Evening Star Newspaper, June 14, 1925, Page 77

ILLUSTRATED FEATURES Part 5—8 Pages MAGAZINE SECTION he Sunday St WASHINGTON, Up-to-Date BY C. MORAN. COAST GUARD radio oper- ator near Cape May picked up. on a night in March, a mysterious code message, the source of which at the time was unknown The message was flashed at once to Government code experts at Washington, where it was learned that the communication was from rum fleet ship to confeder- ates on shore. oast Guard officials here has known for a long time that radio as being used by the rum-ruhners. The Coast Guard had intercepted many of the code messages and had upset some of the plans of the law violators, but until recently the serv. fce has been unable to cope ful with the situation, because of lack of - modern radio equipment This condition s been corrected now. and it planned ultimately to equip the entire Coast Guard fleet, of 24Q speed ships, with the latest types of radio transmitting and receiving app: tus. Government engineers have been working for months on a number of unique radio instruments such as sonic devices and direction finders for use in this work. A school for radio operators has heen established at the Coast uvard Academy at New London. snnecticut. under the direction of | Comdr. H. D. Hinckeley ome 300 radlo operators are being trained at this school in both the theory and practice of radio, and in Coast Guard naval procedure. is a part of a radio munication s tem that may be « one of the most efficient Navy radio shore controlled from Washington, re included in the net, to enable the Coast Guard officials to keep in con- stant communication with the entire fleet A chart at Washington gives at all times graphic picture of the location of every vessel There are some 40 high power ra- dio stations in the system on all coast lines These ations are capable of working distances up to 6,000 miles. In addition there are 95 intermediate stations, which have ranges up to 800 miles. There are also )0 miles of land lines, including approximately 440 miles of submarine telephone cable gvhich connect the various Coast Guard stations with one another, pr vide contact with 150 lighthouses, and furnish service to radio compa tions, Navy radio stations, ‘Weather Bureau stations. * * and HE main radio stations in the sys- tem on the Eastern coast include those at Bar Harbor. Me; Sayvill L. 1. Annapolis, Md., Arlington, Va.; Cayey, P. R.; Guantanamo and Pana. ma. Both the Annapolis and Sayville statlons are operated by remote con trol from Washington. There are some 237 active Coast Guard stations in the land line system, which are Erouped into 13 districts, each in the | charge of a district superintendent. Every Coast Guard ship is in con- stant communication with the various land stations and is appraised at all times of the exact location of every other ship in the service. A system of radio siznals has been developed so that in an emergency any number of | ships can be concentrated at a given woint. Similarly, each vessel has radio equipment sufficiently power- ful to communicate with any of the shore stations, so that Washington is kept closely informed of the move- ments of the rum-runne: Experiments are being made also with a sonic device on the Coast Guard vessel Tampa, in locating ice- | bergs in fogky weather. If it fs pos- sible to ascertain the position of un- seen icebergs by this means, it is con- sidered equally practicable that ves- sels can be similar located. Thus, the operation of smugglers' ships under cover of darkness or inclement weather would become ineffectual. The sonic apparatus sends out a note which goes down to the bottom of the ocean, is reflected back to the ship, and is picked up by a recefver. The time of departure and return of the note is automatically timed, and knowing the speed with which sound travels through water, it becomes pos- sible to measure the depth of the water at any given point. It has been found that the sound does not go directly to the bottom of the ocean, but also spreads out in all directions through the water. Thus, any obstruction such as an iceberg or large ship will reflect the sound to the bottom, thence to the sonic apparatus, and it becomes possible to measure both the distance and the direction that the obstruction is from the ship Radio has proved to he practically indispensable to the Coast Guard in its varlous marine activities, and even before the recent congressional authority to increase the Coast Guard fleet for the purpose of combating rum runners, officials of the service had decided to scrap its ancient radio apparatus and to replace it with newer types. *x ok % % HE varfous activities in which ra- dio s used include the broadcast- ing to mariners of the position of derelicts and straying bergs from the ice fields, rendering assistance to ships in distress, and helping to en- force the customs laws. Radlo is used also in furnishing medical advice to ships engaged in Radio Enable 1B s 6 SUNDAY MORNING, JU 1925. FICTION AND One Hundred and Thirty-five High-power Stations Included in New System—Contact With 150 Lighthouses—New De- vices for Locating Icebergs in Fogs—Radio Warnings to Mariners-International Ice Patrol Made More Effective. The Vew Sonie De to i Lancles;, which, ig be/imzi used locate ilebergs in foggy weathe ward Cutter Haida round, hie Coast Guard Station atCape May is aclive iw running down rum-runners. Ztue-worid £1 deepsea fisherles, enforcing laws governing the anchorage of vessels in navigable waters, enforcing the iaw relating to quarantine and neutrality. suppressing mutinies on _merchant vessels, protecting the sea fisheries in Alaska, enforcing the sponge-fishing law and operating the international ice patrol on the Grand Banks. Many interesting storfes are told by the captains of Coast Guard ships of experiences in gling of gems and Orlentals into the United States. One s 'h story in which radio played a part was in con- nection with an interesting gang of smugglers who, when the ship they Ancient Artisan Implements. "HE story of the mechanical aids of human history has been much neglected. Thousands of writers have described the sculptures of the Par- thenon, vet no one has mentioned the tools that carved those fluted columns. We naturally suppose that our pres- ent-day tools have far better forms than those of past ages. That is true in many cases, but not always. It appears that the forms of the chisel were perfected 2,500 years ago, and that the beauty of workmanship in Bronze Age chisels has never been exceeded. The use of saws and crown drills with fixed teeth of corundum or gem stones for cutting quartz rocks was the regular practice in Egypt 6,000 vears ago. The cores produced were so perfect and clean cut that any modern engineer would be proud to turn out such good work with the best diamond drills. The saws were over eight feet long, and cut blocks of granite seven and one-half feet long. That splendid work was forgotten—the Romans did not use such tools—and =ome thousands of years passed be- fore the same tools were reinvented about, half a century ago. The carpenter’s saw was at first merely a blade roughly hacked on the edge; by 4500 B. C. it had regular teeth, sloping equally both ways; by 900 B. C. the Itallans gave a rake to the teeth to make them cut in one direction, instead of merely scraping as before. No ancient saw, however, made a kerf wider than the thickness of the blade; we do not know when invented, but it was some timie in the Middle Ages. The Egyptians used a push saw as the earliest form; the pull saw was the only one in the West and the Ro- man world. The push saw came back into use a few centuries ago, although the pull saw ‘n a frame is still uni- versal in the East. The world did without shears for many ages, cutting its cloth with & rounded blade knife. About 400 B. C. the mechanical genius of Italy invent- ed shears, which in two or three cen- turies more were fitted to the fingers, and so became scissors. The “snuffers” referred to in Exo- dus is a mistranslation; the early tools for trimming a lamp were a small knife and a pair of tweezers to trim the wick and a point to start the strands. In some cases it js curious to see how long men remained on the brink of an invention. Copper wire was made by cutting and hammering, from 5500 B. C., vet the drawing of wire remained unknown . for 6,000 years or more. When the first drawn wire was made it is not yet deter- mined, but the art seems to have been unknown to the Romans. Thick beaten wire was made into chain with round links as far back as the second dynasty, 5200 B. C., and links doubled and looped through one another appeared in the sixth dynas- ty, B. C. 4200. Yet chains were not commo used until much later. The Gauls excelled in such work, as they used chain cables and rigging in place of rope to resist the Atlanti the saw that makes a wider kerf was gales. } preventing the smug- | were on neared the United States, tossed overboard a number of bottles at kept bobbing up and down in the water. The suspicions of the captain were aroused and a radio dispatch was flashed to the Government coast pa- trol boats. The ships arrived at the location in time to find a small launch diligently searching for the bottles. The bottles contained valuable gems and the smugglers were taken into custody Another instance was the landing of four Chinese on Long Island—Ori- entals that were being “bootlegged into the United States in violation of the immigration laws. The incident was reported by a mariner who had witnessed the affair, the Coast Guard cutter sent out a warning by radio that was picked up by a shore station, the local police were informed and the Chinese apprehended. This “boot- legging” of immigrants is done mainly by tramp steamers which send their human freight ashore at lonely places along the coast. A notable use of radio by the Coast Guard was in connection with the round-the-world-flight. The planes were hopping from 300 to 700. miles on each jump, and it was necessary to know the weather conditions early each morning along the line of flight. If one plane fell during a hop the other planes were to proceed to the nearest radio station and drop a note telling about the accident, thus making it possible to send assistance within a very short time. Most of the radio work through the Aleutian Islands was done by the Coast Guard cutter Haida, which is equipped with a half-kilowatt spark set and can successfully work dis- tances of 1,500 miles. The main trans- mitting set consists of a two-kilowatt arc, which has proved satisfactory on high wave lengths. Ten amperes radiation is secured in the half-kilo- ‘watt spark. The success of radio equipment on the Coast Guard ships is due, in the opinion of Coast Guard radio engi- neers, mainly-to the efficient handling of the antenna systems. The great- est care is taken to prevent ‘“leaks, particularly at the lead-In insulators. The insulation is inspected regularly and the insulators given a periodic bath of paraffin. A * % x % JCEBERGS for many years have been the dread of transatlantic navigators, particularly i e ) rlingtow q (S &The (@-, '/;w the Coast Gu Launching Station, 1 a Surfboaty one of the imporiantloops ardsvadio net. of Newfoundland. In the days of slaw steamers most of the ships took & course directlv across the Banks, which carried them through the ice zone most of the year. Since the ad- vent of_ large and fast steamers in- ternational agreements have been made whereby definite routes have been established to the southward of the normal ice zone. 1f_the ice zone were fixed, nothing further would be required to assure reasonable safety along these routes, but the limits of the ice fields and bergs vary considerably in,location as well as season. Prior to 1912 nothing had been done toward establishing any system for guarding against the dan- along the | ger from floating ice, but on April 14 lanes that run near the Grand Bankslof that year, when the steamer Ti- S tanic was sunk by striking an ice- berg, there arose an almost universal demand for a patrol of the ice zone to warn passing vessels. The following vear the ice patrol work was performed by the Coast Guard cutters Seneca and Miami. Besides the regular work of locating *he ice and broadcasting warnings to mariners, the officers of the cutters made a study of the ice situation, par- ticularly as to the currents in the vicinity of the Grand Banks; the phy- sical properties of the ice, its drift, erosion and melting; temperatures of ca_water and at.iosphere in the vi- ‘inity of the ice; habits of birds and seals with regard tg ice, and, in short, gathered and broddcast all sorts of information of value to navigators. In 1914 the representatives of 13 governments interested in transat- lantic navigation signea a pact pro- viding for an international derelict- destruction, ice observation and ice patrol service, under the management of the United States. This service has continued uninterrupted since that time, with the exception of the years 1917 and 1918, and has been the means of preventing tremendous loss of life and ships in the sea lanes. Ice information is broadcast daily on 1,621 meters C. W. Dally informa- tion is also sent to the Hydrographic Office in Washington, defining the danger zone and giving such other in- formation as would be of value in broadcasting from Annapolis, Arlin; ton, and other shore stations. Trans- mission of messages has been con- fined as closely as possible to C. W. instead” of spark, in order to over- come the overladen spark traffic. * k % % HE Tampa inaugurated the ice patrol last vear, leaving Boston the middle of March. She advised the wireless operator of the port of Hali- fax that the patrol had begun and that all ice and obstruction reports for the Atlantic area would be broad- cast by the patrol. A communication was received from the French radio station at St. Pierre, expressing the intention of that station to co-operate with the patrol. On the evening of March 22 the first broadcast was sent out by the s Coast Guard to Block Rum Ships | patrol, consisting of special ice in- formation for the steamship Cairn torr. The first report of the pres |ence of a berg was received from the steamer Lituania on March The cutter thereupon stood for the po. sition of the reported berg, which was found to be of medium size. The berg was partially broken up by means of TNT mines, and broadcasts were sent out during each day to warn ships in the vicinity This itinerary gives an example of the intensive use of radio by the ice Another instance in which radio an important part is the loca tion of derelicts as reported by pass- ing vessels. These derelicts are de- stroyed by the Coast Guard cutters to remove the source of danger The President of the United States annually designates certain Coast Guard vessels to perform speci; ing upon the coast in the season c severe weather, which is usually from December 1 to March to afford aid | to distressed ships. =10 cutters de tailed to this service last vear cruised approximately 40,000 miles and assist ed 35 vessels in distress. the estimated alue of whic including cargoes, was most $4,000,000 During the year some 75 derelicts and other floating dangers to nav tion were destroyed. 'he Coas was reated b; ongress in combining ther the former Revenue Cutter Service, which had been established in 1790 |and the former Life Saving Service The Revenue Cutter Service was ee tablished the second session of the First American Congress, upon the recommendation of the first Secretary {of the Tr ury, as the sult of the need for the services of a coast patrol to enforce the customs laws and for an organized armed force to protect the seacoust In those early was accomplished mainly with the use |of flag signals, torches and rockets Despite these crude methods, the sery ice became one of the most efcient administration _arms of the Federal Government v use of radio in creased this efficiency, and now, with | the adoption of up-to-date radio appa |ratus, it is expected that the service will make new records in the protec- tion of life and property on the seas. Advice to Tourists BY WILLIAM RUFUS SCOTT LONDON, June & N board ship, particularly you are traveling student third class, have some clothes do not mind giving lounging on and rubbing days communication rough deck, climbing against equipment Arrivi on this second-c railroad ticket will suitable for the ride to Paris or London, and many will go third class; but inquiry should be made to when the third-class train leaves u may travel all night on a hard seat. as some Ameri cans did recently. The first and sec ond class bo: s leave soon after the ship's Having provided yourseif ith French or English currency on ship- board, or before leaving the United States, you Will be prepared to pav porters, taxicabs and dining charges. Have some small change for this. The porters will give vou your first taste of the holdup atti tude toward Americans. Five f for two piec ample. That isaq ok On European dining cars it is cus tomary to issue tickets for seats. 1f you are hungry ask for the first sit ting, “premier ticket on French trains. If the train is crowded there may be three sittings, and. as each requires more than an hour, and nothing will hurry the service, the last sitting may be at 9:30 p.m. for dinner. If the meal pens to be | breakfast, and you are not hunary, you may have to pay the full price for the meal. or go without until you reach your destination * x Reach Paris or London in the day time, and as long before dark possible, so there will be time hunt a hotel. It is a mistake to f low the crowd, for then you will jam up a few hotels, and the cost of a room will rise while you sf d at the desk! One wise method is to leave your suit cases in the taxicab and go inside to see if there is a room and at what price. Don't let porters take them out. It is much easier to walk out of a hotel without your luggage than if it has all been brought in and then you find prices are too high Tell the hotel man what price room vou want—10 francs. 15, 20, etc. If you ask him what his rates are he gives you the price he thinks you will stand. Don't hesitate to walk and tell the taxicab man to go else where. A little searching will save money, especially if You go in outly ing distric be e as e If you arrive at night you may have to take what you can get and jat the price exacted. but the next morning get out and find a reasonable place. You will be in your room very little, and you can spend your money better than in giving it to hotels which are gouging Americans. * o * % In using taxicabs, watch the meter. They are not hard to read In Paris they show so many francs, S0 many centimes. Three francs seventy-five centimes means about 20 cents, allowing § cents to the franc To get out and ask the chauffeur ‘what you owe may result in a higher charge. In Paris (more often than in London) the chauffeur will expect a tip of 10 per cent or slightly higher. That would raise the foregoing fgre to 4 francs 26 centimes, or, to make it easy, 4% francs. If baggage is ecarried outside, about half a franc each plece. And for night service another franc added to the bill. Ar- riving at a hotel the first time, if you register, let the hotel porter set- tle your bill with the chauffeur and thereby prevent yourself being held e A ey If at a smuil hotel, ask if the rate includes service and Wwhat service. Breakfast (in France) will be extra, and so will baths. In England, break- fast and bath usually are included in the smaller hotels' tariffs. If you are to stay longer than 15 days in France, an_identification card costing about $2.50 will be required. The hotel will assist in getting it. * ok % % The tourist who comes to France first and England or Germany last will get an awful jolt. Prices in the last two countries are at par with New York, and all reports indicate Germany is even higher, while Paris prices are about a third of New YOork's, except in the big hotels where they are arranged to fleece Americans. Coming to England first and then going to France is to reverse the experience and have the pleasur. able sensation of diminishing pric.s. ' *