WIRELESS PROMISES TO SHOW STARTLING DEVELOPMENTS

The majority of the readers of this newspaper are probably not old enough to have seen many great revolutionizing inventions develop from what seemed to be a joke to a great popular necessity. The writer has seen several. He saw the electric are and incandescent light grow from a very doubtful laboratory experiment to a public necessity. He saw the electric street car grow from an impossible nuisance to the universal method of street transportation. He saw the bicycle develop from a great high wheel which required an acrobat to ride, into a popular device which nearly everybody knows how to ride. He saw the telephone when it was one of the curiosities exhibited in a dime museum along with an assortment of other freaks. He saw the automobile spring from what was considered a silly mechanical experiment to a great popular necessity. He saw the phonograph come up from a weird and uncanny curiosity to a general household necessity. He saw the moving picture force its way from a crazy notion to the greatest of all public amusements. And he has seen the wireless telegraph beat down public scorn and take its place as a general means of communication. And now he sees the amateur wireless experimenter and the wireless telephone edging their way slowly but surely-ahead, and he wonders what might be the results five years hence.

We all have seen the amateur wireless crank fussing with his queer coils and instruments and many of us have wondered what earthly interest was to be found in listening to the queer little buzzings that were heard. Suppose that these little buzzings did convey some kind of a message, what of it? If messages were wanted the newspapers were full of them. Why go to all the bother of studying a lot of scientific stuff and spend hours trying hopeless experiments, when anything of importance could so much more comfortably and easily be read in the morning paper? There is no answer. The one who asks these questions lacks that spirit of adventure which the other possesses. What is unutterably boring to one is the most exquisite pleasure to the other.

Wireless Came From Telegraph

This wireless amateur came into being about twelve or fourteen years ago. He seemed to be one of the outgrowths of fooling with amateur wire telegraph instruments. A great many boys in years past became bitten with the telegraph bug and built little telegraph systems and communicated with each other in the next house or across the street. When Mr. Marconi began to achieve results with his wireless signals the most determined of these boys took up wireless. It was a hopeless effort, for Mr. Marconi himself was having heavy weather of it, even with all the money and facilities he was able to command. But as is always the case, failure only served to spur on the real dyed-in-the-wool enthusiast. When the queer properties of a piece of galena ore, or a crystal of silicon, carborundum and several other minerals was discovered, feeble little signals were occasionally heard, and this sealed the fate of many young men. They were able to communicate with each other at rare intervals over short distances, and once in a while heard some of the large Marconi stations. The thrill was so profound, that they went at their problems with a thousand times more energy.

It should be understood here that only very short wave impulses could be sent out by the amateur and only very small power was available, whereas, with the large commercial and military wireless stations, where plenty of money was available, long waves and large powers were made use of. The amateur therefore found himself faced with the inability to buy anything suitable to his means. He therefore must needs build it. This is just exactly what he did, and it is one of the striking features of this wonderful new art, that the amateur has been able to accomplish what he has solely by his own efforts.

But let us trace his efforts on, and see how they turned out, for it is a matter of great interest, now that we are entering upon another one of the world's greatest developments.

By the time the year 1912 came around, the amateurs had grown in number and older men had become interested and communication became quite reliable over distances of five or six miles. That was considered very wonderful, for up to that time, the amateur telegraph wire had been limited to something like one city square at the outside. The keen interest of so many young men and the growing interest of older men, led some of the amateurs to embark in the business of making and selling wireless apparatus. The ordinary things were all homemade. In fact, it was impossible to buy some transmitting apparatus at all. Mr. Lee DeForest then brought out what he was pleased to term the "Audion" detector. It was a little incandescent lamp, with one or two fixings on it, and it was intended to take the place of the crystal of galena ore, or the bit of silicon. But it was found to be thousands of times more sensitive than the bit of galena or silicon. Immediately the amateur went mad over the improvement, and the DeForest company found themselves completely swamped with orders for detectors. Every expedient and subterfuge conceivable in the mind of these keen intellects was made use of to secure an audion detector. Straight away, communication jumped from a matter of six or ten miles to fifty and one hundred miles. The thing was enthralling to those having the kind of a mind that these amateurs possessed. The idea of sitting at home and conversing by dots and dashes with a kindred spirit in a distant city, who was completely unknown personally, was absolutely compelling. It really amounted to a private telegraph line, for there was no expense involved, and any number of persons could be included.

Had Rapid Development

Improvements came thick and fast from then on. Mr. Edwin Armstrong, an amateur, discovered the regenerative circuit, by means of which a tremendous amplifying power was automatically obtained, and Mr. Paul F. Godley found a way to make it practical for amateur short waves. This great improvement in sensitiveness lifted the distance into the several hundreds of miles, and opened up great areas over which the excited amateur could communicate. This development, it must be understood was country wide, in its scope, and what was going on in and around Boston was also going on in and around New York and Philadelphia and Chicago and San Francisco, and everywhere else.

Improvements as the result of careful study and analysis were made in the transmitting apparatus, so that as the listening field broadened, the transmitting field kept pace. Then it was that the idea of a national radio relay organization be formed of all of the amateurs all over the country. The time was ripe for it and The American Radio Relay League came into being, as a result of the getting together of several of the leading amateurs from various parts of the country. Traffic systems were devised, and the regular handling of traffic began. By the time the World War broke out and caused the closing of all amateur stations, messages had been relayed entirely across the continent, and it was no unusual thing for an amateur to communicate directly between New York and Chicago, and Chicago and New Orleans, and to points in the far South West.

The War brought every bit of this amateur development to an abrupt halt. The thousands of amateurs over the country, had made themselves proficient radio operators, and when our Army and Navy in 1917 awoke to the situation, they found that hundreds of radio operators were wanted immediately. To train this number of men up from the condition of a raw recruit meant months and months of work, even though the training facilities were organized, which they were not. And so an appeal was made to the amateurs of the country through their national organization. To the everlasting glory of these splendid young men, be it known that they responded nobly. Almost over night the Army and Navy found themselves supplied with thousands of the finest type of young man the country affords, skilled not only in radio operating but entirely familiar with the complex apparatus. To a man they had built several of everything to do with a radio station, and although the military aparatus was larger and more powerful and more perfectly built, the principles were identical and far from strange. It was a splendid record, and one which our citizens generally should keep in mind in years to come.

Speed Records Established

The Army and Navy naturally trained many thousands of new men as the War proceeded, when the Armistice finally came and the military forces gradually drifted back to civil life, there were some five wireless enthusiasts where there was one before. This intensified everything, and the military training of these young fellows began to show at once. Better organization, better co-operation and greater loyality to one another quickly developed. The relay traffic lines grew and grew, and the volume of traffic went to figures the wildest had never dreamed would be the case. Long distance records were hung up nightly. A transcontinental test was arranged, and when the night arrived, the organization was such that absolute quiet prevailed from coast to coast, so that there might be no interference. A message was sent from Portland, Me. to Portland, Ore. and the answer returned. Another from New York to San Francisco, still another from Chicago to New Orleans and still another from the headquarters of the American Radio Relay League in Hartford to one of the members in Los Angeles, Calif. The latter message was started from the library of the writer and the answer was back in complete form and written out on a radiogram blank in just six and one half minutes. Certainly this was a far cry from the silly little buzzings of the boy of 1912. These young men, veterans of a world war, and the finest operators and radio engineers the world possesses, relayed this particular message from Chicago and Roswell, N. Mex. When the tests were completed, the roar from all of those who had restrained themselves and remained quiet for the test, was amazing. The writer sat through this test, and he confesses that nothing in all his life thrilled him quite so deeply, as listening to Chicago request Roswell, New Mexico, to be sure that the way was clear right through to Los Angeles, and to faintly hear Roswell, do as he was bid, and then when everything was set, to hear Chicago come back and report all clear. And when the test message had been finished from our end, to hear Chicago, snap back a single R, indicating, received, and then dash the message itself off to Roswell, and faintly hear Roswell give his R and go on with it to Los Angeles.

Messages Cross Ocean

The latest achievement is even more impressive. The American Radio Relay League believed that if citizen communication could be conducted throughout Canada and the United States that there was a chance that we might reach out and include the British Isles. This seemed altogether to much to many who had not followed the wonderful scientific perfection to which the amateur had developed his short wave apparatus. But the amateur organization appropriated $1000 and sent the most skillful listener living. Mr. Paul F. Godley, one of their number to England last November, with the most sensitive apparatus possible to get together. Mr. Godley searched for a promising location, and finally located at the little town of Ardrossan, in Scotland, just below Glasgow. Here he erected his antennae and apparatus in a tent, and the British amateurs selected one of their number to listen with him and verify the signals that might be received. A very elaborately arranged schedule was built up for the American amateurs and for ten successive nights amateur signals were sent from any amateur on this side who desired to try his luck at spanning the Atlantic Ocean. To the complete amazement of the British amateurs Mr. Godley logged not only twenty six separate American amateurs and their call letters, but also recorded any quantity of conversations going on between amateurs on this side. This achievement is the crowning effort of amateur wireless, for it opens the way for private communication across the Atlantic for private citizens. It is only a matter of months before the American, amateur sitting in his library in this country will communicate back and forth with his English friend who sits in his library in England or Scotland.

One more significant fact should be mentioned, and then every reader of these lines may form his own guess as to what is likely to be the condition five short years hence in this world of radio communication. This is the recent development of the radio telephone. The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co. and several other large companies interested in the building of radio apparatus, have made use of the radio telephone to broadcast musical programmes and lectures. Every one owning a wireless receiver may sit in his home and hear this. These stations are already working in Boston, New York, Springfield, Mass., Newark, N. J., Pittsburg, Pa., Chicago, San Francisco and various other cities. In Chicago the Chicago Metropolitan Opera is broadcasted, so that thousands hear the entire opera every night.

The number of stations at present listening is unknown, but those in a position to judge estimate it is numbering well over 200,000. The writer recently delivered an address from the Newark, N. J. station of the Westing house Company and it was estimated that he spoke to an audience of at least twenty five thousand persons. The thing has so gotten hold of the lay public, who never would learn the dot and dash code of telegraphy, that at the present time it is almost impossible to buy a receiving set. The demand for them will be met, however, as is invariably the case in such matters, and there is every reason to believe that in a few years a wireless receiver will be as common in the households of the country as is the phonograph.

When this day arrives there will be a condition brought about where it becomes possible for a speaker to address directly by the spoken word a large majority of the public in their homes. No such potent instrument for the moulding of public opinion has ever been imagined. The biased and curtailed report of the newspaper will be replaced by the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, as far at least as the original speech was concerned.

Another phase of the matter is important. This is the broadcasting of important events. If the deliberations of the present disarmament conference in Washington were broadcasted, as they might easily be, it would be of inestimable value to mankind. The actual words of the various representatives would be infinitely more influential than the cold print of the newspaper. The occasion of the burial of the Unknown Soldier hero at Arlington cemetery recently would have been an incalculably valuable thing for humanity at large to have heard at first hand. There are a vast number of us who do not realize the bigger and better things of life. The printed page does not reach such people. But the spoken word, with its emotion reflected in its accent does "get across" as we say, and it would be of tremendous value to have it do so generally. The radio telephone can do all this, and how much more is only a matter of conjecture. Each one of us can exercise his imagination upon the matter. But I venture to go on record in these pages, to the extent of saying, that not a man of us foregathering here in the pages of The Harvard Crimson" has an imagination crazy or wild enough to get within a thousand miles of the actuality of five years hence