Nikola Tesla Harnesses Static to 'Phone and Sends Pictures by Wireless Telegraphy

Verified accounts of the sending of wireless telephone messages from Washington to Honolulu, 4,600 miles, have elicited a statement from Nikola Tesla as to his development of telephony without the aid of wires.

He comes forth with the announcement that he has practically perfected a "world system," whereby, through the use of half a dozen great stations at various parts of the globe, all the inhabitants of this fair earth can not only talk to one another but can also see one another.

Tesla declares that his apparatus will transmit pictures without wires, and the faces of persons talking will be accurately revealed when his "system" is put in operation. His mode of transmitting pictures is based on a plan used in ordinary telegraphy. But he insists that he has refined and improved that plan until it is entirely feasible.

The transmission of photographs by telegraph has been accepted as possible for half a dozen years. To Professor Korn of Munich goes much of the credit for the invention of such transmission. While the idea is said to be commercially practicable, little has been done in the matter of its application to every day use, however.

Like the "talking-moving pictures," announced as perfected more than a year ago, which Thomas A. Edison asserted would revolutionize the film business and positively put legitimate theaters out of business, telegraphed pictures have failed to make a "go" of it.

Edison said he had synchronized motion pictures and phonographs, that he had perfected a control system whereby the talking machine would keep exact time with the action of the picture and that conversation of the actors on the screen would be heard, as their lips moved to form the words.

Little is heard of the "talkies" today. Somehow they didn't seem to "catch on." Many of the pictures did not synchronize with the phonographs, and the bang of a saucepan was heard a few seconds after it was seen to drop to the floor in the picture.

But that was not all. In certain pictures, where the action and dialogue did synchronize, even there the effect was not what had been fondly hoped for. The voices did not sound natural, the action of the picture was slowed up to permit the actors to explain by speech what otherwise the spectators would have "got" from their actions.

However, Tesla's invention if it makes good as far as wireless telephony is concerned, excluding the transmission of pictures — will prove an inestimable boon to civilization. It will do away with millions of miles of wires, thousands of miles of "line," of "right of way" which must be owned and kept up. It will mean that "wires are down" will not Isolate a city or a section, as it did the national capital on the date of Mr. Taft's inauguration and on so many other occasions when tires, floods and tornadoes leveled the poles.

Wireless telegraphy has made obsolete the expression "sealed orders," and naval fiction. "Sealed orders" meant that a commander sailed out of port before he broke the seal on the envelope containing his orders and found out where he was going to. He was usually described as piping all hands on deck, breaking the seal with much gusto and then reading the instructions as to where he was to go and what he was to do when he got there.

Safe at sea, it was figured that even if any of the crew were traitors, they could not impart their knowledge to the enemy except through the rather doubtful expedient of chucking a message overboard in a bottle.

Today "sealed orders" are a thing of the past, since a commander can be directed from his admiralty office at all times by means of wireless. And by the same token his instructions are kept strictly to himself and his trusted staff through fear of treachery on the part of anyone who might have access to the ship's wireless, or who might have a little private wireless of his own to warn the enemy.

Nikola Tesla says the only reason he can achieve what he promises to accomplish in wireless telephony is because he has solved a means of eliminating static.

Static is the electricity in the air which so bothers wireless operators, telegraph operators and telephone men. It breaks up wireless messages, cuts in on wires and drowns out messages, and plays hob generally. There is less static in the air at night than in the daytime, which is one reason why so much wireless work is done at night.

Electrical experts have long agreed that the man who can harness static can solve all the perplexing questions of wireless telegraphy and telephone, and wireless control of anything.