Mr Willoughby S. Smith and Mr Charles A. Stevenson also undertook
experiments during the last twenty years, in which they used
induction, but the most remarkable attempts are perhaps those of
Professor Emile Rathenau. With the assistance of Professor Rubens and
of Herr W. Rathenau, this physicist effected, at the request of the
German Ministry of Marine, a series of researches which enabled him,
by means of a compound system of conduction and induction by
alternating currents, to obtain clear and regular communications at a
distance of four kilometres. Among the precursors also should be
mentioned Graham Bell; the inventor of the telephone thought of
employing his admirable apparatus as a receiver of induction phenomena
transmitted from a distance; Edison, Herr Sacher of Vienna, M. Henry
Dufour of Lausanne, and Professor Trowbridge of Boston, also made
interesting attempts in the same direction.
In all these experiments occurs the idea of employing an oscillating
current. Moreover, it was known for a long time--since, in 1842, the
great American physicist Henry proved that the discharges from a
Leyden jar in the attic of his house caused sparks in a metallic
circuit on the ground floor--that a flux which varies rapidly and
periodically is much more efficacious than a simple flux, which latter
can only produce at a distance a phenomenon of slight intensity.
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