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

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THE REDWOOD 27 astonishment and bewilderment of his audience. Regular intercourse was engaged in with the Villa Maria, a University property about nine miles from Santa Clara, signal lights placed in the tower of the old Science Hall and upon a promontory on the villa grounds serving as a check upon the correctness of the operation. Early in his research, Father Bell was the first to discover that a live tree served admirably as an aerial, and experimented with the idea and extensively developed it. General Squires, a figure prominent in radio now, more recently claims to have dis- covered this phenomenon. When Poulsen invented his electric arc burning in an atmosphere of hydrogen by which speech and not mere dots and dashes could be trans- mitted. Father Bell, in 1904, applied the idea to seven arcs connected in series submerged in alcohol, and with the aid of this Jancke transmitter, he spoke by wireless to Professor Herold in San Jose, an ardent student of the radio, and his voice was heard in San Francisco and as far north as the State of Washington, the first spoken words ever to be broadcasted in the West. The crystal detector was the next step forward, and then Fleming made a receptor for electric waves out of Edison ' s invention of the Electric Trap , which in transmitting an alternating current, a wireless wave being an alternating current before being trapped and a direct current after, admits one impulse and bars the other. DeForest greatly improved the receptor tube of Fleming by inventing a grid which he placed within a globe between an incandescent filament and a plate — the common audion tube of today. Perhaps the greatest contribution of Father Bell to the radio during its early stages of development was his invention of the double-grounded long aerial, which was later developed to so great a degree by Zenke in Germany. Just as his microphone was given to the world as his bit towards the perfecting of the radio, so too did Father Bell present the world with this discovery, receiving unqualified enconiums from Pro- fessor White of the Radio Institute of New York, who praised this gift as invaluable and lauded its donor, as a true man of science laboring for the love of his art, and as an example of altruism which if more often imi- tated would do much towards furthering science. Now, when radio seems to be almost at the highest possible stage of perfection. Father Bell is ready to present a new discovery that opens unthought-of virgin vistas of advancement — a new set depending upon a new theory for reception modification, and which also may be applied to sending apparatus. Since the authorities deem it best to withhold this new principle until more thoroughly tested and approved, the Patent Office at Washington, D. C., now has the matter under investigation and it is, therefore, politic to indulge in generalities only, but it may be per- mitted to say that the success with which this new set operates under the inspired hand of its inventor in his private laboratory is assuredly no generality, but is a fact that is substantiated by a single demonstra-

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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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J 28 THE REDWOOD tion. The new set, portending to be epoch-making, in no way depends upon the Armstrong principle, since it is distinctly not a regenerative set, that is, none of the current is taken from the plate back through the tube again to be amplified, Init is amplified upon a theory entirely foreign to the Armstrong principle. Static is diminished to an amazing degree because of the lack of all regenerative amplification in the Armstrong sense, resulting in an efi ' ect that is a vivid reproduction of the artist ' s rendition with a volume whose clearness vibrates with a strumming resonance that is uncommonly purged of the ear-splitting crackle of static. Besides working better when not grounded, it possesses also that very desirable advantage of being able to select whatever waves one may want, cutting out all others, thereby making it unnecessary to listen to a stock-exchange report when one is in the humor for music. Marvelous as his new set is, and much as he loves to satisfy his music- loving soul with the triumphs of artists that it brings to him so chaste and so pure Father Bell, with his usual altruism, delights more in the fact that the new and unthought-of principle which he has evolved and upon which his new set depends, will open vast and untouched fields of research. Other master minds will find in this new theory, incentive for creative thought that only geniuses can conceive, and who can tell what will be the ultimate result of the latest discovery of Father Bell, a true man of science seeking only to understand and not to confound the ways of God. — J. Howard Ziemann, ' 26.