Scientists Doubt Tesla

Electrical Expert Jones Says Professor's Invention Isn't New.

MORSE DID MUCH THE SAME IN '42

Sent Messages Without Wires — Experiment Successful — Tesla's Reply to Edison.

The remarkable story told in The World yesterday of the final development of Tesla's invention by which sound can be conveyed to any distance without the use of wires excited widespread comment and attention among electrical experts of this city. Mr. Tesla's world wide repute as a discoverer gave the announcement great weight.

No less remarkable than the Tesla invention was Edison's caustic comment on it.

Mr. Edison said in brief that there was nothing to discuss in Tesla's invention; that Tesla had told of nothing accomplished; that a similar idea had been tried and found to be of no practical value, and that to send a sound wave to England would require 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 horse-power.

Prof. Tesla's reply is interesting, and the comments made by Frank W. Jones, the chief electrical expert of the Postal Telegraph Company, are invested with peculiar significance:

"I cannot believe that Mr. Edison made the remarks attributed to him." said Prof. Tesla yesterday. "He was probably misunderstood. But for the information of the public at large I may tell you that it will be possible to convey a sound wave to England or to any other distance with one horse-power instead of 6,000,000, I will undertake to do It.

"If Mr. Edison is correctly quoted 1 can only say that he is wrong in supposing that my invention is the same as that of Marconi or Hertz, to which he evidently refers. In its scope and purpose it is entirely different, and I hope may have larger influence in its effects upon the human race."

Mr. Jones, seated in his office on the sixth floor of the Postal Telegraph Building, dictated this statement:

"Tesla is by no means the father of this invention. Hertz may be said to be the fountain head. What are known as the Hertzian waves were, by practical experiments, made to produce signals without wires. Prof. Tesla's work, however, deserves the respectful attention of the entire scientific world.

"I don't feel disposed to take the position of pooh-poohing anything that is proposed in the application of electricity to the service of man, but the results aimed at by Prof. Tesla, as outlined in The World this morning, seem to me to border on the impossible.

"From a practical standpoint I have every reason to believe that signals can be conveyed great distances without the use of wires, and I am credibly informed that the British Post-Office authorities are at present carrying on experiments in South Wales over a distance of nine miles with the Marconi system, and I understand that the receiving instrument is similar to the Morse printing register. Now, as a matter of fact, I am able to show that the idea of telegraphy without wires originated with Morse. In 1842 Morse, at the request of the American Institute, demonstrated the practicability of connecting Governor's Island with Castle Garden by wire. He began to operate wires in three directions, but an accident to the vessel in which the wires were grounded destroyed the connections. Morse would not be beaten, but arranged his wirew along the banks and used the water as a conductor.

"From Morse's experiment we have had the development by Edison of a system of telegraphy between racing railroad trains and wires and with this system it is possible to telegraph stations along the line. The development of the high potential currents by Hertz and Tesla and Marconi seems to make possible the transmission of signals to a greater distance than has hitherto been accomplished by the well-known methods of induction.

"Of Tesla's invention," said A. S. Brown, of the Western Union Telegraph Company, "I will say that it is possible, and nothing more."