from the day, in 1842, when Morse, in giving a pulpit demonstration of his wire telegraphy in this city, devised a plan whereby he made the waters of the bay conduct electric current after a passing vessel parted wires he had stretched from Governor's Island to Castle Garden for the purposes of his demonstration. He also tells how Sir William Preece, of the British postal service, subsequently worked out more extensive methods of operation on the same principle, and successfully employed in short distances the sending of signals by the system of electromagnetic induction through the production of a magnetic field in one complete circuit inducing a current in another complete circuit in virtue of the stretching of magnetic lines from the transmitting to the receiving circuit. South and Phelps both used the same principles, the inductive system, as applied to railway telegraphy.

Judge Veeder traces the wireless development on to the achievements of Professor Dolbear of Tufts College, who was granted a patent in 1886, to the patent granted to Thomas A. Edison in 1891 for a signaling system having elevated induction plates, supported on masts and connected with the earth.

During the period of his researches Edison declared he had discovered that "if sufficient elevation be obtained to overcome the curvature of the earth's surface and to reduce to the minimum the earth's absorption, there could be electric telegraphing or signaling between distant points without the use of wires connecting such distant points." He deemed this discovery especially applicable to telegraphing across bodies of water, between ships at sea, and between ship and shore. The method of operation was described as the variation of electrical tension in the two circuits. Perhaps no more lucid and comprehensive description of the working of the wireless mystery has ever been given than that by Judge Veeder, who continues:

Judge Veeder's Description of the Working of Wireless.

"All signaling at a distance, whether with or without wires, requires three fundamental factors; a device to produce the signal, a medium to carry it, and a device to receive or detect it. The transmitter, in its simplest form, may be briefly described. Radiation is produced by the sudden discharge of a Leyden jar or other condenser. This discharge is secured by arranging a circuit commencing in one plate and ending in the other plate of the con- denser, and containing a spark gap of such length that when in process of charging the pressure in the condenser has reached a certain point, the air between the balls of the gap is broken down and a spark passes across the gap. Until the spark passes the circuit is incomplete and no discharge takes place, but the spark renders the air between the balls a conductor, and by sudden completing the circuit causes the condenser to discharge instantaneously through the gap. The charge in the condenser rushes from the positive plate through the spark gap to the negative plate, overcharging that plate and then rushing back again, the process being repeated until by loss of energy an equilibrium is finally established. The operation is analogous to the plucking of a spring in a vice. Pull aside one end and its elasticity tends to make it recoil; let it go and its inertia causes it to overshoot its normal position; both its elasticity and inertia cause it to swing to and fro until its energy is exhausted. The elastic displacement of the spring corresponds to electrostatic charge, or roughly speaking, to electricity; its inertia corresponds to magnetism. The nature of the oscillatory discharge was investigated by Henry as early as 1839, and the conditions of capacity and inductance necessary to produce such a discharge were subsequently established by Kelvin and Helmholtz. The connecting medium by means of which this energy is carried on in the form of waves is the all-pervading ether of space. The theory that action is possible at a distance across empty space is now exploded. Matter cannot act where it is not, but only where it is."

Judge Veeder goes on to say that the hypothesis of the universal ether was originated largely to afford some sort of basis for a theory which would account for the transmission of light and radiant heat energy. He refers to the fact that the theory of luminiferous ether has long been well known and of the demonstrable fact that the waves of light travel at the rate of 186,000 miles a second, thus taking eight minutes on the journey from the sun to the earth. The kinship between the luminiferous ether and the medium by means of which an oscillatory discharge of energy is transmitted, first suggested by Faraday in 1846, was theoretically demonstrated by the English physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, in 1864. Heinrich Hertz, professor of physics in the University of Bonn, verified Maxwell's theory, making in 1888 an epoch-making series of experiments that made radio-telegraphy possible.

Sir Oliver Lodge and Edouard Branly improved on Hertz's appliances, but it remained for Sir Edward Crookes to draw attention for the first time, in 1892, to the practical aspect of Hertz's discovery.

The next step referred to in his review of wireless development by Judge Veeder consisted of the observations of Nicola Tesla in 1893 before the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, in a lecture on the subject. He predicted and outlined the technical grounds on which he based his forecast, that wire- less telegraphy was a possibility. Sir Oliver Lodge, in 1894, announced in a lecture before the Royal Institute of Great Britain the result of important experiments of his own, in reviewing the work of Hertz. He showed then by diagram the form of the Hertzian waves. Professor A. S. Popoff, a Russian scientist, next carried on the international solution of the problem by important experiments with Hertzian waves, in 1895, as a result of which he discovered that he could by them detect the existence of a distant thunderstorm.