132 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORI-D 



[February i, 1902. 



concerns have not been made clear enough to justify com- 

 ment at this time. 



WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY AND INSULATION. 



THE very brilliant experiments which Mr. William Mar- 

 coni has lately been making in the direction of long 

 distance wireless telegraphy have caused, among those who 

 are not particularly well informed, some teeling of alarm 

 lest the business of the transatlantic and other long cables 

 might be affected by the commercial success of the new 

 discoveries, and lest the manufacturers of insulating mate- 

 rials might find their market restricted through a decreas- 

 ing demand for such cables. That this is not the case is 

 easily seen by some consideration of the known facts in 

 connection with Mr. Marconi's experiments and their prob- 

 able and possible outcome, which is at present clearly in- 

 dicated. 



The whole possibility of wireless telegraphy as a com- 

 mercial proposition rests definitely upon the ability of in- 

 ventors to devise something which appears not yet to have 

 been perfected — that is to say, a syntonic system. 



A syntonic system of wireless telegraphy is one in which 

 the sending station sends out electrical waves of a definite 

 pitch, which may be compared to a musical note, and in 

 which the corresponding receiving station is definitely at- 

 tuned to receive this particular variety of wave — this par- 

 ticular note, so to speak — and to respond to it and to no 

 other. Evidently, by selecting different fundamental peri- 

 ods of vibration or, we may say, pitch of waves, different 

 syntonic systems may be operated in the same field. While 

 numerous experiments have been carried on by Mr. Mar- 

 coni and a number of other investigators, no really definite 

 success has yet been attained in this direction, and it seems 

 fair to say that thus far syntonic wireless telegraphy is not 

 commercially developed. And it also seems fair to say 

 that certain limiting and circumscribing conditions which 

 surround every known method of generating electric waves 

 will reduce the number of possible syntonic systems to a 

 very few. 



The reason for this is found in the fact that electrical 

 oscillations and vibrations, set up in the usual manner prac- 

 tised by experimenters in wireless telegraphy, result in the 

 formation of a compound wave, not resembling a pure mu- 

 sical tone in character but rather bearing a similitude to a 

 noise, in which a fundamental rate of vibra\ion is topped 

 and embroidered with innumerable wavelengths bearing 

 to it certain harmonic relations. Indeed, the action of an 

 ordinary oscillator is such as to produce waves having, to 

 follow the acoustic analogy a little further, a close resem. 

 blance to the sound that would be produced if all the keys 

 of a piano were struck at once. The production of a sin- 

 gle rate of vibration corresponding to a pure tone seems 

 to be practically impossible. For this reason, even if an 

 attuned system of receiving circuits could be devised, the 

 effect upon it of stray harmonics and overtones would be 

 probably to call it into action when this was undesirable. 

 For this reason, seeing that every fundamental rate of vi- 

 bration is accompanied by others bearing simple arithmet- 



ical ratios to it, the possible number of syntonic stations 

 and systems which may be made coexistent in a given ra- 

 dius of operations is reduced to two or three, in which the 

 fundamentals are so related to one another that their over- 

 tones and harmonics will not interfere. 



For this very reason the production of a long distance 

 system capable of transmitting a wireless message across 

 the Atlantic is apt seriously to interfere with the opera- 

 tion of other systems within a radius of 2000 or 3000 miles 

 from the sending station. But even if we may assume that 

 syntonic systems are perfected, and that methods of such 

 power as to permit commercial operation of transatlantic 

 signals are put into practice, then the fact still remains 

 that for commercial purposes these systems will not be able 

 seriously to compete in business with the cables. 



The reason is sufficiently evident. In no system using 

 the earth and the air for its channel of transmission is it 

 possible absolutely to secure secrecy. If a transmitter is 

 set up in England powerful enough to affect a receiver at- 

 tuned to it in Massachusetts, for example, then only a com- 

 paratively simple exercise of experiment will be necessary 

 to devise another receiver equally well attuned to take off 

 and reproduce the messages received. This objection ap- 

 pears to be fundamental. It is not believed to be likely 

 that the world's business would be entrusted to any system 

 of communication openly liable to unwarranted interfer- 

 ence and publicity. 



For all of the above reasons it seems today that neither 

 the cable companies, the cable manufacturers, nor the 

 makers of insulation have anything to fear from the ex- 

 ploitation of wireless telegraphy. Indeed, it is fair to say 

 that the future use of this system of communication seems 

 to be, to some degree, confined to marine signaling and 

 communication. For this purpose it is well adapted, and 

 its extension in this direction will without doubt be of 

 almost inestimable value. But nothing has been done up 

 to date that indicates, even dimly, the possibility of actual 

 commercial competition between cable systems and wireless 

 systems of communication. 



THE GOVERNMENT AND RUBBER. 



T^HE present attitude of the department of agriculture 

 '■ at Washington toward the investigation of rubber 

 resources and production merits the approval and support 

 of every branch of the rubber trade. There is no longer 

 any reason why rubber — any more than wheat, or tea, or 

 hemp — should remain a forest product, to be gained by 

 unsystematized and uneconomical methods. Much has 

 been done by individual, private enterprise in the direction 

 of bringing the production of rubber under more intelli- 

 gent supervision, but vastly more remains to be done. 

 The rubber belt is so wide, and the conditions so varied, 

 involving, among other things, so many rubber species, 

 and the whole production is so remote from the centers of 

 consumption, that any changes based upon unconnected 

 individual enterprises must be slow. 



While the gathering and marketing of rubber — and its 

 planting, for that matter — must always be under private 



