Popular Electrical Delusions

The history of the advancement in the use of electricity for the benefit of mankind, since Franklin’s famous experiment with the kite and the lightning, would, if given in its entirety, make a veritable romance. This form of energy enters so closely into the civilization of the twentieth century that some of its most marvelous manifestations, through familiar use, have become to a degree commonplace.

One of the peculiarities of the practical, every-day utilization of electricity is its general adoption by the public, without that public having any clear and comprehensive knowledge of the principles, the understanding of some of which makes its use possible. In the early history of the art its discovered secrets were not fully divulged by experts. Much seemingly useless care was taken to surround the art with a mysterious nomenclature, which tended rather to obscure than to make clear the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. As a result, people generally accepted the beneficent results, even when they did not understand the discovered principles.

To a marked extent this condition has changed, and the science, so far as it has progressed, is now an open book to intelligent readers and students. In many cities, also, the elementary principles of electricity are taught in the public schools, and almost every university and college has its special school for the study and practice of the art.

That the diffusion of knowledge concerning the art has not become universal, is shown in the widespread credulity with which announcements of startling discoveries in the electrical field are received and accepted as demonstrated truths. This disposition seems to be a survival of the early practice among laymen of accepting as genuine truths any statement which announced a marked advance even in the mysterious art. It was deemed sufficient that results were produced, and the principles which governed the application were practically ignored by laymen. It would seem, however, that some of the more recent announcements made in the branch of the electrical art which has to do with the transmission of messages, and potential energy for power purposes without the medium of wires, would cause the most indifferent to doubt. Broadly speaking, the art of wireless telegraphy, as it is called, is still in the experimental stage. Much has been accomplished in sending wireless messages from one vessel to another on the sea, and from vessels at sea to stations adjacent to the coast on land. So a limited degree of commercial use is made between vessels at sea and the shore stations. That the scope of wireless telegraphy will be broadened under the bulky experiments making is within reasonable expectation, although experiments, repeated year after year, have seemed to define certain clear limitations.

In the face of the fact that the most accomplished electricians in the world are marking time in the matter of wireless telegraphy, and the additional fact that, neither in the British Isles nor in the United States, has wireless telegraphy from point to point on land become an established commercial fact, the wildest stories of its achievements pass current among even intelligent laymen. But three of these claims need be considered at this time.

First: It is announced, in a current news item, that an electrical automobile, operating 1,000 or more miles from a wireless charging station, can renew its electrical energy from the distant wireless station while passing along the road, and without intervening wires. Second: It is announced that energy for the operation of machinery, 1,000 or more miles away is now transmitted from wireless telegraph stations without the use of wires. Third: The statement is confidently made that by means of wireless telegraphy a person in his home in Kansas City can cause a message to be received correctly, by wireless communication, by a friend on a train of cars moving anywhere between Kansas City and the Atlantic coast.

In the face of deliberate statements like these, it would seem to be waste of energy to point out the scientific flaw in each of these three propositions, or others which are similar. It is elementary, however, that the function of the most powerful waves generated by wireless telegraph appliances is not the transmission of energy for useful service at the distant point, but to make and break an electric circuit, by delicate appliances, enabling the use of a code of intelligent signals.

Evidently some of the latter-day dreams of Nikola Tesla have been coined into alleged fact, and it is apparent that these emanations of the vapor of the poppy are passing current. The law of the conservation of energy may, at some future date, be abrogated, through the instrumentality of wireless telegraphy; but the time is not yet.