Signalling across space without wires: being a description of the work of Hertz & his successors — John Shaqi
Signalling across space without wires: being a description of the work of Hertz & his successorsLodge, Oliver, Sir
Science
Signalling across space without wires: being a description of the work of Hertz & his successors
Lodge, Oliver, Sir
Electric waves; Telegraph, Wireless
It may be worth mentioning that the arrangement frequently referred to
in Germany by the name of Lecher (viz., that shown in Fig. 23), and
on which a great number of experiments have been made, is nothing but
a pair of Leyden jars with long wires leading from their outer coats,
such as I constantly employed in these experiments. The wires from the
outer coat in my experiment were very long, sometimes going five or six
times round a large hall, like telegraph wires. And many measurements
of wave length were thus made by me at the same period as that in which
Hertz was working at Carlsruhe. The use of air dielectric instead of
glass permits the capacity to be adjusted, and also readily enables the
capacity to be small, and the frequency, therefore, high; but otherwise
the arrangement is the same in principle as had frequently been used by
myself in the series of experiments called “the recoil kick” (_Proc._
Roy. Soc., June 1891, Vol. 50, pp. 23-39). For these and other reasons
no reference has been made in my lecture to the work done on wires by
Sarasin and De la Rive; nor to other excellent work done by Lecher,
Rubens, Arons, Paalzow, Ritter, Blondlot, Curie, D. E. Jones, Yule,
Barton, and other experimenters.
APPLICATION OF THIS METHOD OF SIGNALLING AT A DISTANCE TO ACTUAL
TELEGRAPHY.
Although the method of signalling to a moderate distance through walls
or other non-conducting obstructions by means of Hertz waves emitted
from one station and detected by Branly filing tubes at another station
was practised by the author and by several other persons in this
country, it was not applied by them to actual telegraphy. The idea
of replacing a galvanometer, which was preferably a well-damped or
speaking galvanometer, by a relay working an ordinary sounder or Morse
was an obvious one, but so far as the present author was concerned he
did not realise that there would be any particular practical advantage
in thus with difficulty telegraphing across space instead of with
ease by the highly developed and simple telegraphic and telephonic
methods rendered possible by the use of a connecting wire. In this
non-perception of the practical uses of wireless telegraphy he
undoubtedly erred. But others were not so blind, though equally busy;
and notably Dr. Alexander Muirhead foresaw the telegraphic importance
of this method of signalling immediately after hearing the author’s
lecture on June 1st, 1894, and arranged a siphon recorder for the
purpose. Captain Jackson also, at Devonport, made experiments for the
Admiralty, and succeeded in telegraphing between ships in 1895 (or
1896). Prof. Popoff’s telegraphic application in 1895 is mentioned on
page 62.
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