Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/451

Rh The logical development of the single contact is therefore the infinite number of contacts existing in the tube of metallic filings, which has been the form of kumascope most used for many years. In its typical form it consists of a tube of insulating material with metallic plugs at each end, and between them a mass of metallic powder, filings, borings, granules or small spheres, lightly touching one another. Imperfect contact must be arranged by light pressure, and in the majority of cases the resistance is very large until an electric wave falls upon the tube, when it drops suddenly to a small value and remains there until the tube is given a slight shake or the granules disturbed in any way, when the resistance suddenly rises again. This type of responder is a non-restoring kumascope, and requires the continual operation of some external agency to keep it in a condition in which it is receptive or sensitive to electric waves.

Much discussion and considerable research have taken place in connection with the action and improvement of these metallic powder kumascopes. As regards materials, the magnetic metals, nickel, iron and cobalt, in the order named, appear to give the best results. The noble metals, gold, silver and platinum, are too sensitive, and the very oxidizable metals too insensitive, for telegraphic work, but an admixture may be advantageously made.

Omitting the intermediate developments of invention, it may be said that Mr. Marconi was the first to recognize that to secure great sensibility in an electric wave detecter of this type the following conditions must be fulfilled: An exceedingly small mass of metallic filings must be placed in a very narrow gap between two plugs, the whole being contained in a vessel which is wholly or partly exhausted of its air, Mr. Marconi devoted himself with great success to the development of this instrument, and in a very short time succeeded in transforming it from an uncertain laboratory appliance, capable of yielding results only in very skilled hands, into an instrument certain and simple in its operations as' an ordinary telegraphic relay. He did this, partly by reducing its size, and partly by a most judicious selection of materials for its construction. As made at present, the Marconi metallic filings tube consists of a small glass tube, the interior diameter of which is not much more than one eighth of an inch, which has in it two silver plugs which are beveled off obliquely. These are placed opposite to each other so as to form a wedge-shaped gap, about a millimeter in width at the bottom and two, or at most three, millimeters in width at the top (see Fig. 1). The silver plugs exactly fill the aperture of the tube, and are connected to platinum wires sealed through the glass. The tube has a lateral glass tube fused into it, by which the exhaustion is made, which is afterwards sealed off, and this tube projects on the side of the wider portion of the gap between the