Pictures Now Sent by the Wireless Telegraph

1901

You can have your picture taken now by wireless telegraphy, says a New York dispatch to the Boston Herald. You can have it wafted through space on the crest of an electrical wave without the intervention of even a wire as a medium, and faithfully reproduced in a few minutes for publication in your favorite newspaper.

You may even have your physiognomy hurled through, an eight-inch brick wall with the speed of a series of lightning flashes, and received in good condition for recognition, on the far side of the wall, without serious detriment to your cherished lineaments.

All this can be done, for the New York Herald has demonstrated it in a series of experiments, concluded the other day, whereby it has successfully applied the principles of wireless telegraphy to the accurate transmission from point to point of portraits, sketches, maps and other pictures.

This practical achievement should be feasible not only to report without connecting wires the progress of a yacht race off Sandy Hook, as has already been done successfully, but to transmit almost instantaneously and by wireless devices actual illustrations made at sea depicting the critical moments of the struggle.

She Shot Him Just for Fun

1911

The Editor Muses

A St. Louis woman, asked why she shot her husband, said she did it "just for fun." And yet they say women have no sense of humor.

The agitation to make the upper berth lower continues; but no matter at what figure they fix the price it will still be high.

A St. Louis man made his wife cut his hair. Barbering, however, will never be included in any domestic science course.

There is a woman wireless operator. The old saw must be amended to read: "What man has done, a woman can and will do."

Fashionable women in the national capital climb the Washington monument to reduce their flesh. Thus does the uplift reach society.

A woman of ninety-one in Massachusetts wants to go up in a balloon. Another example of how people are as young in times as they want to be.

If a girl has a grown up brother she acquires a pretty fair knowledge of men without having to pass through the agonies of matrimony.

Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future. — Euripides.

Jazz By Wireless Heard 1,500 Miles

1920

Low Power Generators Used in Experiment

Expect to Talk to England by Telephone If Present Trials Are Successful

England and the United States soon will be talking to each other by telephone if experiments which now are being conducted in both countries are successful. Already nightly efforts are being made by the British to make American operators hear their voices over the wireless telephone. So far the attempt has been fruitless.

However, just the other day Americans set a new record for talking by wireless, when operators in Chicago, Topeka, Kan., and half a dozen points not more than 1,500 miles from New York distinctly heard the New York operator talking and then listened to a jazz record on his talking machine.

Low Power Generators Used

The record was made because generators of only one-third of a kilowatt of power were used. When last year, for the benefit of President Wilson, navy operators sent his voice ringing around the world by wireless, they used a 300-kilowatt generator. There is no limit to the distance which can be covered the wireless telephone provided sufficient power is used, but to come within a reasonable expense present devices must be made more perfect.

New York and Chicago now have a little talk every night and all over the country the members of the American Radio Relay League, which has half a million members, strain their ears in an effort to overhear what is being said. The New Yorker is Robert F. Gowen of the DeForest Radio company, and the Chicago operator is R. G. Mathews, who worked with the navy wireless during the war. They now are trying to get an operator at Roswell, n. M., to hear Gowen talking. If he succeeds then the wireless talk will be directed at a San Francisco operator.

Span Country Without Wires

"When we can span the country with the human voice without the aid of wires we will have solved the question of how to take care of the ever increasing long-distance telephone business," says Mathews. "Now, if a fellow wants to make a long distance call he has to wait an hour or two because all the trunk lines are busy. When the wireless telephone is an assured thing central will plug the patron in on an aerial trunk line and he can get to talk right away. The chances are he won't know the difference, either, except that he can hear more distinctly and there won't be any of the tinny sound that now interferes with telephoning.

"The great problem is to make it possible to use the telephone without making it so expensive the average person can't afford it. The low power and short wave lengths we are experimenting with now are within the reach of almost every amateur wireless fan."

Marconi Listens for Signals from Mars, Doyle for Spirits

1922

MARTIANS AND SPIRITS

With Mars only about 40,000,000 miles from the earth, Marconi, the inventor of the wireless, is trying to get signals from that planet. True, the most powerful wireless outfits yet built on this planet are capable of sending messages only an infinitesimal fraction of that distance, but Marconi hopes the Martians can do better. That is, if there are any Martians.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announces that he is installing a complete radio outfit in his London home, for use in his psychic investigations. He feels confident that by means of radio he will be able to communicate with the spirit world.

It might simplify things if the "spirit world" happened to be Mars. Then Marconi and Doyle could work together on the job.

Scoffing is easy, and it is also futile. Nobody can say with assurance that either of these gifted men is wrong. But certainly the chances of their being wrong are great. The least that can be expected of the public is an open mind, a willingness to be "shown." There is a long chain of "ifs" in both cases.

—The Monessen Daily Independent, Monessen, Pennsylvania, June 23, 1922, p. 3.

Wireless Music Entertains Men on Ships at Sea

Like all well-regulated ships, the transport "George Washington" has a phonograph. It also has wireless-telephone equipment of the latest design. On a recent occasion the phonograph horn and the telephone transmitter were brought face to face, and the music started. A hundred miles away, soldiers and sailors on the transport "President Grant" gathered eagerly around a loud-speaking receiver, from which issued the merry strains of song and fox trot, as the concert ship threw its melodious vibrations into space. Within the hundred-mile radius were several other radio-equipped ships, and when the concert was over the "George Washington's" operator was kept busy receiving encores.

After more than four years' service as an important military wireless station, during which no civilians were allowed to visit it, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, has been reopened to the public.

Iceland's traditional isolation has vanished with the erection of a wireless station which now receives daily press bulletins from Scandinavia, England, France, and Germany.

Airplane to Unite Isolated Towns of Interior Peru
The Peruvian government has decided to bind more closely together the scattered communities on the eastern slopes of the Andes by means of regular airplane service, handling mail, passengers, and freight. It is possible that the first route will extend from the city of Huanuco, high in the Andes, northward along a branch of the upper Amazon, then eastward over passes in the high mountain ranges, to Iquitos, 500 miles away. Iquitos is 2,653 miles from the mouth of the Amazon River, yet is touched by many foreign ocean-going vessels, making it the center of the Peruvian river-transportation system.

--Popular Mechanics, August 1919