The many devices, the electro-magnetic receivers, tape machines, coherers, syphon recorders and the thousand and one electrical machines produced at the time for these purposes, have practically all gone.
Even when to-day we want to send messages quickly, we record them upon a Dictaphone and rely almost entirely upon the sense of hearing.
Sound, the regular oscillation, and noise, the irregular oscillation, of the air, are really the beginning and end of wireless as it is known to the public to-day.
I would go further when thinking of the public. They do not want to sit with a telephone upon their heads, even if their ears may be improved thereby. They require to walk into a drawing-room, and having stood for a moment upon the mat, they must be able to cross the room, touch a button in a fretwork cabinet, and by the movement of a lever be able to place themselves in touch with any part of the world. Paris, Hong-Kong, London, all must be one to them if we are to get their money for our art.
In other words, we are compelled to use what we now designate the “loud speaker.” We have got to project a sound into the room before we can sell our instruments, and therein lies one great difficulty.
In the first place we dare not exaggerate the movements of a delicate telephone very much or we shall spoil it—therefore we construct something which looks very much like a magnified telephone with a trumpet upon it. The mechanism is naturally rather heavy as regards the moving parts. In order to vibrate these heavy parts with the aid of our aetherial oscillations we have to amplify the available current, and during this process we naturally spoil the detail, or, in other words, we magnify it so much that electrical distortions occur through the whole range of various transformers and other items sold by every shop in the world—at double their value.
Most people are not content with a gentle sound: they find it necessary to express their joy at having reached their home by dancing; consequently they want plenty of sound, and they do not mind if it turns into noise.
They will tell you boldly that their wireless set with a couple of dozen foreign-made valves can be heard right across a large street, a street by the way in which we still permit as much nerve-shattering noise to occur as is thought necessary. This means that we must have quite a big movement on a diaphragm of large size, and a large diaphragm is made to move by the electrical oscillation, itself not very accurate; naturally, if it is heavy, like a poker or anything else, it has a will of its own, and therefore it continues to move when the wireless oscillation has told it to stop. It does not even commence to move when it is told to do so, as it would were it a thin delicate telephone diaphragm from which accurate music can be obtained.
This means further distortion, and so bad is it that a great many people say plainly that they will only listen to wireless concerts through a telephone and that they will only use crystals to obtain rectification because of the inaccuracies otherwise unavoidable to-day.
But this is not business, because do not forget we must have our cabinet with a fern upon it and beautiful music, if we are to be successful. Business always leads science, as we know.