Article August 15, 1901 Issue

To Prevent Wrecks

Literary Digest

A LOSS of 7,642 human lives is the record of the twentythree great shipwrecks of the nineteenth century, and this is but a small fraction of the total mortality through accident at sea. The heirs of Anthony Pollock, who went down with the ill-fated Bourgogne, have recently offered a prize of $19,000 "for the best appliance for the saving of life in case of maritime disaster." The award is about to be made, and according to Henry Harrison Lewis, who writes on the subject in The World's Work, it is possible that we may shortly bid good-by to all fear of such great ocean calamities as are even now too frequent. Mr. Lewis describes some of the devices offered: Those designed to prevent collisions are most numerous, and depend on wireless telegraphy, the detection of delicate sounds, and on heat and cold. It is practicable to recordthe approach of a vessel by the heat that it transmits, a feat that does not seem so wonderful when we remember that was sensitive to the heat of a candle a held a quarter of a mile away.

Mr. Herman Herberts of Newark, has constructed a thermopile will be used on each side of a vessel, where they connect with a galvanometer. One bell will ring on the approach of a heated object, as another steamer; another bell will ring on the approach of a colder object, like an iceberg.

Thomas A. Edison has a plan in which he disregards electricity and depends on the capacity of water for transmitting sound. In the keel he would have constructed diaphragm operated by compressed air. An electric battery or a dynamo could operate this diaphragm so as to produce an explosive note which would travel miles through the water and be received on the diaphragms of other vessels. A code of signals could used and long messages exchanged:—Literary Digest.

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