The improved audion holds out a wonderful future for radiotelephony. For receiving, at least, no elaborate aërial will be needed, and with a small loop of wire, an audion or two, and simple tuning-apparatus any one can hear the radio gossip of the whole world.
TELEGRAPHING TWELVE HUNDRED WORDS PER MINUTE
Some remarkable advances were made in telegraphy also. During the war and since, messages have been sent direct from Washington to all parts of the world. In the telegraph room operators are connected by wire with the different radio stations along the coast and they can control the radio transmitters, sending their messages without any repeating at the radio stations. Long messages are copied off on a machine something like a type-writer, which, however, does not make type impressions, but cuts perforations in a long sheet of paper. The paper is then run through a transmitter at a high speed and the message is sent out at a rate of as much as twelve hundred words a minute. At the receiving-station, the message is received photographically on a strip of paper. The receiving-instrument has a fine quartz thread in it, which carries a tiny mirror. A beam of light is reflected from the mirror upon the strip of sensitized paper. The radio waves twist the quartz thread ever so slightly, which makes the beam of light play back and forth, but of course the motion is greatly magnified. In this way a perfect record is made of the message in dots and dashes, which are translated into the corresponding letters of the alphabet.
There is another radio invention which we contributed during the war, that proved of utmost service in thwarting German spies and which is going to prove equally valuable in time of peace. Although a war invention, its peacetime service will be to save lives. It is a very simple matter to rig up a wireless-telegraph system that will send messages to a considerable distance, and simpler still to rig up a receiving-set. European governments have always discouraged amateur radiotelegraphy, but in this country restrictions used to be so slight that almost any one could set up and use a radio set, both for receiving and for transmitting. When we entered the war we were glad that amateurs had been encouraged to play with wireless, because we had hundreds of good radio operators ready to work the sets which the army and the navy needed.