Show communication AT SEA agrest A great ocean steamer leaves the port of new york tor for liverpool in all features of construction and equip menashe ment she Is a triumph of modern engineering gi she rp carries arries perhaps seven hundred people with specie and cargo aggregating millions in value and she will traverse the ocean at the or speed of the rail railway train not many years ago violent storms merely delay her the heaviest seas scarcely impede her progress of all things in the world we see in her the most nearly perfect embodiment of mans victory over the forces of nature within a very brief period from the time that steamer loses sight of land she may plunge into a dense fog hank bank Then despite all her marvelous mechanism despite all ane genius and skill lavished upon her every internal detail she is to all intents and purposes lost not wrecked or destroyed but simply lost cut off practically practical anc for the time being as much from all communication with the world as it if she bad suddenly sad denly been transferred to another planet she cannot indicate her whereabouts to another vessel she cannot reco recognize galze the bearing or distance of other ships in her vicinity and in a few hours she will be unable to determine her own position with any certainty furthermore ther more there Is no knowing at what moment another vessel may crash into heri her or she into another vessel in briet brief sue one is ia face to face with the greatest peril of the sea and the fact remains that after all the centuries during which men have sailed the great deep this problem of how to secure intercommunication between ships at sea during thick weather has resisted and still resists every attempt at human ingenuity toward its solution ships at sea now communicate with one another either by visible or by auriole signals visible signals usually are made by displaying klags of different colors or patterns which represent letters of the alphabet or numbers audible signals are made by the blasts of a whistle on en a steamer or by toe the ringing of a bell or the ibe sounding of a horn born on a sailing vessel to steam swiftly through a fog and so increase the chances of collision with another yes ves sel or to go slowly and so to increase the chances ot another vessel colliding with us as may be simply perhaps to choose one or the other horn of a dilemma it is of more importance to do away wit the dilemma itself and this can be done only by ib Ih venting some way of transmitting intelligence f from rom one ship to the other independently ot the prevailing meteoric conditions dit ions audit and it is by reason of these conditions that sound signals fail ot crr mislead two awo methods of establishing communication muni cation between vessels have been proposed one being partly electrical and partly acoustic and the other wholly electrical in character the arst system has been experimented upon u by professor lucien luciea J blake and ad to some extent by mr Eddi eddison sod its general plan is as follows any sort of sound producing apparatus such as a whistle or foghorn fog horn is arranged to produce its ito blasts auder the surface of the water wherein the sound waves will travel in all directions ions with a velocity tour four or five times as ag fast as the air there is nothing electrical therefore in this part of tile the contrivance the receiving apparatus is to consist of a tube tabe extending down through the ship and open below so as to become tilled filled with a column of water into which so some me of the sound waves pass in this tube is to be arranged a telephone transmitter the contrivance ordinarily talked into which will take up the sound which has passed through the water and electrically transmit the signals through a wire to the captains cabin or other quiet room in ia the ship where an ordinary telephonic receiver is provided at which instrument during night and thick weather someone is constantly to listen professor blake states that signals have thus been sent between boats a mile distant through a rough sai sea and in a dense fog and that the sound of a bell has been heard over a distance of one ne and a ball balf miles around three or four turns of a river when entirely inaudible through the air mr edi sons plan so far as it has been made public in the newspapers papers appears to involve very much the same idea as that of professor blake nothing could be clearer than the distinguished inventors elucidation or of what he intends to accomplish but no reported results are at hand other than a general statement that intelligible telli gible messages have been transmitted over a distance of a mile idile through the water of a florida river the second system is that proposed by professor alexander graham bell and as already stated is purely electrical he suggests an insulated wire to be connected with a annamo ayn amoon OB board beard ship and trailed for a considerable distance astern the electrical circuit from the dyn dynamo amoto to the ex posed end of the wire or metal plate thereto attached is completed back to the vessel by bi the water the other pole ot of the dynamo dynamo may be connected to the iron ship herself the reported theory of this arrangement is that when the ibe current in the above circuit is interrupted by the making of signals currents will be induced in a similar circuit es on another vessel and that the variations produced la in the second circuit will effect a receiving telephone included therein so that thai signals will fuere be reproduced of the two systems thus briefly outlined that attributed to professor bell to is the most promising the objections to the acoustic plan are many and serio serious uc tile the motion of the vessel herself the constant vibration of the hull duato due to moving machinery and impact of the waves the groaning and creaking of the ships frame and other unavoidable noises always al hayg present in a vessel in a sea way and intensified in stormy weather will affect the delicate mechanism of a telephone transmitter ta itter and tend to obliterate and obscure the signals received at the present date thereto rethe gr great eat problem has been no more than barely at tac tacked ked that it will be ultimately solved and by electrical means the writer fully believes whoever succeeds may hope to secure tor for himself hin iselt a reward that might gratify the highest ambition park benjamin in the forum lor for december |