Evening star. [volume], October 25, 1931, Page 5, Image 79

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
Marvelous BOTTLES OF NOTHING
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’ BY ISRAEL KLEIN.
OUT of almost nothing, scaled In an
airtight bottle, man has succeeded
in getting more than he has out
of any more substantial substance
on earth.
Vacuum, the absence of air, has
not deterred him, but helped him. The vacuum
tube has become an electric brain—modern civ
ilization's greatest gift.
Yet It has become so only within the short
kpan of the last 25 years. In fact, its capabili
ties have been known and developed only
Within the years of the modern adult genera
tion.
It was in the Fall of 1879, only 52 years ago,
that Thomas Alva Edison produced the first
electric light. What he succeeded in doing was
to exhaust enough air from a glass bulb, so that
W carbonized thread within the bulb, heated by
electric current, burned for 40 hours.
And it wasn't until 1883 that he discovered
something happening within his bulb that
scientists now are making use of in a big and
practical way.
That was termed the Edison effect, the escape
Os ultra-minute electrons from the heated fila
ment
Nothing was done about the Edison effect
for a while. Edison himself was content with
developing the electric light, the first and*today
the most widely used vacuum tube in the world.
Ftor the electric light is in reality only a simple
Vacuum tube—merely a burning filament "set
on fire” by an electric current passing through
1& and made possible by the existence of a
Vacuum, or rather the non-existence of air.
The vacuum, to be sure, is not complete. Man
hasn't yet succeeded in securing a complete
abaenoe of air. But air is evacuated from these
tubes up to a point at which the best lighting
•ffect is obtained.
TODAY, scientists evacuate air and insert a
i I small amount of an inert gas like neon into
the tube to obtain some special effects. Or
they add a drop or two of mercury or some
Other chemical element to obtain other effects.
Or they coat the interior of the vacuum tube
Container with an element to get still other
results.
Out of each of these possibilities have arisen
new uses for the vacuum tube, uses that are
growing in number and importance almost
weekly.
There's radio, perhaps the most marvelous
discovery of the twentieth century. The Edison
affect led to it
First to reali z<* the possibilities of the escap
ing electrons from a lighted filament in a
vacuum tube was Sir John Ambrose Fleming,
British scientist, who, in 1904, put these elec
trons to some practical use by catching them
on a small electrically connected plate Inside
the tube.
That was a crude, elemental form of wire
lass tube until Dr. Lee De Forest, young Amer
ican scientist, installed a third element Into
the tube two years later and succeeded in con
THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., OCTOBER 25, 19.11.
trolling the flow of electrons from fll&ment to
plate. That third element he called a grid, a
sort of gate through which the electrons flowed
and which could control this flow by means of
a varying electrical charge.
There's your simple radio tube. Os course,
today, there are four and five element radio
tubes, having two and three grids for muen
more accurate and effective control of the elec
tron flow.
It was 1906 when De Forest inserted that
grid Into the vacuum tube. Yet a quarter cen
tury later millions of listeners throughout the
world are enjoying entertainments produced out
of sight and physical reach, all through the aid
of these vacuum tubes.
THE radio tube has gone even further. It has
made the talkies possible and it has per
mitted considerable improvement in the re
cording of music and voices for improved types
of phonographs.
Even more promising is television. Here Is
a combination of both radio vacuum tube and
the electric eye.
The electric eye to the scientist is called the
photo-electric cell. It is actually a vacuum
tube that sees, one that converts this vision into
corresponding electric impulses, just as the
radio tube converts the sound it hears Into
similar electric impulses.
Instead of De Forest’s grid, however, the elec
tric eye makes use of a thin layer of some alka
lln element, like potassium, caesium, selenium
and so on, which is even more sensitive to light
and its variations than the pupil of the human
eye.
It s only a matter of connecting this sensitive
layer to an electric circuit to get the results
scientists have succeeded in obtaining from
this unusual phenomenon.
Television is the most far-reaching and
promising: possibility. But while television is
still in the experimental stage, the scientists
have put the electric eye to some 200 practical
uses and are finding new applications for it al
most as fast as the demand arises.
TALKING motion pictures, in their projection,
require the use of the electric eye to catch
the sound tracks alongside the film and con
vert these waving lines of light and shade into
corresponding sounds. Here, in other words, is
an instrument so remarkable that it even sees
sounds.
In fact, the electric eye has been made to
feel, to hear, to taste and to smell, besides see
ing, applying all the five physical senses of man
through its single virtue of sight.
As an instrument of feeling, for example, the
photoelectric cell is being used in some of the
large paper mills to detect flaws In paper as it
passes through the rollers, to "feel” its thick
ness and discard that which does not come up
to specifications.
In the reproduction of talkies, the electric eye
becomes an electric ear, "healing” electrically
the sounds that had been deposited on the film
at the time the scenes were photographed and
rcorded
Similarly, the senses of taste and smell are
caught by this übiquitous eye, converted into
electric current and recorded for the benefit of
observers. The smell of smoke belching un
duly from a chimney quickly raises an alarm,
through this instrument. The rise of a poison
ous gas in a tunnel, or a mine where men are
working, can go no farther than the extremely
sensitive "nose” of this unique vacuum tube.
On the West Coast the electric eye is “tast
ing” fruits and grading them for the various
markets. In an Ohio steel mill, white-hot
molten metal is being kept within a very few
degrees of a constant high temperature, more
effectively than man has ever been able to
keep it.
LIGHTS are being turned on whenever it gets
dark enough, banks are being guarded,
traffic is counted, colors are sorted and many
other duties heretofore performed by man are
being fulfilled by this vacuum tube.
It has converted the five senses into one—
that of sight. So sensitive is its sight that it
can see what man has to detect by one of the
other senses more adequate for the purpose.
There is, for instance, a vacuum tube that
measures a hundredth of a millionth of a bil
lionth of an ampere of electric current, that is
so sensitive as to react to the slightest electrical
impulse and is so powerful as to start high
powered machinery or control deadly electric
currents.
The bend in a table top made by a 25-cent
piece can be measured by an ultra-micrometer,
of which this tube Is the heart! Yet the same
tube will enable electric engineers to double the
practical length of their high-power lines
carrying up to 220,000 volts of current!
For the various services these tubes are to
perform, they are built differently. But fun
damentally they are the “thyratron” or the
"grid-glow” tube, depending on whether they
come from the General Electric or the West
inghouse plants.
Combine one of these with a photoelectric
oell and you can fashion a robot or mechanical
man that will do almost anything but think.
| N war, as in peace, this robot promises to have
I its uses. The United States Army recently
demonstrated a robot anti-aircraft gun whose
sharp "ears” discovered an "enemy” airplane
long before any human ears could, and which
immediately found the range and the altitude of
the plane, then aimed the gun and fired. No
human hand touched the anti-aircraft gun,
yet it is said to be much quicker and more
accurate than any heretofore in use.
Furthermore, there's the radio-controlled
warship and the radio-controlled airplane,
both making use of the radio vacuum
tube, the "thyratron” or "grid-glow” tube and
the electric eye. Without a man on board, a
ship "manned” by the modem robot can be
made to maneuver in all directions and at all
speeds, even to fire its guns and throw a smoke
screen, at the command of an officer on a
ship several miles away.
Most extraordinary, perhaps, a blind man
places a book, not in Braille, but printed in
regular type, before a strange instrument whose
interior consists of an electric eye, a disc witn
The glowing pano
rama of a city at
night made possible by
vacuum tubes with one of the miracle
working “bottles of nothing in the
inset.
several holes In live rows, a light which shines
through these holes upon the lines of type and
is reflected back upon the electric eye, a bat
tery and a set of earphones. He turns on the
current and actually hears the instrument
read the book for him!
i
SCIENTISTS at Schenectady and at Pasadena
are building huge vacuum tubes of a dif
ferent nature, raising their voltages to one mil
lion, two million, even five million volts, power
ful enough to kill a whole regiment, more
powerful than a ton of radium, in some sort of
effort to And a more practical treatment for
cancer and other fatal diseases. Death-dealing
X-rays to defeat death!
In several modem hospitals in New York,
Chicago, Rochester, Albany, physicians are
placing patients, suffering from diseases here
tofore believed Incurable, upon a box-like table,
turning on a current and awaiting the effect
of powerful, but tiny radio waves upon their
bodies.
These waves, emanating from a tube that
oscillates at between 10,000,000 and 14,000.000
cycles a second, have been found to raise a
fever in the patient, what physicians have dis
covered is needed to kill the germs of such
diseases as paresis, arthritis and various other
joint diseases.
The list of possibilities for the vacuum tube
Is akr.ost inexhaustible. Two hundred practical
uses already, yet the vacuum tube has only be
gun to demonstrate its availability. The range
is almost Infinite.
A Schemer Comes to Grief
ONE salesman with a fine scheme is spend
ing six months in an lowa jail, consider
ing the error of his ways in trying to play both
ends against the middle. He visited farmers in
the guise of a Federal poultry and swine in
spector. This went unchallenged for the Fed
eral Government is conducting an intensive
campaign in lowa looking to the eradication of
tuberculosis among the poultry and swine.
The energetic “inspector" found tuberculosis
highly prevalent and had a remedy that hg
would gladly sell to the anxious owners of the
flocks. Curiosity was aroused, however, over the
fact that a Government agent was in private
business at the same time with the result that
the “agent" is now “In" but not in business nor
yet in the Government service.
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