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Show 7 -' ; 1 up ) ( ;-' Ms.. V & ir, PROPOSE to revolutionize revolution-ize -warfare on land and This is the confidently calm, wholly matter-of-fact prediction made by Ulivi, the Italian engineer en-gineer and chemist. In a word, he flatly declares that he has perfected an I apparatus by means of which he can project wireless waves at an enemy's ships and blow them off the face of the waters! These are not the Idle mouthings of an Irresponsible dreamer. Were they uttered by any one less Important perhaps per-haps little heed would be given to them by officialdom abroad. Not so with the talented Italian. All Europe is watching hiB every move, and even now the government of France is considering con-sidering whether of not it is advisable to pay the vast sum the wireless expert ex-pert demands for a monopoly of his invention. Imagine what it means to be able to blow up a battleship or a cruiser without the firing of a single shot! Warfare will be revolutionized indeed! A steel-sided leviathan of the deep can do no harm far out at sea If the enemy has no ships, but let it once approach the coast and threaten to lay low some great port behold! The press of a button In a shore station, the instant crackle of the wireless as it zips through the blue ether and instantly the great thing of steel parts amidships with the roar of a thousand guns and sinks to tbe ocean's floor, a broken, distorted mass. No dream, this. It has gone beyond the experimental stage. For weeks past a mysterious yacht, fitted with powerful wireless apparatus, has been hovering off the Norman coast of France. Aboard has been a notable party and Ulivi. Now the secret is out. They have been blowing up submarine mines, by wireless wire-less as a preliminary to more drastic experiments. The yacht is the rakish Lady Henrietta, Henri-etta, flying the British flag, but under French ownership. Within her sharp lines is hidden the revolutionizing secret which not only France but the government of the United States and all the powers of Europe have been seeking ever since wireless waves have been a fact and wireless pod-er pod-er a possibility. And this secret is the new invention as yet in its infancy in-fancy for exploding at any desired distance from 600 to 6,000 yards by wireless infra-red solar spectrum waves all explosive substances in contact con-tact with metal. Briefly this means that Ulivi says he can detonate the guncotton or the powder contained in a warship's magazine mag-azine by means of wireless, and the French Government is seeing if it can be done. The infra-red rays of the solar spectrum are those mysterious beams beyond the edge of the red, invisible to the human eye but nevertheless there. For convenience Ulivi calls them "F-rays." They are akin to X-rays in that they can penetrate metal, but instead of making objects visible they develop force beyond the barriers which can deflect the most powerful' projectile, but are as glass to the potent force of the little known rays beyond the red, whatever unthinkable un-thinkable color they may be. How they work or in what manner Uivi has controlled them nobody but he knows. But that they have worked he himself frankly states and the official offi-cial commission which went to sea with him solemnly gives assent. Ulivi did not go about his work under any cloak of secrecy of mystery. With him on the Lady Henrietta went Gen. de Castelnau, assistant chief of the general staff of the French army; Commander Ferrie, director of the wireless telegraph station on top of the Eiffel tower, Paris, and Captain Cloitre, representing the French minister min-ister of marine. "We have reported to our government," govern-ment," said General de Castelnau seriously, "and everything we have said must be kept a profound state secret." It Is no breach of confidence to say, however, that the commission has unanimously reported in favor of France securing the invention without delay, no matter what the price. This consists, stripped of technicalities, of a Bpecial projectile emitting return infra-red rays which find the exact distance dis-tance and the exact radio-magnetic capacity of metallic objects. When these are determined with precision the Ulivi "F-ray" is then shot out from its station afloat or ashore and a long distance explosion takes place instantly in-stantly with mathematical accuracy. This is not merely Ulivi's hope of revolutionize warfare. Experiments made near Villers prove that it can be done even with the unperfected apparatus ap-paratus already put together. So accurately ac-curately has the projector worked that two mines were placed five yards apart at 1,000 yards' distance and either one exploded at will, the other remaining intact. It works as well by land as by sea; it can be applied to dirigible Dalloons like the German Zeppelins. "And," declares Ulivi confidently "it will render a ship freighted with explosive ammunition more dangerous to those aboard her than to their own enemies.!" I Dictated by Commander George W. Williams, U. S. N. Inspector in Command U. S. Torpedo Station, Newport, R. I. " If the Italian, Ulivi, has devised something by which he can explode a magazine at a distance by the Hertzian Hert-zian rays then we will surely get something to combat it. If projectiles can be deflected by shields surely wireless power can be deflected too. But this new power if there is such a power will not alone be used tor war; its use in the arts would be far too important to be overlooked. And if it has been discovered at last I am not at all surprised nothing would f surprise me in this age of miracles! mira-cles! I have not the slightest doubt that at this time Signor Ulivi has been able to construct antennae and specially de. signed receiving instruments and relays re-lays by which he can explode at a considerable distance an especially prepared charge of guncotton or other oth-er explosive. In fact, I have seea the thing done here already the idea is not altogether new. This working apparatus Is the Shoemaker Shoe-maker torpedo. It is a full-sized torpedo tor-pedo wirelessly controlled. This formidable for-midable weapon can be started, stopped, steered' and exploded by au operator at a distance, but it requires special receiving apparatus in the torpedo tor-pedo itself. It can perform what is expected of it, but it is not practical for the very good reason- that the operator cannot see far enough to exercise ex-ercise his judgment in the control of the instrument Take a motor boat 2,000 yards away you can't tell ex- V actly how she is heading. How much harder then to judge the steering of j a distant torpedo! The French navy has already had trials with wireless torpedoes, and what Ulivi has accomplished accom-plished Is probably an extension of these experiments. Now, what mysterious power is it that he has? Or, better, what is Ulivi trying to obtain? Briefly this: Some means of projecting pro-jecting energy through space that will detonate some explosive at a given place, subject to the control of the operator. As I have said, this is no new idea, Frank R. Stockton has It in his story, "The Great War Syndicate," and H. G. Wells used it in "The War of the Worlds." The same scheme has already al-ready been, proposed at the bureau of Ordnance of the navy, too. One inventor in-ventor asserted that he had effected a combination of mechanism that k could project the Hertzian waves or other wireless waves generated by electricity and explode a designated charge at a distance. |