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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (April 19, 1908)
4 THE SUNDAY OKEGONIAN, PORTLAND, APRIL 19, 1908. HOOT : Can Now Wit Wires BY C. II. WILLIAMS. IF TOU were on a ship midway b tween Portland and -Honolulu and the cratt were to sink beneath the waves, you could, while the waves were laping hungrily at the sinking craft, send a message to your friends in Portland and direct the disposition of your property. Or if your voyage were more happy, and was to end at Port land, you could, while oft the Columbia liiver, far out of the sight of land, order a cab sent to your pier to meet you at the hour you step oft the gang plank. You can order rooms reserved at your hotel, notify your .wife you will be home for dinner, or do anyone of the thousand things that you can through the old telegraph and tele phone system. If the shaft of your steamer breaks and Hip. vessel drifts helplessly at the merry of wind and wave at any point on the coast from Sitka, Alaska, to Magdalena Bay, your captain can flash a message to Port land for a tug, giving the location of . the disabled vessel, with reassuring messages to friends of passengers on board- This is a splendid accomplish ment, when It is remembered that thou sands of steamships, similarly disabled, have drifted helplessly for weeks, and many have Anally gone down, over whelmed by storms. All these things and innumerable others have been made possible by the installation of the new wireless sta tion on Council (.'rest by the United Wireless Telegraph Company, which has just been put in operation. 'With the crash of the wireless -spark as bis only companion, 1. A. Cameron, the operator, keeps vigil over the city sleeping far below him, for the station works onjy at night, when conditions are most favorable for the wireless ap paratus. The violent rays of the sun are at war with the ether waves that carry wireless messages, and light them like red corpuscles In the blood do dis ease germs. Humidity in the air also bleaks up ether waves. Only short distances arc covered by wirclcs In the daytime. Messages to be sent over "00 or 3"0 miles are transmitted at night when conditions are perfect. A Modem Aladdin. Every night Operator Cameron, hears the wireless messages passing between Admiral Kvans' fleet of lighting ships and the Southern California stations. He hears what ships far out at sea have to say as they pass each other hundreds of miles apart. He is chum my witli the operator at Sitka, Alaska, and chats with the man at the key in the lonely hut on Tatoosh Island, as readily as one neighbor to another over the telephone. Ho gossips with the man on watch at San Diego, and the itations between as readily as one man to another across the room. The wireless telegraph operator is mother Aladdin. He caresses his key, tvhich is another magic lamp, and the Eenli of the clouds do his bidding. The willing lave carries his message a thousand leagues over land and sea, snd delivers it more iuickly than a flash of lightning. Before the wink of an eye is accomplished, this modern wizardry is done. This is nothing short of magic . neater magic than the wonder-work-trs ever wrought. That one may send . message across mountains, over des rrts, fling it across oceans, without wires or cables, losing not a letter of Its import, is nothing less than a miracle. Would the steamship Columbia have ' Bone down last Summer off the Cali fornia coast in collision with the San Pedro, had both vessels been equipped with wireless as Portland-San Fran cisco steamers are now.? Probably not. By wireless telegraph and its sister in vention, the wireless telephone, -Aiips can warn each other of approaching danger, even In the densest fogs and smoke, which often make visual signal ing impossible. Lighthouses equipped with wireless can warn ships off the shore more effectively than the present system of lights. In the Xcw Station. At the Council Crest station, a mast 200 feet high has been placed, from the peak of wiich stay wires reach in each direction. These wires are not used Jn receiving or transmitting messages, eight antennae serving these purposes. There are 26 other stations on the Pa cific Coast already, all of them in touch with the Portland station, as well as a number of ships that ply across the ocean. From Portland to Sitka is 870 miles, while to Magdalena Bay is 1500 miles more. Stations will be places within a short time at Coos Bay and Grays Harbor, making a chain of-wireless masts that will be in ready com munication with each other at all times reachlng the whole length of the West ern North American Coast. Wireless messages have been sent very long distances successfully, "Utsf Spring the naval wireless station at Point Ima, Cal., took part of a mes sage sent by the wireless operator on board the Connecticut, which was oft the east coast of Cuba, A message from the battleship Rhode Island was received by the same station, the vessel being at that time off Cape Henry. The armored cruis er Pennsylvania, in San - Francisco Ray last August, took a wireless message from Savannah, Ga., a distance of more than 2400 miles. Tho message was re corded without a break. Slock Quotations to Pleasure Seekers A striking demonstration of one of the many uses of the wireless was made last August by an enterprising New York newspaper. Tho annual cruise of the New. York Yacht Club was about to be sailed through Iiine Island Sound and the newspaper equipped a tug with wire less apparatus and arranged to send finan cial bulletins and stock quotations to it every little while. The tug was to fol - low the fleet of pleasure craft and hoist signals telling the latest news of Wall street. Each yacht had been supplied with code books In advance by which the owners could Interpret the tug's sig nals. Wireless messnges were (lashed to the tug from the top of a Broadway skyscraper, where a mast and laterals had been set up. While the fleet was gathering at Glen Cove a number of the yachtmcn de clared they Intended to separate them selves entirely from business worries during the cruise. They accepted the code books politely, but intimated they . .UNITED" ROQRAWl. - . tefeKKSl I i. j A Os ' . w.rmiotNT 1 & r HI ii II I miHsW limiMIIMI I II I'M liWWIIIWIIII llllnWlMIl"'T1"" Q I i- ,Hi . NH"-r x - I I Ik V ' I - fSkk-v '?3r-k jSI IM II ' .-r lYAfc'Z' ' : 'rJ0 11 i i - TflT I r' - flit mf&& : li A V r : 1: wM n " r - P i V W ' "-IV1 ff I 4 I ir - 1 Hv 1 1 1 f s i"f5 1 it I W ir -ru'JKXMk- - i 1 1 i I i ' I if ' ' -AJFe ' y . 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' Wireless telegraphy depends for the transmission of its messages upon ether waves. These are set In motion by the oscillation of a high frequency current controlled by the operator. The waves, set in . motion at one station, impinge upon receiving antennae at other stations. They travel in widening circles just like waves from a pebble flung into a pool. The difference Is that they .travel as fast as light itself, which is calculated at 186.000 miles per second. The ether wave is several hundred feet deep. It travels over ' mountain ranges and preserves its identity. Land sur faces serve well for Ails wave to sweep over, but salt water is the best known medium. Fresh water lakes are found to be somewhat less favorable than the ocean. Development of the Wireless. G. Li. Milligan, a wireless expert who has spent the past week in Portland tun ing the local station', that is, adjusting the wave length sent out to that of other stations so they may talk together, has watched the development of wireless from the time a message could be flung through the ether a scant four miles. He believes the development of the ether wave will give to science the power to make daylight. He says it' .Is only a question of short enough vibrations of the wave, together with high enough fre quency of the current: . He also thinks electrical power will be sent through the air in future without wires. That electricity may be given a high frequency, making It capable of erators believe that with the constant im provement oT sending and receiving ap paratus that, is bound to come, the wire less message will be seiU longer and longer distances, and no one can guess what will be the ultimate distances spanned by the wireless spark. Has Made the Karth Shrivel. Like the other big advances in science. the wireless telegraph has made the world smaller. For centuries the earth has been shrinking. When Marco Polo first circumnavigated it, tho globe grew noticeably smaller. When the first steam boat ploughed the Atlantic, distances grew less. With the invention of the telegrapli and telephone and the build ing of steam railroads, what seemed like formidable distances shrunk to short and . comfortable journeys. With the inven tion of the wireless telegraph, tho earth positively shriveled. It has done more .to annihilate distance than almost anj thing else. Terror of sea travel has been vastly minimised. And why not greater wonders still? Why should not the control of ether, the most Insubstantial substance, bind the. planets closer together as 'it 1ms the hemispheres? It is not altogether im probable that the ether wave offers a means of communication with Mars and other planets believed to be inhabited. Given the means of generating an ether wave strong enough and there is no rea son why it should not break on the shores on that little known, mysterious planet. Wily not sometime detach an ether warn from the Council Crest antennae that would pulsate tho receiving lateral of a Martian station? F.ther not only permeates the air and water buf substances as well and is the chief constituent of that void between the worlds where nothing is across which light and heat travels on ether waves but through which no sound can come. How fast the ether wave will speed in its own element, where no air is. cannot now be known. Who knows but in that supposedly perfect medium, an earth wave would flash across hitherto un bridged distances and all in the twink ling of an eye? In fact some wireless inventors believ "Mars has been trying to signal us by this means already. Last Summer when this new science was being developed by leaps and bounds, a number of scien tists w,ere experimenting along the At lantic Coast at widespread stations. Oi erators at the keys throughout tho night reported that a certain fixed intervals each night a mysterious message of three dots would be tapped on tho receiver. Not once, but many times this happened, and .many operators at different stations reported it. Where the dots came from no one knew but the suggestion was made that It might have been Mars trying to speaK to the earth through this new and uni versal means of communication. Largest Bath in the World. New York Sun. The biggest swimming ,pool in th world has Just been officially put in commission at Tooting Bee Common, England. It Is 3u0 feet in length and is 99 feet wide. With a capacity of 1,360,000 gallons of water, it is so arranged that 80,000 gallons can be pumped Into It dally, thereby in suring a partial flow all the time. By this plan It will not be necessary to clean the bath more than once e year. To empty the bath and refill It means an expendi ture of J1!00. The depth of the pool is 6 feet inches. It has no covering over head, but all around there Is ample ac commodation for spectators. The work of construction was begun about a year and a half ago, and was so faradvancedlast Fall that it was used for general porposes. The fixtures, of course, were only In a rough state; nevertheless about 3000 persons visited the big pool every day for their dip. One day In tho wick Is set aside for women, and on these days the bath Is taxed to its fullest. There is no admission charge. In spite of the' large number of bathers, no fatality has so far occurred, but the bath attend ants have rescued 13 persons, and they re ceived the Royal Humane Society medal last year for saving two persons from the deep end. The. bath is situated in the most picturesque part of the common. would not be used. On the following day the financial storm broke. Many who had steeled themselves to be heedless at the outset were the most Interested readers of the financial bul letins. From having promised themselves to be interested only in squalls at sea. they began to strain- their eyes for squalls on the New York stock exchange. Scores who. started -oiit to remain with the fleet until the finish-of the cruise at Newport hastened back- to the- storm center. Those who remained were kept as fully advised - of the market as if they had . been in their own offices. One minute and thirty seconds, was re quir,pd to flash the news of the London opening to the fleet, the message being relayed by the' Newport naval station, and In three minutes the O K had been sent back to the New York operator that the wireless tug had received the mes sage. The same newspaper office was in pos session of the fact that the schooner yacht Klmina won the Astor cup two minutes and thirty seconds after the boat crossed the line, all due to the re- traveling on tyie ether wave, and then sent across the country and picked up as wireless messages are snared in a net of wires seems probable. But the most wonderful development In the field opened up by the wireless in ventor is probably as yet ungucsscd. Op- Hardy Newspaper Men. Boston Transcript. In 8 years no editor has been received as a patient at the Longvicw Hospital, of Cincinnati, and only one reported. In that time the hospital has treated 21.i0 housewives. 12K4 laborers. 653 domestic servants, 5S0 other servants, 3(6 farmers, 2W clerks. HI carpenters, 115 merchants, 135 tailors, 131 painters, 116 shoemakers. M eigaimakers, 78 salesmen, Tf ma chinists, 64 cabinetmakers, teamsters, 63 butchers, M bakers, 40 coopers, 48 saloon keepers, 4" soldiers, 46 school teachers, 42 printers, 39 lawyers, 30 physicians, 30 fire men and 28 policemen. Fatbw O'l-lynn. Alfred P. firavt!. Of prits we can offer a charmin' variety, Kar rno-ned for larnln and piety: Stiil. I'd advance ye wldout Impropriety, Father O'KIynn as the flow'r of tlicin all. Ftefrain Herat a health to you. Father O'KIynn, Klalnte and alalnte and alalnte agin; Pow' rfulest preacher and Icnflerent teacher, And kindliest creature In ouid Donegal. Don't talk of your Frovoat and Fellows of Trinity. FamoiiH fnrever at Greek ant T.atinlty, Faix and the nivil and all at Divinity. Katner O'Flynn 'd make hares of them all! I'onie. I venture to fcive ye my word. Never the likca of hi lntrlc w.h heard, Down from mythology lnlo tliayoiocy, Troth! and concholoKy. if he'd the call. Och Father O'Flynn, you'e a wonderful way wld you. All ould sinners are wishful to pray wld you. All the young chllder are i ild for to play wld you. You've nthch a way wld you. Father aviek! Stilt, lor all you've ko jsentlo a aoul. Gad, you've your flock In the grandest con trol; Checkine the crazy ones, coaxiu' onalay one. Liftln the lazy ones on wid the stick. And though quite avolJin" all foolish friv olity. Prill at all season of Innocent jollity Where was the playboy could claim an equallty At comicality. Father, wld youZ Once the bl.shop looked grave ut your jest. Till thin remark net on wid the rett: "Is It lave gayety all to the laity? Can not the clergy he Irian -nun, too?"
