A Quarter Century of Communications Development

CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen of the Empire Club of Canada: Since our last meeting, the Honorary President of this Club, Lord Tweedsmuir, the Governor-General of Canada, died. It is a great regret, of course, not only to this Club, but to the citizenship of Canada-wherever they may live, or whatever station of life they may occupy.

We are most fortunate in having with us today, Dr. Bruce, who for some years represented His Majesty, the King, as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Ontario, and who was a personal friend as well, of Lord Tweedsmuir. He attended the funeral yesterday in Ottawa as a personal friend. Dr. Bruce is going to address the Empire Club briefly, before I introduce the speaker.

I just want to say that the Empire Club sent a message of sympathy to Lady Tweedsmuir and her family, and the Club was represented at the service yesterday by Mr. Pratt, a former President of the Club.

I am sure we are all very glad to have Dr. Bruce here today, and I have great pleasure in calling on him now, and asking him to say what he has to say about Lord Tweedsmuir at this time. Dr. Bruce.

COLONEL THE HONOURABLE H. A. BRUCE, M.D.: It is both an honour and a privilege to pay a tribute to the memory of one who brought to his high office a wealth of knowledge and understanding that will class him for all time as one of Canada's greatest Governors-General. Yesterday I attended the funeral in the Presbyterian Church in Ottawa of a kindly, gentle man, and in the simplicity and beauty of that service I was reminded of the fact that in the last analysis it is not a man's worldly possessions that count but what he gives in public service. Lord Tweedsmuir gave of himself to the last minute of his life in the service of his King and Empire.

There gathered in the Church and on the streets a large throng of people from the highest to the lowliest to pay homage to a great and good man. Not only in Ottawa but throughout Canada in the homes of our people, in cities, towns and hamlets, and in the lonely places of our great Northland, the service was listened to by many a saddened heart.

During his term of office in Canada he fulfilled one of his ambitions to help bring about the full understanding of America and the British Empire. His success is evidenced by the many splendid tributes in the American press, one of which from the New York Tribune is symbolic of all. It said that "Americans today are mourning his death equally with his British countrymen, and will revere his memory as a statesman who was first of all a sympathetic friend".

I first met John Buchan during the last war but it was only during the latter part of my term as LieutenantGovernor that I enjoyed the privilege of intimate friendship. Only three weeks ago my wife and I spent a few days at Rideau Hall when he showed his usual lively interest in everything affecting Canada and our Empire.

He was endowed with a brilliant intellect which absorbed knowledge easily and with an enquiring mind he carried out in his life the pursuit of truth by research. He had in him that divine spark which men call "genius", which by his own efforts he fanned into a great flame and now in Canada as in all parts of the English-speaking world, a bright light has suddenly been extinguished. We shall not see his like again but the inspiration of his life and work will live on through the centuries. We members of the Empire Club salute in death a very gallant heart. (Applause)

The Members of the Club stood, and while the lights were lowered, observed a minute of silence in memory of Lord Tweedsmuir.

CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen: We have a great treat in store for us today. Dr. Perrine is well known to many people in this Club and evidently very well known to many people in this City. The number of people that have greeted him since he went into the little room before we came in to this luncheon, shows me that he is a very popular person.

You have only to look at him to know he is a genial person, and he is not only genial, but I know he is very erudite and very clever, because he is a graduate of no less than three universities, and he occupies a very high position in one of the greatest business concerns in the world, The American Telegraph and Telephone Company.

We are honoured in having him here as our guest of honour today. He comes under the auspices, not only of this Club, but also of the Royal Institute of Canada, under whose auspices he speaks in Convocation Hall next Saturday evening, at a quarter past eight o'clock.

I have great pleasure in introducing Dr. Perrine, to give his lecture upon "A Quarter Century of Communications Development". (Applause)

DR. J. O. PERRINE: Canon Woodcock, Dr. Bruce, Gentlemen: It is very nice to be invited back to the Empire Club. Among my friends in the States I boast very much that I have had the privilege of speaking to you.

This morning on the train I thought of what I might say to express the great respect that I have for Lord Tweedsmuir, and the books of his which I have read. In the morning paper, I read a headline,-"He Came as an Official, He Departed as a Friend". The phrasing of this headline was very interesting to me because I had expected to, and I shall, quote a bit of verse about a great American, Jean Louis Agassiz. When he died, James Russell Lowell wrote about him, and what he said applies so beautifully to Lord Tweedsmuir, that I should like to quote it:

In some, genius is a thing apart, A pillared hermit of the brain,

Hoarding with incommunicable art, Its intellectual gain.

His magic was not far to seek, he was so human, Whether strong or weak

Far from his kind he neither sank nor soared, But sate an equal guest at every board.

No pauper ever felt him condescend, No prince presume,

For still himself he bare at manhood's simple level And wheree'r he met a stranger, there he left a friend.

Lord Tweedsmuir! (Applause)

To us in the States this year of 1940, and also to our friends and colleagues of the Canadian Bell Telephone Company, this year of 1940 is a quarter-century anniversary, because January 1915 was the first time that New York ever spoke by telephone to San Francisco, across the entire ' breadth of this Continent.

So it is with that thought of a quarter-century of communications achievement that I present to you a few ideas about this effort, this accomplishment, this episode in life, and how we have gone here and there, everywhere, in all branches of science, to seek understanding of the physical, chemical and mathematical phenomena in Nature's storehouse.

Nature has treated us very generously. Nature has provided unexpectedly, phenomena which we can utilize to our purposes, and in this generous store-house of Nature, these abundant phenomena of Nature, through these years we have dug here and there, because we must dig. They are not lying on the top of the ground, just to pick up. We must dig for them.

So I want to show an experiment, right at the very beginning,--a simple phenomena which starts the whole business of speaking by word of mouth, along a circuit or by radio. I have in my hand that little simple something, all great ventures start with simple things.

This is a simple coil of wire, with a, magnet inside of it, and a piece of clock spring, that doesn't touch the magnet, placed above the coil and its magnet core. This is the very simple something that your own Alexander Graham Bell, and our Alexander Graham Bell, too, and Scotland's Alexander Graham Bell, thought about here in this country; thought about in the States 65 years ago.

Here it is, a most simple something, a coil of wire, a clock spring, a magnet. After it functioned as a telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, Lord Kelvin asked Bell to send him one. Lord Kelvin gathered a few of his friends in his home one evening to show them the amazing something that Bell had made. They were a group of distinguished men and it was so simple that one man said, "why didn't we think of that a long time ago?"

Here it is. I will pluck the clock spring. We have to invoke the genius of Michael Faraday who, in 1831, in England, discovered the simple principle that if a clock spring or magnet moves with respect to a wire, this storehouse of Nature's phenomena comes in, and reveals the principle that is useful. (The clock-spring was plucked and sound produced as a low tone out of a large loud speaker.)

Bell asked himself,-"Perhaps if I were to talk against the clock spring, the sound waves coming out from one's mouth would make it move". (Demonstrating.)

Well, it doesn't seem to work. You didn't hear what I said.

But, strangely enough I had an accident not long ago. I happened to touch my lips to this clock spring, and the sound therefore was a bit nearer, and lo, out of the loud speaker came my voice. I find there is no record of Bell or Watson or his colleagues doing this.

So we see the relation between the simple affairs that Nature supplies, if we have some imagination to put them together to work in this whole venture.

. . . Dr. Perrine demonstrated the effect produced by touching his lips to the spring, and fairly intelligible speech came out of the loud speaker.

You may remember the story. After having the tone produced by the plucked spring, and his brilliant imagination seeing the possibility of the experiment, he asked his assistant to go and make this (holding up gallows telephone), which is the same sort of thing, but now it has a drumhead to catch the sound waves, and the clock spring is fastened to the drumhead. Everything else is the same. It becomes a formidable looking thing, but it is almost exactly the same, and again a very simple arrangement.

I have often wondered, if Bell had happened to touch his lips to the clock spring, would the story of the telephone have been different? I shall tap the drumhead and talk against it now. (Demonstrating the gallows type telephone.)

We have the same sort of thing here-a drumhead to catch the sound waves, and by this amazing principle here, we had the beginning of this connection of affairs of the telephone communications system.

On through the years, what has happened? Sixty-five years ago that all took place. Then came its utility as an enterprise in life and we began to understand that what was involved, after all, in the telephone and the radio and all these affairs, began with very simple things, essentially very simple. The apparatus was very simple and what was involved was really waves and vibrations which collectively make speech.

So I have some waves here, they are very simple. This is a tuning fork wave, 512 vibrations per second. (Tuning fork placed near dynamic microphone and tone came out of large loudspeaker.)

And I have still another of a different pitch wave, a lower pitch wave. (Demonstrating.) And the last one I have is considerably lower, 128 vibrations per second.

Then through the years we became minded that we need no longer make the waves mechanically, but must make them electrically, distinctively electrically. So, after all, it is electrical phenomena, beginning with Mr. Faraday, as I said in the beginning.

I have a very new type of microphone before me by which I have been speaking to you, in conjunction with the cabinet of vacuum tube amplifiers on your right and this big homely box which is a loud speaker. This microphone we sometimes call an "eight-ball" microphone. It is an unobtrusive, serene looking affair. Inside it is very beautifully constructed. It operates on the same principle as the early model of Bell's so-called "gallows" telephone. However, from Bell's original one to this microphone (pointing to the "eight-ball" microphone), there is an amazing story of achievement. The first one barely could reproduce natural and articulate speech. This one can hear most distinctly words, music and intonations and inflections. It is a splendid electrical ear. Between the two microphones are several man-years of mathematical research alone.

I wish to point out that the basic principle in these two microphones is that of Faraday. Furthermore, the same principle is used in the great generators for light and power in the power-house of Toronto.

We have no battery connected to this microphone. The power of my voice waves is changed to electric waves. It is a generator, an electric generator. The power of steam and hydro-electric systems is likewise changed to electric power in the generators with great rotating armatures.

But here we are changing microscopic amounts of power. That is why we call it a microphone. A microscope sees tiny things. A microphone hears tiny bits of sound. "Micro" is a prefix; it really means "a millionth".

Now again about waves, acoustic and electric. On top of our cabinet you see a little suitcase sort of a box with a long pointer. This gadget, if I may call it such, has no rotating parts, no wheels, no tuning forks inside of it, but it can generate electric current of varying pitch. We call it a vacuum tube oscillator. It is a special type of generator of electric current which, when connected to the loud speaker, will give out many acoustic tones.

Let us hear some tones, say a hundred vibrations a second. We are going to make it electrically. That is a hundred vibrations a second. Go to five hundred, (Dr. Perrine spoke to his assistant, Mr. J. L. Richey), now, to a thousand, to five thousand.

Now, we have acoustically from five thousand vibrations, to one hundred, and now go down to fifty, say. (Demonstrating.) Now, that is really basso profundo. Now, down to forty; now, up to five hundred; to five thousand. Now, we go on to six thousand, to ten thousand. Maybe some of you won't hear some of these now. The ear loses its acuity with age, a bit. Eight thousand, nine thousand, ten thousand, eleven thousand, twelve thousand. I don't hear it. I stopped at twelve thousand vibrations a second. Now, thirteen thousand, fourteen thousand, fifteen thousand vibrations per second. I don't hear anything.

Now, come back to fourteen thousand, thirteen thousand, twelve thousand, eleven thousand. I hear it now. Ten thousand.

Well, here then are those intangible, invisible somethings that really in the twenty-five years of communications development we have increasingly understood, not in their microscopic aggregate alone, which is a fairly conglomerate array, but in their individual features and properties.

I would put it this way, Gentlemen. I would say that the twenty-five years of communications development is an appreciation of this sort of thing, and then, on beyond what we might call supersonic, away above what ears can hear. In other words, we have made great advances in the generation, amplification and control of a large gamut of electrical and acoustical vibrations. As the radio broadcasters say, when saying "Good-night", "We are broadcasting on a frequency of 1,000 kilocycles", he means one million vibrations per second, electrically.

How do we know how to make one million vibrations electrically? We have only known in the last twenty-five years. When I was a student in college we used to have a most difficult time to get tones of different pitch. We used to have a tuning fork. I am sure General Mitchell remembers the day when there was no electrical apparatus to give the vibrations of wide variations in pitch. Professor Burton, at the University of Toronto, has a fine array of tuning forks of wide variations in pitch. But in this simple box, we can make a wide variety of electrical vibrations to later change to sound at our pleasure by means of a loud speaker.

So, we have this whole affair. We started with James Clerk Maxwell, your great man in England, who predicated that light waves and heat waves, after all, were electromagnetic waves. Then, (and isn't it too bad that science is so panoramic in its implications and advancements but we can't get along humanly), a German, by the name of Hertz, was the first to prove experimentally that Maxwell was right. Maxwell summarized, wrote equations, philosophied, and then came a man who actually demonstrated that there were such things as the electro-magnetic waves that Maxwell had predicted.

So I would say, Gentlemen, in twenty-five years what we have understood, is an appreciation of what is called the electro-magnetic spectrum,--that is electric waves from very few to many millions of vibrations.

Our ears and mouths have to do with this. (Pointing to microphone and loud speaker.) And beyond are the radio waves which still can be used, and beyond them the heat waves. Beyond them are the ultra-violet rays which give us sunburn and hurt our flesh, and on beyond them are the X-rays. Of course, we don't use X-rays in communications, I know, but they are part of the whole something called the electro-magnetic spectrum.

So the microscopic aspect of the understanding of these seems basically a chief factor in what has happened in the last twenty-five years. So, this loud speaker of mine doesn't look very pretty, but it does do things microscopically, both individually and collectively.

A number of you have heard my voice today. Mr. Rolph of the Telephone Company and I are good friends. I am sure if he didn't know I was speaking and my voice came out, he would say, "There is Perrine", because this homely looking thing does a fine job with waves, so that voices can be real and natural.

Now, I want you to hear some music that must be handled microscopically, from the standpoint of waves. In the whole twenty-five years we have learned how to relate sound and electricity, and to bring them together musically, because music is language, too. I am going to play one of the songs I think maybe Canada and Great Britain and the States call "Stars of the Summer Night". This is a group of men singing. (Record played.)

Now, that is just a sample of where all the little ideas are brought together, about this relation between waves and your communications system of the last twenty-five years.

Well, twenty-five years ago, these little waves out of this affair (the gallows telephone) that I first showed you, went only between two rooms, and then after a while they went a mile. Then they went five miles. Then it went fifty miles. And then in 1893, down in the States, we talked from New York to Chicago, and that was an amazingly fine achievement. We had wire about this size, quite a heavy piece of wire. (Sample shown to the audience.) We had wire like that strung all the way from New York to Chicago. I don't know how many pounds it weighed, but it was a lot of them.

Then it seemed this store-house of Mother Nature had been called upon to a final end. It seemed that Mother Nature had said, "Man, you can't go any farther than a thousand miles. It just isn't possible to get an electric current to go on two great big wires like this any more than a thousand miles."

Then, a man by the name of Heaviside came into the picture. You will see I am a great admirer of Maxwell, Sir Humphrey Davy, Faraday, and Heaviside. After a while I am going to mention some others that I admire.

Well, a man by the name of Heaviside, said, "I believe an electric current can be made to go much farther if you study magnetism". That was an odd idea in the sending of waves electrically. Then it was developed by the simple idea of taking a doughnut-shaped piece of iron, a certain kind of iron, and wrapping some wire in and out around it to make a coil something like this. (Illustrating.) This has the doughnut-shaped affair inside and the wire is wrapped around. Heaviside said, "If you purposely add magnetic effects, I believe you could talk farther than you could otherwise". This loading coil is a result of his suggestion.

It is an amazing sally of the imagination, but lo! it worked out. I could talk a long time about that but I must go on to the general high spots that I think you might be interested in.

Due to Mr. Heaviside, and a man in the States by the name of Professor Pupin, and also due to a gentleman who retired from our business only a year ago, by the name of Dr. George Campbell, it was worked out that we could with the help of magnetic phenomena, talk not from New York to Chicago, but from New York to Denver, twice as far.

In other words, through magnetism, digging into the store-house of understanding of iron, nickel and cobalt, by a round-about way, one could talk twice as far.

It is a long story. About the universities I know the Professors talk quite a bit about it to their students. It seemed again Mother Nature said, "Two thousand miles is as far as you can go". Man replied, "I won't accept your limitations. I can talk anywhere I want to in the world". I can imagine Mother Nature chuckling, "Maybe so. I am going to give you a run for your money".

Well, the run for his money was a grand run, and I want to mention Sir Joseph Thomson and Crookes, who in England began to study, not how electricity and magnetism were related, as such, but what happens when you take a bottle--I am speaking generally now--and pump out the air from it, if you don't put anything in it, but take something out of it,--namely the air,--and then send electricity through the vacuum.

They said, "What is inside?" "Is it the fourth state of matter?" Solid, liquid and gas--those are the three states of matter.

Crookes said, "What is happening in there with electricity must be a fourth state of matter. The fourth state of matter is real actual electricity".

Then we came to Sir Joseph Thomson and our own Edison in the States and your own Sir John Ambrose Fleming and DeForest, Arnold and Langmuir in the States again. It was a long way around. They said to Mother Nature, "We can talk more than two thousand miles. We can talk three thousand miles. We can talk around the world. We will find something to take the place of wire and we will substitute for big pieces of wire and copper, intangible, imponderable things, called "electrons". It was such a great pleasure when Sir Joseph Thomson came to America and lectured on the electron. I had the opportunity to hear him speak in Philadelphia. He was the Englishman who had so much to do with the study of electricity in its microscopic atomic aspect, the electron aspect.

In 1915, we first used these electrons to talk, not a thousand miles, not two thousand miles, but three thousand miles. Then we were able to make the vacuum tube bigger.

So I have one here of bigger capacity. That is, it would give increased power. Then I have one still bigger, the kind that we can use to talk to the ships at sea.

Then, if we want to talk around the world or across to London, which I had the pleasure of doing some time ago for your membership, when we put a call through to London, we use this one. We can do this because man understands the "fourth state of matter"--electricity.

So what happened inside these things was the crowning achievement in talking across the ocean, and we talked to Hawaii, and we said to Mother Nature, "Mother Nature, we have achieved, we are grateful for the phenomena that you have in your storehouse".

In other words, we can send the voice here and there to the far curves of the earth. Due to electronic research, King George V and King George VI broadcast to- your British Empire at Christmas time.

Well, now, I would like to recapitulate to you a bit what it might have sounded like to talk to San Francisco in 1915. In the first place, what would be different? The microscopic aspect would be different. That is, these little tones you heard-if you don't have so many of them you can't do so well.

I don't know whether you have a college song "Johnny One Note". I don't know who wrote such a song. "Johnny One Note" couldn't have much music in one note.

So the problem has been the increasing understanding of more waves. So I am going to pretend to be talking to San Francisco in 1915. I am in the laboratory. A young gentleman is in another room, ready to do what I ask him to do, and I am going to illustrate, actually with my own voice first.

The loud speaker that I have divides my voice in three parts, electrically, I would have you know, Gentlemen. Out of the lower circular affair comes the lower tones, forty to five hundred, approximately, and I have the throat identified by a red light.

Then I have another section of our loud speaker, quite wide and high, and there comes the middle register of whatever there is in my voice. This is identified by this yellow light. The little horn with aluminum paint emits tones from 4,000 to 15,000 vibrations per second. It is identified with green lights.

Now, I am going to talk with my mouth away from you, and Mr. Richey will take out of my voice electricity--the different vibrations in my voice. (Demonstrating.) I am talking as I was-immediately you notice a difference. So the voice is reproduced in the telephone, in the broadcast in its entirety, by an understanding of it. Take away the low throat again and you understand what I am saying pretty well. It isn't the same person as before. Now, put it back to low. If I have only the low throat to talk on, you don't understand my words so well. (Demonstrating.)

Now, my voice has a little huskiness and doesn't reproduce the clearness and clarity so well. Now, put it back to the little one on top and I think you begin to know what I say; the articulation is better. Put in the middle throat and my voice comes back clearly as it was before.

So I have done this electrically. We have studied voices and speech not so much as speech per se but rather speech when in the form of electrical phenomena. We have learned much about speech by changing it to electrical current.

We call these facilities which take vibrations out of an electric current, electric wave filters. I have some in the back of our loud speaker.

So, as I said a moment ago, I am in one room at the Bell Laboratories, and we have a young gentleman in another room, and I am pretending to talk to San Francisco, as it was done in 1915. I want you to listen. In New York in 1915 we talked to San Francisco for the first time in history. It was a great achievement to carry speech across the Continent, but the voice transmission was not so good as it is today. Electric wave frequency was from five hundred cycles to fourteen hundred cycles. (Record played.)

As I say, last January 25th, two weeks ago tomorrow, I had the pleasure of being in our City of Boston. It was the 25th Anniversary, and we put a call through to San Francisco. It is interesting, too, that we made a permanent record of what happened, because our lines went down to New York and I asked my young friends in the Bell Laboratories if they would connect on the line and take it off to the laboratory, and they did this fine job of recording the voices on a piece of wax material and making a transcription of it, as we say.

By way of contrast I want to play three or four minutes of men talking between Boston and San Francisco, as of 1940. (Record played.)

That gives you an idea. These two men are Mr. J. J. Robinson, the President of the New England Telephone Company, in Boston, and Mr. N. R. Powley, President of the Pacific Telephone Company in San Francisco.

At the beginning of the utilizing of electrical wires, it took twenty-six wires for one message. It was an odd affair, a cumbersome; bit of apparatus, with one wire for the letter "A", another for the letter "G" and so on, and a man stood here and punched keys and they had one wire for each letter.

Then a man came along and he said, "That is very foolish for the telegraph to have twenty-six wires. Let us have one wire, and a sequence of signals. So they have had the ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-to-ta- you have heard it. Their sequence of sound stood for letter, and only one wires carries a message.

Then Mr. Edison and Mr. Hughes, in England, said, "We will send two and four telegraph messages on one pair of wires". Then came the telephone and one message on a pair of wires. So today we have wires, wires, wires, in the telephone business, because there are so many people here and there, so many individual fellowships between various people who wish to speak.

I have in my hand a cable, an amazing bit of mechanical achievement that has in it 4,242 wires. If each wire is allocated to a subscriber, it means 2,121 people can be talking simultaneously. The wires are very tiny. Actually this one wire, called a #8 wire, is six thousand times the cross section of the little wire that is in here. Just for fun, I want to push out the wires. There are 4,242 of them. I may say, parenthetically, we are trying to make the wires 4/1000ths of an inch smaller, to get in more of them, so we will have 3,000, instead of 2,100. I will let them fall down here on a piece of paper. (Demonstrating.) There they are-4,242 of them.

Then we said, "Why not send more than one message on the same pair of wires?" For quite a while we sent three telephone messages on a pair of wires, and we now send 64, between the State of Texas and California. It is a thousand miles across, and we have a pair of wires on poles strung across, and on one pair of wires, sixteen telephone messages, 64 on the four pairs of wires.

But how do we do it? With the little things called "waves". We don't send them all together on one track. You can have more than one automobile going over one spot on the surface at one time. Oh, yes, you can build a road here, and a road on top, and a road on top of that, and at any instant of time there may be, as down at the George Washington Bridge, New York City, four automobiles going over the same spot of the earth's surface at the same time, but on different levels.

By the same token we have different levels of those intangibles that some of you, you remember, didn't hear. We said, let us try to do something more. Let us try to send more than sixteen messages. So an idea was used which had been suggested a number of years ago. Instead of a long wire, let us have a wire that is a pipe, and inside of it put another wire, so the one is a pipe and the other is a wire, so I have here such a cable, as we call it. We call it the coaxial cable, about which we hardly dreamed twenty-five years ago.

Today, we send 480 messages through it simultaneously. How? Because we invoke a lot of waves, one level on top of another, and the maximum number of waves we use is about 2,300,000 or so, all together, and divide the whole ensemble into groups of 4,000 vibrations. On each group of 4,000, a separate telephone message can go.

Then, someone says, how can you keep all the tracks nicely and sharply separated? It is like a multiple track highway-how do you keep the wave tracks separate?

I want to show an experiment. Remember, I said we go to Nature's store-house. In creek bottoms and river bottoms we find beautiful crystal, clear and beautiful, called "quartz". Quartz is an amazing something, and Madam° and Pierre Curie found out an amazing phenomenon. It is piezo-electricity--"piezo" meaning twist, or pressure. So if I take a piece of quartz and twist it--ergo, this side gets a positive of electricity, and this, a negative.

Nature's phenomena! Rochelle salts have the same properties. Take a piece of Rochelle salts, crystallized into a rectangular block, about like a small match box. I am going to hit the crystal. When I strike, I drive the electricity out of one side, and to make it come down on the other side, and there is a defficiency on this side. In other words, there is a little battery for a fraction of a second. I do that. (Demonstrating.) And when I hit it a blow, a little light lights up and we have utilized the property of piezo-electricity-pressure electricity. When I hit it, this little neon light flashes up.

Now, that little phenomenon, believe it or not, that little phenomenon of a quartz crystal is one of the ways to help keep the separating lines distinct to send more messages. We take such a quartz crystal as this, and saw out of it a little plate, like that, beautifully thin and true and all. Then the opposite thing is interesting. If I put a bit of electricity on each side of it, like so many things they are reversible. I do one thing and something happens. I do something and one happens, So I have a little affair that I brought along from New York.

I have a little plate: you can see it here. I have it connected electrically. When I turn it on this little plate will begin to expand and contract in this fashion. (Demonstrating with hands). Actually it is only going to expand and contract two-millionths of an inch, and do it at the rate of a million times a second. I am going to turn it on. Since it does expand and contract a million times a second, and does it only two-millionths of an inch, there will be sound, a supersonic tone, far above our ability to hear.

If I turn it on the little paddles begin to move. The little weather vanes rotate around. Why? Because electrically we are using phenomena of nature to make vibrations a million times a second, no more, no less. If I turn it off the little vanes stop. Now it is not expanding and no sound waves go up. If I turn it back on, the little vanes begin to move. So we reveal the supersonic waves by a pair of little wind mills rather than trying to hear them with our ears.

So, my point is, Gentlemen, that going away around, via electrons, we get the vacuum tube; going around the other way, via alloys of iron and nickel, we get unusually helpful magnetic results. Going around another way, we went to the river bottom and got quartz, and we bring together in a system about which twenty-five years ago we didn't know any too much. However, twenty-five years have brought amazing utilization of nature's phenomena for electrical communication.

When I received this very nice invitation to come and speak to you again, from your President, Dr. Gaby, he wrote: "Will you say something about the sociological, human value of all this study? What does electrical communications mean as a basic factor in the welter of life?" I should like, therefore, in conclusion, to say something along the line of Dr. Gaby's request.

In bringing the fruits of science to the service of a vast public in a manner such as the telephone accomplishes, there has been no room for the dictatorial method, except, of course, as Nature does the dictating. We must try at all times to plead our case intelligently before Nature, and sympathetically before the public. As a matter of fact, the public and its reactions are as much a part of nature as the electrons which carry our messages, and transgressions of its laws of reaction are as inimical to success as would be a failure to understand the laws of electro-magnetism.

There has been much cooperative effort in developing and guiding what appears to many people a relatively simple thing, the telephone. But whether or not you visualize telephony as simple, how much more complex is this mechanism which we call society and destined, it would seem, to become more complex.

We now apply painstaking study and research in the less complex field. We study coils, wire, glass, electricity, magnetism, materials, with every technique of research. These are inanimate, things to be sure. A definite relation between cause and effect can be determined. What are we going to do with respect to that field which is vastly more complex, namely the sociological domain? Would that we could apply the methods of physical and chemical research to sociological and human problems.

The question these days before the communication business is not so much what can we do technically, but what can we do that the people want, will use and will use for the good of society? What are the social and human aspects of scientific achievement?

We like to look upon our work as a benefit to mankind and we like to measure our progress in those terms. What good does modern communication do to humanity? It is some aspects of that question that I would like to suggest in closing.

Up to the time of the invention of the telegraph, which was the first utilization of electricity to man's needs, communication was, generally speaking, tied and directly associated with transportation. A message had to be carried by a man, walking, running on his own legs, or on horses, locomotives, or ships. Semaphores, beacons and smoke signals were, of course, used, but in a very limited way. In general, the ancient communications were largely made up of the military and political information necessary for the conquerors to maintain power over the populace. Small ruling classes thus kept large populations in subjection. Modern communication is chiefly useful so that large populations may know themselves by constant intercourse and thereby improve their economic status and their ability to govern themselves.

The underlying purpose of the two systems is exactly the opposite. Ancient communications gave inside news exclusively to the few. Modern communication enables everyone to have the same news at the same time and to have equal facilities for personal communication. One tended towards exclusive power, the other tends toward equalization of opportunity. Communications are now one of the great agencies of democracy. In their origin they served the opposite ends.

In passing, of course, I must mention the development of the printing press and the extensive use of the printed word, and the ability of many, many people to read and write. The development of mail service must also be definitely regarded as an agency of democracy.

There are those who are critical of our modern age and even of our modern and extensive scientific achievements. Some folks talk about a holiday, a vacation for science, for invention. These folks say that at the present time the tools control the man, rather than the man controlling the tools. But I think they say this chiefly because it is easier to blame the machines than it is the people, it is easier to blame someone else than it is to blame our own inability. Our machines do what we direct them. They add to our powers, but they do not direct our purposes. Our problem, of course, is to know how to direct the machine in the interests of mankind.

After all, the important aspect of science and research is the development of man's own abilities. We must not stop man's creative work. We must not curb his imagination. The really important thing is not a locomotive, it is not an aeroplane, it is not an ocean liner, it is not a hydro-electric dam, it is not a high voltage transmission line, it is not a telephone system, it is not a radio system, it is not an automobile. They are not important, they are just things. The important thing is the man's creative imagination that make them possible, and our problem is that man's creative imagination shall also make them fit into sane world affairs.

It is true, as the last few years have made painfully apparent, that all these modern tools put together have not eliminated the vicissitudes of human affairs. They are not automatic and, as I said before, they do not control mankind. They give man the power to do many things he could not do before, and to do other things with greater facility, but they do not control the degree, nor the, direction in which he uses that power.

So electrical communications, through all its great successes, and connecting world people together, as one man put it, "The electric nerve, whose instantaneous thrill makes next door neighbours of the Antipodes",-these electrical communications have been used to revolutionize the methods of commerce, to make news instantaneously common to all men, to restore the influence of the spoken word in politics, to bind your country and my country together with a constantly changing but ever present web of words, and by transoceanic telephony to make a great change in the conduct of international relations.

These and many others are the proof that electrical communications have given man immensely increased power. Whether it is used to make more money, or better men, to increase comfort and happiness or the opposite, to make a better or worse civilization, to promote peace or war, depends not on the facilities at his disposal, but on man's attitudes and desires, on your attitude and my attitude, and the attitude of others.

After all, the mere ability to talk on the telephone and telegraph does not automatically make for amicable and friendly relations. If one is minded to be friendly, the communications system may enhance the friendliness. If one is minded to be mad, inconsiderate, obstinate, perhaps communications may excite more anger, stir more stubborn obstinacy.

So it seems to me in the whole welter of life and in the whole array of civilization, the really basic problems are those of stern character and spiritual values. Mind you, I do not say religious. I mean the deep and broad spiritual and ethical considerations. Maybe, after all, the whole problem is one of education, to promote and inculcate concepts of tolerance, forbearance, appreciation of other men's rights.

But being an optimist, both as to the public's intentions and abilities in the long run, we have faith in man's basic and intrinsic goodness. Therefore, we get a bit of satisfaction from adding to those powers of spreading the word of man quickly to the far curves of the world.

I say again, how shall we be minded? What shall be our disposition? What shall be our spiritual philosophy? If these are tolerant and broad and deep, communications, we hope, may help to make the world a better place in which to live for all mankind. But we must be so minded, and if we are not, all the physical things we have developed may be Frankensteins that destroy, rather than agencies for good.

Gentlemen, I have finished. It is very nice of you to come and I say thank you and good afternoon. (Applause)

CHAIRMAN: Gentlemen, we are very grateful indeed to Dr. Perrine for coming here and giving us this very extraordinary lecture. I am sorry that Dr. Gaby, our President, was not here. He, being an engineer, could thank you much more appropriately. There are men at the head table also deeply aware of these things, but I noticed even General Mitchell was taking notes during this lecture. There were some things that even he did not understand. There were many things I did not understand, and I think I would like to say, if you will bear with me for a moment, I think perhaps it might be an appropriate conclusion to this wonderful lecture.

You know these geniuses of science have made this world for us a neighbourhood, but it is not the first time this world has been a neighbourhood. Long centuries ago it was a neighbourhood. You remember, in the early pages of Genesis there is a story, well known to us in our youth--perhaps forgotten as the years roll on-a story of the tower of Babel, which men built. Evidently in their endeavour to build up to the heavens they said, "We are great men, we will be absolutely secure with our bricks and mortar. We will build a tower to the heavens". The result of that was confusion and chaos, and the men were scattered throughout the length and breadth of the world.

Since then the world has not been a neighbourhood, but now in our modern day, because of modern achievements, our world has once more become a neighbourhood, because of transportation and communications. We are living together, we know each other. We should live as neighbours, but there is that intrinsic idea in humanity. We will build a tower to heaven, we will make ourselves secure and permanent in this world.

There is that old Mother Nature which has something still to say, and she says this world is not a neighbourhood in an intrinsic sense. Not essentially so. It is full of confusion and conflict and war.

Let us think a moment of all our achievements. They should make us humble. They should make us recognize there is a great Divine Providence that rules this universe. It is only when we as people living in a neighbourhood, pay common homage to Him, by a common faith in Him, that we can live together, not just in a neighbourhood, but as neighbours.

I thank you, Dr. Perrine, on behalf of the Empire Club, for your wonderful lecture today. (Applause)