Science: Master of Micro-Waves

Singers, politicians, Bankers Otto Kahn and Winthrop Aldrich and other personages at whom reporters usually rush when a ship enters New York Harbor, last week received skimpy attention at the arrival of the Conte di Savoia. The ship reporters rushed for Patrician Guglielmo Marconi, Nobel Laureate, Italian Senator and Marquis, inventor of commercial wireless, experimenter with ultra-shortwave radio communication. The reporters wanted to know all about Senator Marconi’s latest work in “bending” short waves around the earth’s curvature (TIME, Aug. 22, Dec. 5, 1932).

The Senator was amiably evasive until later in the day when his great good friend, chunky David Sarnoff, president of Radio Corp. of America, presented him to the Press in R. C. A.’s magnificent new headquarters in Rockefeller Center.”First,” said Senator Marconi, “put me wise to what is taking place over here.” He enjoys U. S. slang, asked particularly whether the phrase “cold feet” had changed meaning since 1927 when he was last in the U. S. (honeymooning with his second wife, who again accompanied him last week). Then Senator Marconi told what he has learned about the curious behavior of minute ether waves.

The Marconi microwaves approach heat waves in shortness and light waves in behavior. They can be focused as a beam and sent in any direction. Theoretically they should be perceptible only just beyond the visible horizon of the sending station. Senator Marconi has made them register over a distance of 180 mi., or nine times his sending station’s visible horizon, and has been able to communicate with them clearly and powerfully at five times the horizon. They register beyond mountains. Whether they bend over the mountain tops or go right through the mountains, he last week declared he did not know. Added he: “One definite fact about microwaves is that these waves are not susceptible in the slightest to static. I have tried them in thunderstorms where the lightning flashes were very close to the instruments, and there was no effect. This one thing may easily revolutionize the whole of wireless telegraphy and radio. . . .

“Curious as it may seem, day and night do not influence the tiny waves. We might think that night would affect them, but no. We are at sea there for an explanation and must do further research to solve the mystery.”

Another mystery is why the waves fade at times. Yet, said he, “I once had fading on an experiment of 100 mi. with long waves, and none on a 6,000-mi. transmission. You can’t tell.”

Asked a reporter: “Are big storms caused by too much high-power radio in the sky?” Answered Senator Marconi, laughing: “No. There were bad storms in prehistoric days.”

Another question: “Have you ever sent messages to other planets?” Prompt answer: “I’ve sent lots of messages that never got anywhere. If dispatches ever reach other planets the achievement will depend on overcoming absorption in the earth’s atmosphere, and last but not least on whether the planets are inhabited. They might be in the Stone Age and not be ready to receive our communications. We know that wireless travels far into space because we have picked up radio echoes. I never heard any of my early messages come back; the first transatlantic letter ‘S’ is gone forever. But I have been bothered with round-the-world echoes, especially on the nine-meter wave. We have picked up short words encircling the globe several times. It takes one-seventh of a second for a word to girdle the globe. I have intercepted the word ‘no’ after it sped around the world several times. The trick is difficult with longer words. At times like that the world as a laboratory is too small for us.”

Off to Chicago went Senator Marconi, to visit the Fair, mingle with Italian societies, eat with the American Legion, broadcast over the Atlantic to his listening King Victor Emmanuel receive an honorary Sc.D. from President Walter Dill Scott of Northwestern University, accept a 28-in. bronze statuet of an exultant young man from the grateful Radio Manufacturers Association.