The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 5, 1896, Page 28

28 THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1896. ELECTRICITY IN MODERN WARFARE, Is it Destined to Revolution- ize Military and Naval Science? Speculation Based Upon the Swiss Discovery of “Charmed Bullets.” Engineer W. Stuart-Smith Discusses the Matter for the Benefit of “Call” Readers. The influence of electricity upon modern naval and military methods is a subject of wide speculation at the present time. In some quarters it is thought that the subtle fluid will work a revolution in methods of warfare. The particular phenomenon upon which such speculation is based was observed by a committee of the Swiss Fed- eral Rifle meeting in summing up the re- sults of the practice shooting of the troops at Winterthur. This committee noticed that nearly all the shots fired from the right side of the range had hit the target to the right of the buliseye, while those fired m the left side had, with an eq singular persistency, hit the left half of the target e great number of men who took part in the shooting pre- cluded the idea that this singular result id have been due to the personal pecu- es of the soldiers, for while it may be true that one marksman habitually shoots foo high, another too Iow or to the right or left of the mark, with a large number of individuals firing at the same target these idiosyncrasies of marksman- ship would be set off one against the other and the misses wonld be fairly distributed on all sides of the bullseye. It became necessary, therefore, to find an extraneous and single cause for the remarkable uni- formity with which the bullets appeared to have been deflected from their proper course. The wind could not have produced the effect noted, since, in the first place, allow- ance had doubtless been made by the riflemen for deflection by aerial currents, and on the other hand, if the wind bad diverted the missiles the deflection would have been in the same direction on both of the range. An examination of the steel-c'ad bullets extracted from the tar- gets disciosed the fact that they had be- come magnetic, and this led the commit- tee to entertain the theory that the phe- nomenon observed by it might have been due to electric influence exerted by the large number of telegraph and telephone which run along both sides of the ge at Winterthur. Further experi- ment at the rances of Thun and Berne proved this cheory to be correct, and the remarkable discoveries made at these trials may effect another complete change in military tactics. The following account of one of the experiments is given by the Journal de Geneve: **At Thun,authorities established parallel with the rifie range, at a distance of a little more than forty yards, an electric current f 8000 volts, carried along four steel les. With a view of tracing the whole tect, paper circlets were placed at inter- vals of ten yards along the line of ftire. first experiments were made with the Swiss model rifies of 1889. With this the influence of the electric current was at once apparent. In a distanceof 260 yards nilet took a lateral deviation of was still more marked. The second experiments were made with the Japanese 3.3mm rifle of Colonel Ya- magata, and they were still more decisive, the bullet being rapidly attracted to the electric wires and following their course with absolute servility. Further attempts were made with artillery. The range selected was one of 3000 yards. Two hundred yards in front of the targets, but forty yards to the side, was placed the electric battery. Every shot was diverted by its influence far to the side of the target —to be exact. the deviation was one of 14 degrees.” It is interestine to note some of the re- markable conclusions drawn by Eastern s from those results. One of them for instance, that “a dynamo or ac- cumulator of tise requisite power placed on the flank of a company of infantry would insure the men complete immunity from the fire of small arms within a range of 500 yards and upward; for all of the bul- lets would be diverted toward the mag- netic field created by the electric current from the dynamo or accumulator. Simi- larly, artillery fire could be rendered harmless at & range of 1000 yards and over. It would, perhaps, be premature to assert that the consequence of this discovery will be the doom of the mod- ern small-bore military rifle, with its steel-jacketed bullet, for - it might be practicable to mclose the leaden missile in hard bronze or some other metal not affected by magnetism. Artillery wouid probably remain destructive enough on the battle-field by the use of explosive sbells. It is in navel warfare that the discovery may have the most important consequences. In Conan Doyle's ‘Stark Munro Leuters’ the hero is credited with an invention to render a warship immune irom the shots of an enemy by placing electric accumulators at its stem and stern. The idea was to deflect steel projectiles by magnetism, just like the Swiss military authorities bave in fact succeeded in do- ing. It would certainly be a revolutionary departure if instead of incasing our battle- ships in heavy bombproof armor we could encompass them with an impalpable mag- netic veil which would compel the great armor-piercing steel projectiles to pass harmlessly by.”” A representative of THE CALL inter- viewed W. Stuart-Smith, electrical and mechanical engineer, United States navy (retired), on the subject of the electrical influence above mentioned. Mr. Smith smiled broadly as he read the Eastern newspaper deductions, His ‘own views are valuable as coming from a recognized -authority on these matters. “The experi- .ments made by the Swiss military au- -thorities,” said he, **while of considerable interest from a scientific standpoint, will hardly resuit in the adoption of methods for rendering the firing of small arms and .great guns so ineffective that these wenpons will be relegated to the military scrapheep, and the battles of the future become hand-to-band conflicts as in days of old. A very superficial examination of the conditions prevailing during the tests will show what is required in order that deflection of the shot may be produced. The reports of the test state distinctly that long circuits carrying heavy currents were ectory our yards, and after that thecurve | London’s Girl Artist. The charming decorative drawing entitled *“The Young B8t. Cecilia,” which is re- produced above, has secured the bronze medal of the Royal Drawing Society this year. The artist, Miss Nellie. Kuck, a young lady of 16, has already won a considerable measure of success. Two years ago she was awarded Lord Leighton’s prize for her drawing, ““The Mermaid,” and he then recommended her to adopt the artist’s profes- sion. Last year she obtained Sir George Kekewich’s prize for an illustration of *‘Un- dine,’” and this drawing represents her third success.—London Chronicle. placed parallel with the rifle range. This condition must prevail in order to pro- duce any appreciable deflection. The principle involved is that an electric current in & wire produces a mag- netic field, this field theoretically ex- tending to an infinite distance from the wire. It is most intense in the region immediately surrounding the wire and becomes weaker as the distance increases, the law of variation being in- versely as the square of the distance. Any magnetic beay placed 1n a magnetic field (a ‘‘magnetic body” is not necessarily one which is magnetized, but one capable of being magnetized. Iron possesses this property in a far greater degree than any other substance) is acted upon by the magnetic lines of force and, in case the field is one of variable intensity, tends to pass into that portion of the field which is most intense. Where a circuit carrying an electric current is parallel with the line of fire the shot, in its flight, is con- tinually acted upon by the lines of force of the magnetic field through which it is passing, and is sub- jected to a continuous pull toward the wire or that portion of ti.e field which is most intense. If the time during which the shot is acted upon by the force is of considerable duration the effect may be a considerable deviation, as is reported to have been the case in the Swiss experi- ments. It must not be forgotten, how- ever, that time is an important element, and if a powerful magnet were placed somewhere along the line of its flight its effect on the shot would be but momen- tary, and it could do no more than to twitch the shot as it passed. This might be sufficient to somewhat upset the calcu- lations of a marksman who was endeavor- ing to make a ‘dead center,’ but woula hardly be sufficient to cause the shot to fly wide of an army or fortification. “With regard to the writer who pro- poses to protect a company of infantry by placing a dynamo or storage battery of requisite power on the flank, 1t is probable that he bas in mind some new form of stem and stern. The proposal was to place powerful electro-magnets overhanging stem and stern, the idea being to so at- tract the shots as to make them clear the vessel. magnets were sufficiently powerful to pro- duce such a deflection they would attract the shotdirectly to themselves and quickly promote their own destruction, leaving the vessel without the protection of the ‘im- palpable magnetic veil.’ ”’ —_————— Practicable Bicycle Skirt. Ladies who object to bloomers and sensibly desire to ride a man’s bicycle can now do so. Mrs. Elizabeth ¥. McCartney of New York has patented a skirt that has all the qualities of a pair of first-class bloomers and the modesty of a skirt. The front portion of the skirt is open part of the distance from the bottom and the inner edge secured to the back of the skirt, which falls in the usual manner. When riding the opening in the front of the skirtallows it to fall gracefully on both sides of the frame. “Unfortunately,” said he, “if the | '\ GREAT MAP OF THE HEAVENLY ORBS, It Will Delineate Thirty Millions of Spark- ling Stars. Big Enough to Cover Two Acres and Cost Two Million Dollars. Eighteen Obs-rvatories in All Parts of the World Engaged in the Mighty Task. The great map of the sky upon which astronomers have been working for the last nine years is approsching completion. It is an international affair, for no one country could carry through such a gigan- tic task. . The heavens have been mapped out in sections, a section being assigned to each of the principal observatories in the world, and each of these eighteen observatories | must furnish a map of its particular sec- tion in 1500 parts. To do this 3000 photo- graphs have been taken at each observa- ory, making a grand total of 54,000 photo- graphs. The United States is not repre- sented in the international congress for the construction of this map. Professor Pickering of Harvard wished to undertake a share of the work, but it was finally decided that the great amount of time required for the aliotted section would interfere with the general work of the Cambridge observatories. The Yerkes observatory was not, of course, ready at the time, and the others did not care to lay out the money for the necessary in- struments. The observatories sharing in the work are those of Greenwich, Rome, Catania, Helsingfors, Potsdam, Oxford, Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Algerio, San Fernando, Tacubaya, Santiago (Chile), La Plata, Rio de Janeiro, Cape of Good Hope, Sydney and Melbourne. The map will be in total area nearly two acres, but must necessarily be divided up into & manageable size. For each hemi- sphere there will be 11,000 little maps, or 22,000 for the whole sidereal universe. TUpon it will be shown about 30,000,000 of stars. Of these 2,000,000 will be catalogued and numbered, so that any star up to the eleventh magnitude can be located as easily as an island in the map of the world, The stars actually shown upon the map will be all those up to the fourteenth magni- tude. A great number of the stars shown upon the map cannot be seen by the human eye, even with the aia of the most powerful telescope. The photographic plate, however, can de- tect many millions of stars which no man has ever seen. The long exposure necessary in order to eet photographs of stars beyond the four- teenth magnitude renders the operation too difficult for the construction of a map. | The measurements and exact position of each star hava to be recorded, and to do this hundreds of astronomers have been working for years. Special apparatus was purchased by each observatory for the work. instruments must be similar in size and conatruction, or the photographs would not be alike. The international congress, which was held at the Paris observatory eight years ago, decided that a telescope must be constructed for each observatory All the | MARKET STREET BESIDE TH. THE GREAT MAP OF THE SKY As IT WourLp APPEAR IF PLACED on E NEwW “CALL” BUILDING. LATEST MOTOR CYCLE. completed, will be of inestimable value to | astronomers. The idea is to show just| what aspect the heavens presented at the period represented. Any changes subse- | quent to this period will be at once de- tected and valuable information gained. | The observatories participating in this work will each bear the cost of, and pe | responsible for, its own particular piece of | sky. When completed the photographs | will all be forwarded to the Paris observa- tory for the production of the map. Stellar photographs are always used just | as they come from the camera, without any retouching whatever. The number of | stars shown is proportionate to the length | of exposure of the sensitive plate. At first it was intended to include stars of | the fifteenth magnitude in the measure- ments, but the tremendous additional | labor involved caused the congress to fix tne limit at the fourteenth magnitude. | Almost nothing is known of stars which | | are such an enormous distance away, and | no map or record has ever before been | made of them. As matters stand at pres- ent a few millions of them might disap- pear without astronomers being any of the “ | wiser. This gigantic map was planned by the Paris observatory in 1866, and a propo- | | sition made to all the big observatories to | | assist in the work. Since that date the| | principal observatories have been busy on | | the big scheme, which will certainly be | | the most wonderful thing that modern as- | tronomy has accomplished. The New Braille Points System i Which Books for the Blind| Are Now Written. NS s e last s ey S e fEtie i3 5ol o ‘5" S, e e SR M HEE PN it o-.: S5 LLRTY 2 tes 00 S s Pyt < Coo R S B S L il TransLATION—This is tne last day of the school year, and we are about to leave for our homes, to spena the vacation with friends, and if nothing happens, will return to the institution on the last Wednesday in August, to begin another year's work. MOTOR ATTACHMENT FOR VEHICLES. dynamo or battery which will automati- cally follow the company about the field of battle, remaining continually in the proper position on the flank. As at pres- ent constructed dynamos and storage bat- teries would be difficult to handle in this manner. Moreover, the dynamos or stor- age batteries would in themselves have no effect under uny circumstances, but in order to produce any effect it wauld be necessary to have wires carrying heavy currents passing from the flanks many hundreds of feet toward the enemy, and the writer does not explain how hein- tends to make these move about the field, following the company on these various maneuvers, always remaining in proper position on the flank and always reaching out the requisite distance voward the enemy. It is conceivable that with an army in a fixed position on the defensive a vast array of wires might be run out in all directions in such a manner that any particular company would have wires on its flanks into which current could be turned, but the shots so deviated would be .likely to invade the ranks of some other company, with a consequent pro- duction of domestic discord.” With regard to the reference to Conan Doyle’s “Stark Munro Letters” Stuart- Smith calls attention to the error in the statement that the hero proposes to pro- tect vgmh by accumulators placed at | Across the front of the skirt there is a fly that is made so as to hang over the opening when the wearer is not riding. When intending to mount her wheel the wearer unbuttons one side of the fly and folds it over the other side. Or it can be removed altogether. Motor Attachment for Vehicles. Every man who owns a buggy can now bave a horseless carriage with little ex- penditure. Heretofore one who would own a horseless vehicle had to buy the whole contrivance or build it . himself. But Alfred H. Kennedy of Rockport, Ind., has overcome this by inventing a machine that can be attached 1o any wheeled ve- hicle. Briefly, Mr. Kennedy's invention con- sists of a two-wheeled truck witn a motor mechanism and flexible attachments for fastening it to the vehicle to be propelled. The attachment looks like an old-fash- ioned cannon. The details of the construction of this device are two wheels mounted on a shaft with a crank coanection. Close to the hubs is a framework that extends forward and carries the cylinder and other ma- chinery of a gasoline engine. Connection between the piston and the crank shaft is made by a connection-rod in the ordinary way. The gasoline tank is to be carried in the bed of the buggy. THE PATENT BICYCLE SKIRT. engaged in the work. These telescopes are all of 11 feet 3 inches focal length, with an object glass 13 inches in diameter, To take a stellar pbotograph is nota very difficult task, says the Pittsburg Dis- patch. The sitters do not have to look pleasant, and the automatic movements of the telescope keep the objective always opposite the stars to be photographed. The delicate part of the task consists in the accurate measuring and placing of the stars shown upon the photographic plate. Each negative will be transferred 1n dupli- cate on copper, and the two plates will be kept in different observatories. This 18 to obviate any chance of accident to the vlates, for if both were lost the damage would be almost irreparable. Some idea of the magnitude of the task undertaken may be gained from the fact that to repro- duce the map from the plates will cost over $2,000,000. When to this is added the cost of the instruments, the time of the cal- culators and measurers and the number- less et ceteras which pertain to a work of so gigantic a nature, the ultimate cost will be tremendous., But the map, when The vrinciple of the invention consists in making the two rails conform to the action of centrifugal force; that is, to build them at such an angle that they will axially con- form to the curve of the roadbed. This is, of course, an easy matter to calculate, so that the cars will swing to the center as a bicyclist does when turn- ing a corner. By this arrangement there will be very little strain on the upper rail at any time, except the car should come to a standstill, and none at all except gravity on the lower rail. Another point of Mr. Boynton’s inven- tion lies in the fact that the rails can be built parallel to one another and the same center supports answer. Trains can even run in opposite directions at the same time and there would be little extra strain as the axial center of the two trains would be the same. New Motor Cycle. The horseless carriage is designed to become | 8 practical, every-day thing, now that inven- tive genius has solved the problem of applying power. Charles H. Barrows, a Connecticut man, stands ready to equip any sort of venicle with a motor, using either electricity, gasoline or compressed air as the power. His latest invention is a motor cycle built for two, m which the power is applied to the front wheels instead of the rear wheels, as has been the custom heretofore. The invention is a very simple one, with no loss of energy between the motive power and the driving-wheels. Mr. Barrows says that with his method there is no loss of power through friction of intermediate machinery, and 1o excess of power is required toovercome the short-leverage strain common in the driv- ing mechanism of other horseless vehicles. Those Earthquake Waves. Science sometimes illustrates a homely old saying about going away from home to get the news. For instance, the tide roll from the tide gauge at Sausalito has been read by the Coast and Geodetic Survey and the record marks with accuracy the duration of the earthquake waves on the Japanese coast on June 15, Such a record it would be impossible to make at the scene of the disaster, for the tide gauge could not stand under a pressure of waves thirty feet high sweeping overit. Obser- vations made by local spectators cannot take the place of the gauge with which the sea makes its own indisputabie record. The first earthquake wavs from Japan, on June 15, arrived at Sausalito just about twelve hours after it received its impulse in Japan. The first wave was the largest. { e oo oe ol track’’ railway; that 1s, a system that would have one traction rail and one over- head rail, the car to run beneath the two. As long as the car was running on a straight track, all previous inventions seemed to do very weil, bzt when curves were reached trouble began on account of the action of centrifugal force. As a con- the inventor of a railway system that seems to overcome this great objection. NEW TRACTION SYSTEM FOR SINGLE-TRACK RAILWaY. New Railway System | Inventors have for many years been working on what 1s known as a “single- I quence, they have been failures. ‘W. H. Boynton of Morris Park, N. Y., is This was one foot high at Sausalito, but it will be recollected that on the Hawaiian slands the wave was thirty feet high. Undoubtedly number one was higher than oue foot when it reached the Golden Gate, butasit ran through the gate it was much diminished in size, and as it ran around a corner to get to Sausalito there was a further shrinkage. The crests of the waves as they arrived at Sausalito were about fifteen to twenty minutes apart, and they continued to come for about twenty-four hours. The time taken to ransmit the oscillation verifies the speed observed. in the waves that ran here from Simoda in 1854, and is a very interesting demonsiration., LOWEST HUMAN FORN FOUND IN JAVA Scientists Think It Will Turn Out to Be the Missing Link. Coffin Torpedoes ‘That Are Cal- culated to Blow Up Grave Robbers. Peculiar Devices for Securing the Escape of Those Buried Alive Recently Patented. The “missing link’’ that scientists have been gearching after ever since Mr. Dar- win announced his theory of the descent of man from the lower animals may have been found at last. 2 There have recently been uncovered in Java by a French scientist, M. Dubois, a thigh bone, part of a skull and two molar teeth that seem without doubt to be the fragments of one of these extinct man- apes. The teeth are as much larger then the teeth of the African as tbe negro’s teeth are larger than the FKuropean’s. The thigh bone is the size of that bone in the average man of to-day. The skull is about the average in point of brain ca- pacity between the average European and the highest ape. The femur or thigh bone is said to be unquestionably human. Authorities differ as to the character of the skull und teeth. Shall they be called human or apish? The answer can only be definitely given when all the steps in the change from man to ape are in evidence and the dividing line conventionally established. Professor S. E. Tillman, writing in the Cosmopolitan, says about the Java discov- eries: “The consensus of scientific opinion, however, decides that all the remains must be regurded as human. It cannot be definitely determined from this find alone, but it is probable that this so- called Pithecanthropus (erect ape) is the lowest human form yet found, and is one of the ‘mi: g links’ connecting man with earlier and less human forms, and that he stands a long way off from man on the line leading to these forms. *This statement should not be under- stood as implying any direct connection between existing men and existing apes, for it is pretty certain that while both of these may be traced to a common ancestor, they have not traveled the same path from that ancestor to the present, and no discovery will ever britdge the chasm be- twzen them.” To B'ow Up Grave Robbers. The “coffin torpedo’” is the latest pat- ented device in the line of burial appli- ances. It is introduced into the casket before the latter is closed, the arrange- ment being such that any attempt to force the receptacle open will release a spring, strike a percussion cap and set off the bomb. This means aln.ost sure death to the unsuspecting grave robber, whose in- dustry the invention in question is de- signed to discourage. Live people do a great deal of thinking about death, it one is to judge from the immense numbers of patents that have been granted for inventions having rela- tion to the tomb, says the Philadelphia Times. They run up into the thousands, and not a few of them are weird and grisly enovgh to make the flesh creep. Among the most interesting are the so-called “life signals.” These are contrivances in- tended to secure the release of persons prematurely interred. There can be no doubt that to many human beings the fear of being buried alive some dayis a haunting dread through life. All of the patented devices for life sig- nals have one feature in common—namely, a wire or cord attached to the hand of the supposed corpse. In each case it is in- tended that any movement shall. set off an alarm of some kind. One contrivance emnvloys a small red flag, which shoots up from the grave and displays itself above ground if required. Another is called a ‘“grave annunciator.”” A disturbance in the coffin closes an electric cireuit and springs an alarm in the watchhouse of the cemetery. The superintendent takes note of the number of grave indicated by the alarm, and proceeds without delay to dig up the victim. Yet another species of apparatus is oper- ated by a spring catch, which throws open the lid of a tube extending from the coffin to above the ground, thus admitting air. At the same time a bell is set ringing. .On a somewnat different principle is an indicator in a glass case, to be placed on top of the grave and communicating by wires with the alleged defunct below. It the latter moves at all, a needle shows it. Most elaborate of all such devices is one in which a wire is attached to a ringon the thumb of the corpse. The slizhtest movement of the hand pulls a trigger which starts & clockwork mechanism. This sets off an alarm, and at the same time puts in operation a fan which forces down a tube into the coffin. There is a second tube provided with a lamp and reflector, so arranged that one may look down and see the face of the deceased. After a reasonable period has elapsed, the tubes are to be withdraw. ————————— A statistic fiend has figured out that a man who shaves regularly until he is 80 cuts off about, thirty-five feet of hair from his face. NEW TO-DAY. cases than any living ing. him. He publishes a valuable work send their P.O. and Express address, From U.8. Journalof Medicine, : Physician; C “red We have on this disease, which he sends We advise ‘ anyone wishing a cure ® Prof.W. H. Peeke, who makes a special- ty of Epilepsy, has without doubt treat- ed and cured more his success isastonish- ‘heard of cases of 20 years’ standing cured by with a large bottle of his absolute cure, free to any sufferer who ma: to address ®rof.W.H.PEEKE,F.D.,4Cedar St. N.Y.