University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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- la S iutt Vatt) i 8 3»

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THE REDWOOD 25 Father Bell and the Radio Without that great foe of nobleness, self-interest, and devoid of every suggestion of the mercenary, Father Richard H. Bell, S. J., has since his advent to St. Ignatius College in 1898 and his subsequent transfer to Santa Clara in 1902 been quietly and unostentatiously delving into the m .teries of the wireless and the radio. Interested to en- grossment in advancing the radio since its very inception, the Marconi of the West allows no other material thing to interfere with his con- tinual research, as is well evidenced by his successes. That so little has been heard of him, rather than extenuating his glory, adds to it, for his ideal is cf Grecian purity and is unsullied by the brazen lustre of gain. When Horace speaking of the Greeks extolls their high literary ideals, ' Graiis iiift ' enium, Graiis dcdit ore rotundo Musa loqui, praeter laudem niilliiis avaris. he is speaking also, mutatis mutandis, of Father Bell. In him the man of science is surpassed only by the priestly man of God, and when in Chapel with his simple eloquence he betrays his filial devotion to the Virgin Mother, the eyes of his listeners are frankly moist. Seldom is it given us to see the genius of the scientist and the soul of the priest so inti- mately intertwined, never in opposition, but the one assisting the other to more perfect accomplishments Ad Majoi ' em Dei Gloriani , as true science and the teachings of Him, the Master of all Science, must always do. It was in 1894, while Father Bell was studying Theology in Rome, that Marconi succeeded by means of his adoption of the Branley tube in re- ceiving, or detecting, a current of electricity transmitted through a few feet of air. Branley, the learned professor of the Catholic University of Louvain, little expected that his rather cumbersome detector tube would be the inception of so revolutionizing a discovery as wireless te- legraphy, but it is history that his tube, although never intended for such a purpose, was the foundation of Marconi ' s invention, and being an indispensable attribute to his instrument, was of the very essence of it. Branley ' s detector tube consisted of a cylinder containing powdered part- icles of silver, hermetically sealed at either end by terminals, one of which was connected with the positive pole of a battery and also with a current of high frequency electricity, and the other was connected with the negative pole of the battery and to the ground. Whenever a current of high frequency electricity was projected through the tube, the particles of silver would align themselves and thus close the battery circuit; when the high frequency current was shut off, the particles of silver would be disengaged by an automatic tapper, and the battery current as a con- sequence would be broken, the flowing and breaking ofl of the battery