Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle, October 27, 1912, page 20:
YOUNG BROOKLYNITE TALKS BY WIRELESS
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Aerial 'Phone Practical, Says 23-Year-Old Elman Myers.
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GOVERNMENT PLANS TEST.
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Youthful Inventor, Optimistic About His Work, Hopes to Talk Across Atlantic Soon.
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If the expectations of a Brooklyn boy, a former student at Adelphi College, are fully realized, it will be possible to call up a friend on an outward bound steamer and talk with him over a wireless telephone which this young man has invented. A great many experiments have been made with the hope of perfecting and introducing for general use a wireless telephone. Elman B. Myers claims that he is the first person to propose something which is workable and which can be easily added to the present telephone system.
Mr. Myers is 23 years old. Though young in years, he has been giving for a number of months his whole time to the study of that branch of electrical science which has to do with wireless telegraphy. He may be considered an enthusiast in the matter of the perfection of the wireless telephone. A test of the new invention is being planned under the direction of the United States Government. It will be made between Albany and New York, a distance of 165 miles, a section of country in which the wireless telegraph has met with some apparently insuperable difficulties. These difficulties have been attributed to the great quantity of iron in the soil over which the wireless dispatches were expected to travel, and consequent interference with electrical forces.
"What are the advantages of your wireless telephone system over the now popular wireless telegraph?" Mr. Myers was asked.
Some Advantages of Wireless Telephonic Communication.
"Just the advantage that a telephonic message has over one sent by telegraph. If the first named communication comes in to your house you usually have no difficulty in understanding it, but you can't make anything of a wireless message unless you understand the code or there happens to be an operator in your house the very moment the message arrives. Take the situation on shipboard. The operator may be disabled, or for some reason is unable to take dispatches sent by the wireless system. But the captain of the ship, any officer thereof, or even a common sailor can understand a wireless telephone message."
"Are there not a great many interferences in sending messages by wireless telephone?"
"No. You must remember that the messages travel through ether, not through air. It is the wireless telegraph that encounters difficulties. Why, if it had not been a clear night and an atmosphere uninterfered with by electric disturbances, not one word would ever have been heard from the Titanic. When the Carpathia was coming into this port with the rescued passengers, it was found impossible to communicate with her by wireless telegraph, for the reason that the air was full of electricity. It will be remembered that there were no wireless dispatches from the steamer at that time. The plans made for the efficient use of wireless by the telephone obviates all these difficulties."
"At how great a distance have you been able to make the wireless telephone distinctly serviceable?"
"The human voice has been distinctly heard at a distance of 700 miles. This was between Sacramento and Santiago, in Lower California. A peculiarity of the wireless telephone is that the voice is clear and distinct. There is no buzzing. Long distances are merely a matter of electric power. The generation of such power is expensive, but it is much less expensive in wireless telephoning than it is by the more familiar system."
Hopes to Telephone Across the Atlantic Soon, Says Myers.
"How about telephoning across the Atlantic. Have you accomplished that feat yet?"
"We have not, but we hope to, before very long. It is entirely practicable. It is only the question of the application of electric power. We believe that the wireless telephone will entirely supplant the cable. As a means of communication the cable is very unsatisfactory. Its working is constantly being interfered with by the salt water in which it is laid. You are aware that an electrical battery which is badly worn is revived by being dipped in salt water. Telegraphing through salt water by means of a cable is therefore surrounded with difficulties which the electrical experts have not yet been able to overcome."
During the visit of the fleet, Mr. Myers established his invention in a high building on West Ninetieth street, Manhattan, and talked with various ships. He also started the phonograph going and furnished music by wireless telephone, to the great gratification of the jackies as well as the officers of the fleet. He established communication with the Torpedo boat Trip, and the articulation was as clear and distinct as could be desired.
Mr. Myers emphasized the point that wireless telephoning was not interfered with by the many difficulties which beset telephoning in the ordinary way. It requires ¼-horsepower to send a message 1,000 miles when there is perfectly clear speech, he said. It requires 90-horsepower to send a wireless dispatch the same distance. The apparatus upon which Mr. Myers has secured patents in the United States is capable of making 2,500,000 vibrations a second, and is thus capable of sending the expressions of the human voice for very long distances. The apparatus is absolutely silent--no buzzing, no roaring, no ticking--until the words of the speaker are uttered.
French Inventors Agree With Mr. Myers Opinion.
Telephoning without wires is sometimes referred to as the sparkless wireless. Already residents of Paris are getting ready to take down their receivers and call up New York. It is claimed by French inventors that all that is required to talk such long distances as between Paris and Brooklyn, is a sufficiently powerful installation. This is Mr. Myers' view, also. It is claimed by the French inventors that 200 words a minute can be sent by means of a mechanical device, which is to be made a part of the new system of wireless telephoning. No stations have yet been established for the new method of transmitting messages, nor does it seem probable that such rapidity of transmission will be called for. Paris electrical experts who have recently been interviewed sustain the claims which are made for his invention by the Brooklyn boy above referred to. It is held by the Frenchmen that the doing away with the spark of the wireless telegraph a great saving of time is made. With a continuous current apparatus, such as is used by the wireless telephone system, 100,000 oscillations a second can be reached instead of the 2,000 to 3,000 obtained at present.
Fred Lambert, a Brooklyn man who has carefully investigated, the wireless telephone invented and constructed by Elman B. Myers, declares that it will do all that is claimed for it and that it will revolutionize the business of transmitting messages through the air. "The Federal Government," he says, "has become very much interested in this invention. After the coming test between Albany and New York, the system will undoubtedly be adopted by the Government and used as a means for communication between ships at sea and over long distances on the frontier."