San Jose Mercury Herald, July 27, 1913, page 5:
SAN J0SE SCIENTIST ACHIEVES DISTINCTION
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Practical Wireless Telephone Perfected by Prof. Chas. D. Herrold.
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At his laboratory in the Garden City Bank building, Prof. Charles D. Herrold, the well-known scientist, has perfected a system of wireless telephony. This is said by leading engineers to be the most simple and practical system yet put in operation, in this country or abroad.
The Goldschmidt, Bethenod and Fessenden systems are characterized by extreme complications and costly equipment. Some of the generators used in these wireless telephones have cost as high as $40,000 to $70,000, and weigh several tons.
The Herrold system employs no expensive generator. The complete outfit for producing the oscillations weighs only a few pounds, and can be supported on one hand. This outfit will carry the human voice several hundred miles. The fundamental patent is owned and controlled by a nonstock-selling company of conservative San Francisco business men.
On the 22nd of June last year Prof. Herrold signed a contract, at the same time agreeing to deliver speech wirelessly between San Francisco and San Jose. Within a few weeks communication was opened between the station on the roof of the Fairmont hotel and that on the Garden City Bank building, in San Jose. This remained practically uninterrupted during the better part of the year. Tests showed as high an average as the long-distance wire telephone.
The result of this work placed him in the position of chief engineer of the company.
Bringing to bear upon the problem some 12 years of experience, he commenced the systematic improvement and development of the wireless telephone. In this work he was ably assisted by his faithful laboratory expert, Frank G. Schmidt, for several years laboratory assistant of the Rev. Father Bell S. J., University of Santa Clara.
An important detail of the transmitter was independently discovered by E. A. Portal, radio-operator for the San Jose station. With the wonderful receiving methods at this station Mr. Portal has been able at times to hear stations within a radius of 3000 miles. The Key West, Fla., station was plainly heard by him.
As a result of 13 months of work Prof. Herrold has a larger number of important patents and improvements to his credit than any other worker in the field for a given length of time.
Every detail has been overhauled. The defects in the Collins, Poulson, and De Forest systems were carefully studied and remedied. Patent experts claim that the automatic system is the simplest and most effective device of Its kind passed into time U. S. patent office.
The device for supplying the vibrant energy to the aerial wire is revolutionary. Five wireless telephone stations of this system could be placed within a few miles of each other and unless absolutely tuned to the same wave length, would be unable to hear each other.
So tremendous is the energy emitted from this system that at the station in the Santa Cruz mountains the human voices from either the Fairmont station in San Francisco or the San Jose station is plainly audible through the earth without raised aerial wires.
Prof. Herrold is at present constructing instruments for actual use. Frank G. Schmidt is at the government radio-station at Mare Island installing one of these. Tests performed today were very satisfactory, and the second National Wireless Telephone instrument will be installed by Mr. Schmidt at Point Arguello in a few days.
On being interviewed, Mr. Herrold was very conservative, but made the prophecy that in the future the human voice would be carried further by wireless than over wires and that the aerial wires of great height would eventually be unnecessary.