TELEPHONING WITHOUT WIRES
We have had the telephone for more than a quarter of a century in practical working use, and have begun to think of it no longer as extraordinary. In truth, however, the advances and improvements in the ordinary telephone since the first successful experiments were made, mark almost as great progress as did the original invention itself. Of very recent success are the experiments of Marconi with wireless telegraphy, an astounding and important advance over the ordinary system of telegraphy through wires. Now comes the announcement that an American inventor, unheralded and modest, has carried out successful experiments in telephoning and is able to transmit. speech for great distances without wires.
The inventor is Nathan Stubblefield. The first public test of telephoning without wires was made at the Kentucky village where the inventor lived, on the first day of January, 1902, only a few weeks after Marconi's success in signaling across the Atlantic by telegraph without wires.
The next demonstration was made ten days later for a newspaper correspondent from St. Louis and the account of it was published in detail in that city. The investigator wrote as follows in regard to what he learned:
"Mr. Stubblefield has worked for ten years to discover an apparatus by which he could overcome the use of wires in telephoning, during which time he has become a technical electrician of high order. He has kept in touch with all the leading electricians, and is familiar with every important discovery in the field of electricity. Naturally he has been a close observer of the work of Marconi.
"The transmitting apparatus is concealed in a box. Two wires of the thickness of a lead pencil coil from its corners and disappear through the walls of the room, and enter the ground outside. On top of the box is an ordinary telephone transmitter and a telephone switch. This is the machine through which the voice of the sender is passed into the ground, to be transmitted by the earth's electrical waves to the ear of the person who has an instrument capable of receiving and reproducing it.
"We went into the cornfield back of the house. After walking five hundred yards we came to the experimental station the inventor has used for several months. It is a dry goods box fastened to the top of a stump. A roof to shed the rain has been placed on top of it; one side is hinged for a door, and the wires connected with the ground on both sides run into it and are attached to a pair of telephone receivers. The box was built as a shelter from the weather, and as a protection to the receivers. I took a seat in the box and Mr. Stubblefield shouted a 'hello' to the house. This was a signal to his son to begin sending messages. I placed the receiver to my ears and listened. Presently there came with extraordinary distinctness several spasmodic buzzings and then a voice which said: 'Hello, can you hear me? Now I will count ten. One--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten. Did you hear that? Now I will whisper.'
"I heard as clearly as if the speaker were only across a 12-foot room the ten numerals whispered. 'Now I will whistle,' said the voice. For a minute or more the tuneless whistle of a boy was conveyed to the listener's ears. 'I am going to play the mouth organ now,' said the voice. Immediately came the strains of a harmonica played without melody, but the notes were clear and unmistakable. 'I will now repeat the program,' said the voice, and it did.
"An examination of the station showed that the wires leading from the receivers terminated in steel rods, each of which was tapped with a hollow nickel-plated ball of iron, below which was an inverted metal cup. The wire enters the ball at the top and is attached to the rod. The rod is thrust into the ground two-thirds of its length. Another test was made after the rods had been drawn from the ground and thrust into it again at a spot chosen haphazard by the correspondent. Again the 'hello' signal was made by Stubblefield, and after a few minutes wait came, the mysterious 'Hello! Can you hear me?' and a repetition of the program of counted numerals, whispers, whistling and harmonica playing.
" 'Now,' said Mr. Stubblefield, who carried under his arm duplicates of the ball-tipped steel-rods. 'I wish you would lead the way. Go where you will, sink the rods into the ground and listen for a telephone message.'