| HERTZIAN WAVE WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, VII. |
By Dr. J. A. FLEMING,
PROFESSOR OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
A NUMBER of more or less imperfect arrangements, having the isolation of communications for their object, have been devised or patented, which are dependent upon the use of several aerials, each supposed to be responsive only to a particular frequency; and attempts have been made to solve the problem of isolation by MM. Tommasi, Tesla, Jegon, Tissot, Ducretet and others.
We may then pass on to notice the attempts that have been made to secure isolation by a plan which is not dependent on electrical syntony. One of these, which has the appearance of developing into a practical solution of the problem, is that due to Anders Bull.[1] In the first arrangements proposed by this inventor, a receiver is constructed which is not capable of being acted upon merely by a single wave or train of waves or even a regularly spaced train of electric waves, but only by a group of wave trains which are separated from one another by certain unequal, predetermined intervals of time. Thus, for instance, to take a simple instance, the transmitting arrangements are so devised as to send out groups of electric waves, these wave trains following one another at time intervals which may be represented by the numbers 1, 3 and 5; that is to say, the interval which elapses between the second and third is three times that between the first two, and the interval between the fourth and fifth is five times that between the first two. This is achieved by making five electric oscillatory sparks with a transmitter of the ordinary kind, the intervals between which are settled by the intervals between holes punched upon strips of paper, like that used in a Wheatstone automatic telegraphic instrument. It will easily be understood that by a device of this kind, groups of sparks can be made, say five sparks rapidly succeeding each other, but not at equal intervals of time. One such group constitutes the Morse dot, and two or three such groups succeeding one another very quickly constitute the Morse dash. These waves, on arriving at the receiving station, are caused to actuate a punching arrangement by the intermediation of a coherer or other kumascope, and to punch upon a uniformly moving strip of paper holes, which are at intervals of time corresponding to the intervals between the sparks at the transmitting station. This strip of paper then passes through another telegraphic instrument, which is so constructed that it prints upon another strip
- ↑ See The Electrician, Vol. XLVI., p. 573, February 8, 1901.
