Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, April 17, 1910, Page 17

y» HALF-TONE FAGES oNm 1O youm VOL. XXXIX-NO. 4. SUNDAY MORNING, A PAPER FOR THT HOME OMAHA BEE APRIL MILLENER'S PURSUIT OF SECRET OF WIRELESS WAVES wmbwwmmmmwm.om&wum Adaptation of Electric Impulse - . — — WTIIENER'S HOUWSE OF MYITERY N K TINY briex _+surrounded by whirring machine shops and acres of noisy raliroad yards the creative mimd of Az electrical engineer is proding for the saswer to a problem When the solution is reached the Union Pacific Raflroad com- psay will beve possession of a wireless telephone of working value, and Dr. Frederick H. Millemer. electrical research expert, will have erected a milestons in sclentific history. There are many, many days of persistent snd relentiess experimentation yet to come before the wireless telephone is a fact. Still that lttle brick shaaty holds secTels even now that certais interested engineers abroad are anxious to piy late. Lr. Muleper, who is to be found over his instruments through most any of the long days, and oft times far Into the night, teils a lit- tie to his visitor and thea retires into modest reserve. Of what others have done he is willing to talk, of what he is doing—well wait until aft while. There is & vast maze of instruments to be seen. One may look them o but never mind about the circuits that lie con- cealed behind the switchboards. The pursuit of the wireless telephome means far more to the Unioa Pacific and Yo the raiiroad world than a laboratory demos- strition. The achievement of & successful wireless ‘phone will mark the end of telegraphic train orders. & will mean that the dispatcher at bis desk may hoid direct comverse with the man with his hand on the throttle of the big mogul that is puiling the tralus over the mous- tains hundreds of miles away. Ia this lies much of the importance of the wireiess to the railway company That the wireiess telephope should replace the present day tele- phone in general usage is as unlikely as that the wireless telegraph should do away with the wire system. But the field of special appli cation for the wirelcss telephone is as broad as that of the wireless telegraph. Several investigators are pushing toward the wireless telephene The experiments are going on both in America and abroad, where the Germans are particularly active. There is mothing to indicate ksl they are so far along or 5o near the goal as is Dr. Millener down thers in the Union Pacific yards The attempts at the wireiess transmission of speech have bees many. Success has attended the use of several devices. but in highly limited degree. So far back as the St. Louis expesition the sensitive action of the selentum cell to & variant besm of light was utilized in the wireiess transmission of speech. The limitaticns of such a device are obvicus. It cam scarcely ever be more tham a lecture roem curiosity. Numerous other devices bave been made 0 operate intermittently, and occasionally, just emcugh to give encouragemest to the invest! sators. The wireless telephone will come in time. The sclentists are as positive of it as is the mathematician that an integration cam be performed. It may take a long time to write the equation or t the curve, but it can be dome, and it will be dowe. In the mind of the men who are wrestling with the probiem of how it is to be dome doubt does not exist The discovery that an are light can be made 1o reproduce human speech when placed in eireuit with a teiephone transmitter under certaiz conditions has piaced in the hands of the experimentists a basic principle, a tangible fact to work upon. At first thought to the lay mind this perhaps seems of little significance ia the atrempt to Sain the trazsmission of speech by wireless. The investigutors have found. however, that the are light produces 3 series of vidrations which vary from those which produce sound and light in an ascend. ing scale far into the regions of wave activity kaewn as the uitra vislet with referemce to Mgiht. They are but different manifestations of energy pitched in different keys. They are vibrations which are The productios of these higher wave vibratipns whichk come off ©f the weaking are becomes the vital fuaction of the initial or sound- in its present state of devel- he lastruments or ine sound waves be comes the simple function of the same receiving device which takes in the clicking of the wireless telegraph. That much of the wireless teiephone was perfected with the wireless telegraph The problem thus resoives itself im form of the waves whick will project Carrying in terms of emergy the 9 audible human speech The speaking arc's efficiency in the produc @directly indicated by the degree of audid ®peaking voice that comes from the instrument of course. are dead withia the short distance but the ultra violet waves which are coming off the Ously with the sound waves are carried kzows how far Dr. Miliemer's work in the Union Pacific research Row directed toward the perfection of the speaking arc ing the speaking arc (o the point where it will clearly and plainly as the receiver of a telephone of perfection is reached be will know that the an wireless waves which are to carry the message of slallation in the same degree of perfection The investigator bas gome far with the speaking are, efficiency that has not been attained even in the best laboratories. Just how he has done it § lies in a corner of kis owa brain. Parts of his apparatus have been made on special order in the east. while other parts were made iz the Omaba sbops, and yet others by his own hasds. No ome but bimself is in possession of a kmowiedge of the whoie A great deal is said to e In the telephone trazsmitter, which . comstiucted to operate with a high voltage such as is necessary in prodyciag the arc light at a high frequency for the generution of the wireless waves. With a temporary installation Dr. Millener last week §ave an inkiing of his progress with the wireless telepbone by a dem emstration of & speaking arc which gave forth every sound repeated into it with the wtmost sccuracy of articulstion The arc which will eventually become a part of his wireless tele phone will, however, be & much different instrument from the ordi Bary lamp with which the demonstration was made The speaking arc presests many whimsical possibilities aside from its gulization !n the wireless telepbome. The emtire Hllumination mdlmnl‘hmhlumwnumm Sanouncement of aa election In words audibie at every lighted - Secticn of the strests. A band concert at s far ay park could be sudible in every part of the city. The same lamps that Mumings . ma—uhmumumnm-—umn terms. n--nn-r—u—n.n-n--uu-m impuise The sound waves, t they can be heard re simuitane through d Ance mo one laboratery is He is bring er its words as When that stage s dellvering the Le telephone in gaining of the German THIS BOARD THE WIRLLESS TELEPHONE %m OF CONSTRUCTION IN LOWER Research Now Being Made by an Expert at Union Pacific Shops 13 QPERATED. CoRNTE" uim Wi | S { I3 out hiring & brass band to assemble the voters in some third-Story bail The Millener laboratory, with its intricate maze of apparatus and mysteries, contains an estire series of imventiops in the makiag, others complete, but to be adapted 10 operatiom in rallway service A commonplace looking brass box, displaying to the eye only a @ial and a gong. conceals the working ecenomy of & wireless biock signalling devi ich has proven its possibilities. On the dial are displayed the ar & miniature semaphore identical with those which stand over tracks at the blocks. At a change in signa’ as the train enters a block the cab signal before the eyes of the en gineer tells him of all that is taking place without moving his hand from the throttle The wireless teiegraph plant with which Dr. Millener is condu ing experimeats for the Union Pacific is one of remarkable eficiency A new transformer now under process constr his piant is soom 1o make the Union Pacific’s plant the mest pow ul in the worid. Dr. Millener is investigating the possibilities of the wire lees in inland work A example of the vital importance of the wireless for comti Beatal service was shown by the receat storm, which cut off the rail rosds, and all the public as well, from communica with the west, said Dr. Millener A series of wireless plants of even ordizary efficiency could have bridged the stormswept territory amd per mwitted the operation of trains with the same facility that they are moved with the wire lines in perfeet operation Milleser, the man, seen outside the Iittie room in which he wraps bimseilf in bis work, is far from the fuventor of fietion and drama Dr. Millener is to the casual acquaintance just am inten sling persom of professional appesrance, who might be engineer, lawyer or phys- ician. He is as wuch inclined to talk about the “best seiler. the latest discovery of the stage or the city's water supply as of his specialty. The Millener of the laboratory, & concemirated persom iz shirtsleeves with a pair of pliers nestiing nest to his foustaim pes, s another man. There be is with his pets, 3 wireless telephone and a big tramsformer Nobody disputes the suthemticity of the fact that electricity obeys certain laws, but there is & question as 1o what some of those laws are. The discovery of many of these i % bas led directly to their utilization through the imvention of Dew devices. The mew traus former which is 20w under construction in Dr. Millener's iaboratory will umuu--nn-ohum.ty However, it may do & great many other things that mobody knows sbout. There was Bever such a transformer builded in the wide world before, so it may do things that no other Unasformer has ever done. This lasUument of on in 15 the greatest ever wound for the generation of the wireless fmpulse. Marcon! Bas a machine, 2ow the largest in operation in the world, at Glace Bay, which is but 60 per cemt of the size and capacity of the one under coustruction for the Union Pacific’s experimental plaat. This great induction coil, for that is all in reality a transformer ' is. will deliver a current of 100,600 voits at haif an ampere in vol- ume. This means nearly seventy harse-power of energy courving over the wires th deliver the impuise to the antense from which the wireless wave is disseminated. In frequency, rate of vibratiom eor wave undulation, what ever one may wish to call it, the cofl permits of & great Tange. It is capable of handling from 60 to 450 and 5§00 eycies, which means the current can reverse polarity that many times In a second. The sixty cycle current has a frequency about equiva- lemt to that of the alternating current ordinarily used for commercial electrie lighting purposes. It may be an epoch-making moment when siart the ether echoes sounding across #pace Bected with this giant coil What will it do? No one can give answer. Eiectricians all over the country whe have had an intimation of the secrets that are being uzravelled down In the little brick laborato are waiting for the machine to make its own answer. It is admitted that it will at least far exceed the capabilifles of any machine mow in operat The wireless telegraph from ships in the harbor of Havana has been read over the receiving instruments at the Omaha piaat by De. M er. The words clicked out from the Carthagena, plying in the siers of the island republic came up across the sea and land to be picked up by the antemse of the Union Pacific laboratory aad sounded from the receiver clear and strong in the high-pitched note of the Marconi system. The sender at Brant Rock, Mass., was heard in the Omaha plant on that rem ble and memorable night. This performance of the wireless comstitutes a record for transmission over land, a record which greatly discounts all that had been scopm- plished before A weird Rock and the night that n charge of sitting at the ument ta idly “feeling” through space with the Brant Rock station came bad hardly cruisers at the key first closes to from the antenae con- interest attach e messages received It was in those from Brast quiet hours of Milliken, government engineer and experimentation, wepe fic laboratory. They wy ing colis, when the call 2,000 miles. The listeneps ent when they beard the the Carthagena at Havana spoke the far away Dr. M wireless s clear on Pa recovered fro sea give answ up across the comt With u apparatus of the capacity of the type T expectation of greater and mope remarkable feats from the ¢ naking exists. Certain it 8 messages from Omaba e Atlantic seaboard, and perhaps leagues beyond that, will be handied resdily When the energized waves go av up against the walls of the Rocky mountains another sting sitaation will be produced. Win they go beyond? If the how far? is altogether within, the limits of possibility t 18 two such plants that Dr. Millener i building at the Union Pa s research laboraiory messages cowld be made to gird the world ement perchance sounds a Bit extravagant, but the wireless has ways of its own. The inersashd capacity of the transformer which generates the impuises may result in the multiplicatios of the range by many figures The transformer in its obvious physical aspects fs interesting to one versed iz the literature of electrical science. It repressnts just the last word and one more fa transformer construction. The core or Sody of irom, in which the lines of force are produced by the ¢04- volt curreat, in the primary winding is b up of laminated steel The metal ttseif is peculiarly composed for the purpose. It is knows a8 sllicon steel. The introduction of silieon for the purpose of re- ducing the tendemcy of the core to Tetain its magnetism or gemers- tion of lines of force when the currest is cut of or reduosd to zero. All of which means that the cote shall be clear o take up and met poR each individual impulse which comes into the primary winding clear from aay “bangover” from the fmpulise which went before. Hundreds upon hundreds of sheets of Silicon steel are piled to- gether. presenting mueh of the appearance of & pild of butcher paper. Each separate sheet has been treated to 8 bath in & shellac prepars (Coatinued on Page Four.) that The =t