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Page 27 text:
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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
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Page 28 text:
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26 THE REDWOOD current being registered by an indicator set in the battery circuit. Mar- coni made a small replica of this tube and instead of projecting a high frettuency current from a local source through it, attached an aerial to one terminal and grounded the other. Whenever he picked up a current of electricity from the air by his aerial, the particles of silver aligned themselves and the battery circuit was closed and broken in accordance with the reception of the impulses received by the aerial, and the instru- ment set within the local battery circuit would click off dots and dashes accordingly. Marconi ' s successful detection of a current of electricity transmitted through a few feet of air is justly said to be the birth of the wireless telegraph, but contemporaneously and entirely independently of him, Poppoff in Russia accomplished the same feat in almost an identical man- ner, since he, too, used the Branley tube as the basis of his instrument. Poppoff deserves the same degre of honor as Marconi, and would today be so acknowledged only for the fact that Marconi, possessing more busi- ness acumen than his contemporary, immediately set out for England and interested English capital in his wireless telegraph. Father Bell brought with him when he returned to California from Rome in 1898, a copy of the book that Marconi had published on his new discovery. The fame of Marconi ' s invention spread far and wide, for it was epochal in the science of the day, and all wondered at this mysterious way of picking a message out of the air, but few — very few — had ever wit- nessed its workings. Father Bell immediately upon his installation as professor of science, erected an aerial and constructed a set similar to Marconi ' s, and during the fall of 1902 he received at Santa Clara the first wireless message ever received on this coast, a message broadcasted from a sending set Father Bell had installed at St. Ignatius College in San Francisco. When the magnetic detector was then invented by Mar- coni, it, too, was immediately applied at Santa Clara successfully. After making several improvements on this magnetic detector. Father Bell then invented his microphone detector of which Mavey in his book on wireless speaks so highly, and accounts of which were published by all the leading scientific magazines of that time. His life motto of Ad Ma- orem Dei Gloriam and his ideal of Scientia scientiae gratia effacing all desire of material gain or glory. Father Bell had no thought of com- mercializing the result of his genius, but gave it as his contribution toward the advancement of the wireless. With the assistance of Prof. J. J. Montgomery, Santa Clara ' s aeronautic inventor and the world ' s first successful builder and pilot of a glider that could be sustained in pro- longed flight. Father Bell continued his research and experiments with wireless. In the spring of 1903 he delivered a lecture in the Auditorium of Santa Clara College upon the Hertz wave theory, which was then being newly expounded, and before a throng of noted personages attracted from all over the west by the press accounts of the Marconi of the West , he publicly received a message from St. Ignatius College, much to the
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