The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 5, 1902, Page 10

10 THE SUNDAY CALL il B ¥ > € o i XFEER! ee T S T TN A NI 1 LS pemm——eerE L SR ¥ THERE is anyth sun, that new th! gprung on the uni this city in particular, ery will belong to a S If all goes well this San Fr be considered the acknowledged of this bay and coast and will be regarded as the “Marconi of Green Te It is to be hoped that very chances of future disasters like the I de Janeiro and the more recent sinking of the {ll- Rafael will be i possible. The problem which has exhausted the minds of all prominent men interested in the matter of light piercing fog is about to be overcome. The day at hand when land fogs will bring no fear to the mavigators of our bay, and, fog or no fog, the captains will be able to handle their wheels with equal ease and prec! ng new under the ng is about to be verse at large and its discov- soon ed San During the winter months there is no | more dangerous piece bay of San Francisco. The come stealing down the Sacramento River and from the San Joaquin and envelop the waters in their folds. It is not like the sea fog, which can be penetrated by the eye for a tance, but the black fog is thick and al- most impenetrable, rising to an altitude of from fifty to 150 feet and there stop- | ping, thinning graduali the base up and leaving the air clear above it. from The penetration of fog by any light has generally been considered an impossibil- ity, and attempt after attempt has been made to overcome the difficulty. The white light simply glare against the fog molecules overwh glare back with full force. The red light fared better in that it was softer and more penetrating, still it was so unsuccessful that it seemed futile to make any further effort in that line. And so the matter rested “in statu quo,” : hard nut to crack. But if penetrgtion was an impossibility, there must be some way of getting round or over this fog difficulty and “over” is the word that will probably do the trick. and the millions of While these disasters have been bap- | pening & quiet, self-possessed man ha been doing & lot of figuring and thinking, with the result that a number of experi- ments are about to be made, with a very | fair chance Of success. This quiet individual is none other than F. E. Whort, the Harbor Commissioners’ electrician. The tower of the ferry will be his con- ning tower, and a light of sufficient power and especially arranged his fighting gun. P o v v W P aum e hort dis-{ threw a strong | d it and threw the e - e And How is w 1 how is this to be accomplished? his menace to be overcome? By problem that has made -headed to be solved? isco is the trickiest An accident oc do those . a ship founders, and nfortunates so sudden- disappear in the wa- but their bodies are often lost 1l time and the ship itself is phau- tomized. The bodies go out to the ocean, sucked there by the currents, the tons of steel and iron are ‘moved and shifted to God knows where. The land fogs of w with a blanket lights are power! A captain’s life on board the ferry-boats is not all bread and marmaldde. He has so many hundred souls under his individ- ual protection—men, women and babies. His responsibility is enormous and his inter cover the bay which the boat through { | | J=="OUR _HUNDRED AND NINETY- FIVE persons, firms and corpora- fl tions want $57,000,000 from the United States for damages done to their property in Cuba during the last in- surrection against Sp: The last claims have been filed with ‘the Cuban claims | commission and an examination of them shows that most of them think the United | States will pay high prices for low com- | moaities. The largest single one is $4,177,698 85, | which was presented by a Cuban’sugar company incorperated under the laws of the State of New York. From this sum the claims run down to $7000 or $8000, al- though such small amounts are the ex- ception, the average claim. not counting those filed on account of the disaster to the battleship Maine, being between $200,- 000 and 00. Most of these claimants evidently think Uncle Sam is about the easiest “picking” the world ever knew. The statements have filed with the commission. set- ting forth the damage they have suffered might well rank as humorous literature. An examination of some of them - fur- | nishes more’ entertainment, than ~Mark Twain’s sketches. The Cuban mule must have been a table delicacy before and during the late insur- rection, judging from the value placed on him by the patriots who wish to dip their hands into Uncle Sam's pockets. Every | cow must have made an American Jersey look mean, if ‘we are to accept the values placed on them. The fences separating one plantation from another must have been silver plated. The huts which the native workmen inhabited must have been furnished with Brifssels carpets and mahogany bedsteads and equipped with | onyx mantelpieces and - porcelain - bath tubs, although the Cubans were not noto- rious for their bathing propensities, And the sugar cane—it was the finest quality, just ready to be harvested and FunnyWarClaims That Bother Uncle Sam. .damages for marketed at a handsome profit. Tt must have contained choco’ate creams and bon- bons, placed there by the lavish hand of bountiful nature. But valuable as were "the crops, the beasts of burden and the other adjunc of a well-kept Cuban plantation, the were cheap compared with other thi for which damages were claimed. For example, 2 man who was arrested during the Insurrection because he could not give a tisfactory account of himself to the Spanish authorities calculates that the wear and tear on his dignity and peace of mind could not be remedied or repairsd for less than $100,000. Of course the Span- ish prisons where American suspects were lodgeu pending an investigation of their cases were not moaels of comfort and lux- ury, but many a respectable citizen can be found who would sleep there and keep company with a few Cuban rats and bats for less than $2000 a night. Many claims have been fled for alleged false imprisonment and one for less than 75,000 s an exception. Here is an itemized statement of a claim filed by an American citizen who was ar- rested because he was suspected of being in collusion with the insurgents outside of Havana a short time before the United States and Spain went to war: For im- prisonment .and refusal to hold communi- cation with the American Consul General, $50,000; for mental and physical suffering and indignities, $25,000; for permanent mental and physical injuries, $15,000; for defamation of character, $9000; for extra expense on account of imprisonment to obtaln release, or cash expended, $1000. To- tal, $100,000. A man with a name decidedly Spanish, averring that he was naturalized in the city’ of New York, who asks for $25,000 the alleged ruination of what must have been a veritable Garden of Eden in the province of Matanzas, puts down his muleg at $150 each and every s horse on the plantation at the same fig- ure.—St. Louis Republic. heart only beats evenly when he feels his boat gliding into the pier. Of course every captain, be he on an ocean liner or a smaller boat, has his re- sponsibilities from the hour he takes un- der his wing his freight of human souls until he has delivered them safe and sound at their port of destination. On the bay, however, there is'the con- tinual. strain of the coming and going. the crossing ‘and recrossing, that contin. ual effort to sec through the wall of fog. The question of lights that may help to protect the passengers and ald the cap- tain is thercfore one of no small moment. With the theories of the East and .the 0ld World to figure with Mr. Whorf com- menced to further ideas of his own, with the result that experiments on a large scale will shortly take place. For years, in all the great railroads of the world, three lights have, up to quite recently, been used, the white, the red and the green, but now the white has been dropped altogether and the red is the danger signal and the green means “all's well.” Not long ago green lights were placed at the end of the Mission and Washing- ton street wharves and the captains of the incoming boats have declared them very satisfactory, showing up well in the fog, and greatly aiding them in reaching their berths. Mr. Whorf therefore devoted his atten- tion entirely to the green light. He knew it had the greater penetration. Lantern experiments and trials made in Europe and the assertions of.the captains on the bay of San Francisco had proved that to him, and he figured that if a power suffi- clently strong could be placed at a high enough point the penetration -would be sufficiently great to plerce the densest fog. Harbor Commissioner Kilburn inter- ested himsclf very much in this matter, and after several conversations with Mr. Whorf he instructed him to go ahead and make good his ideas. In the case of a land fog the ‘“modus operandi’” is materially facilitated. The height of the light would depend on the fog, the projector being so placed as to throw a blaze of enormous strength and magnitude some feet above the fog. Ths man at the wheel on catching sight of the rays through the fog can be sure of his Bearings and be guided to his landing place. i In the event of a fog of great altitude the concentration is made more intense by the aid of lenses and piercing the fog at mizzen height, in order not to be in the eyes of the helmsman, and performs its functions as a guiding star in the same marner. An Invention That Promises to Put an End to All Fog Disasters. In the success of the penetration lies the revolution of the steering system to a large extent during fogs of not only steamboats on the bay, but on all large rivers, like the Thames and the Mersey, for instance, where fogs are so prevalent, and will be of great assistance to ocean liners. Oft the banks of Newfoundland, where the fogs are like the Himalayan snows, everlasting, the benefit to be derived from this discovery would be of untold value. Should Mr. Whorf's ideas prove conclu- sively correct his next suggestion would be the placing of a projector with a green light of great power on each ferry-boat abaft the pilot box, sufficiently elevated to throw its light fair and square through the center of the fog, not for the guidance of the boat itself, but for the boat coming to meet it. All boats would have these lights each for the guidance of the other. In these very dense fogs sounds are often deceptive. The foghorn sounds often farther away than it really is and the ex- act direction is a matter of guesswork. With the steady light showing the exact whereabouts of each boat, her exact course, there could be no excuse for a mistake. Mr. Whorf intends to use for his first experiments a marine searchlight projeet- or, which will be placed at a given height on the tower, having a power of rbout forty-five amperes. Each ampere will rep- resent about one million candle-power, so he will have a forty-five million candle- power in all. ‘With this projector he will use certain lenses in order to concentrate the rays as much as possible and thus give it the most possible penetration. The question arises, In which direction shall this powerful light be thrown? The answer to that rests very much with the captains, and they must decide whether it shall be directed to the Oakland mole or over to Goat Island. It will be Mr. Whorf's aim to focus well above the pilot box In order that the glare may in no way interfere with the man at the wheel, and in the densest fog he ex- pects to be able to plerce the fog with his 40,000,000 candle-power of green light so completely that the boats may guide thelr course without fear or anxiety. The captains on the ferry-boats all seem to be in accord in regard to the green light being the best, although some of them are more earnest in thelr declara~ tions than others, but there is a mate ol —— one of the boats who is more than posi- tive in his mind regarding which light is the best, for after making his landing at Mission-street whart the other night, where the new lights have recently beea placed, he sald very emphatically that “them green lights was the guckoos of the water front.” And there was more truth than humor in that Swede's re- merk. And now it is to be hoped that this light which human ingenuity and brain is about to attempt to bring to the highest pinnacle of the- electriclan’s art may prove to be the means of averting all fuc- ther disasters on the bay, relieve the cap- tains’ minds of that eternal anxiety and become the “guckoo™ of mnot only the water front, but of the universe at large,