Wireless experiments do not involve any great problem, as messages have been successfully transmitted from an aeroplane to land stations many times. The receiving of a wireless message by an operator in an aeroplane from a land station or from a warship involves considerable difficulty because of the noise and vibration of the motor, but it is expected, however, that this will be soon entirely overcome and that it will be possible to transmit or receive telegrams in an aeroplane to or from distant points with the same ease and accuracy that it is now seen on the ground or on the water.
The telegraph seems to be the companion of the locomotive, the telephone of the automobile, and now wireless has its side-partner in the aeroplane!
Important experiments are being carried on by the signal corps of every army with various methods of communication with an aeroplane in flight and by the aviator with those on the ground. They have tried an instrument for making smoke signals, with large and small puffs, reviving a method used by the American Indians in the pioneer days and quite familiar to all boys who have played Indian in the country.
FORESTRY SURVEY
The supervisor of the Selway forest, consisting of 1,600,000 acres, which was formerly part of the Nez Perces reserve in Idaho, predicts that aeroplanes and wireless telegraphy will be important factors in forest fire prevention before a far distant date. He believes that a man in an aeroplane could do more accurate and extensive survey work in the forests of the Pacific slope country in a few hours when forest fires are raging than is usually accomplished by twenty rangers in a week. With wireless stations installed on peaks in the chief danger zones, he believed it would be a comparatively easy task to assemble men and apparatus to check and extinguish the flames and prevent fires from spreading.
MOVING PICTURES
Aeroplanes have already been used for purposes of photography and moving picture machines have also been attached to them and some remarkable pictures taken. One of the large moving picture magnates said, "Now, Mr. Curtiss, if you can take a series of moving pictures showing a trip across the United States, I do not care if it takes you a year to get it and even though it is taken piecemeal, or one section at a time over the main cities on the way, I will pay you well for it. We will take the film, trim it down, and run it through at lightning speed taking our audience from New York to San Francisco 'as the bird flies' in twenty minutes."
The value of moving pictures taken from above and from a swift low-flying machine is apparent at a glance. The contour of the country is shown as in no other way, and now that warfare is going to have a quite different point of view, even a different range of action, it is important that schools, and especially military schools, should be made familiar with this aspect of the land. The flat map is superseded by such a panoramic view. In time of actual war, moving pictures taken in this way will have a unique value.
In photographing reviews of troops, public celebrations, lines of battleships, or any scenes that require a panoramic representation, the aeroplane has been used with success. It can also be of great service in photographing animals and rare birds which may inhabit regions otherwise inaccessible. With the advance of nature study and the steady development of "camera hunting," the aeroplane will be used more and more for such purposes as well as for photographing mountain tops and other insurmountable or dangerous places to reach.
Robert G. Fowler has had some surprisingly good motion pictures taken from his machine during his cross-continent flight, by an operator sitting beside him, his camera placed on a temporary stand.