The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars. L. P. Gratacap
rose the present system of dry plate photography. My father had always felt the greatest interest in the use of photography in astronomy. He was acquainted with the splendid work done by Chapman for Rutherford, New York, in his careful and exquisite photographs of the moon. As early as 1850 Whipple of Boston made photographs of the stars.
It was, however, the incomparable advantages, furnished in speed, by the dry plate photography which made my father realize early as anyone, the boundless possibilities thus opened in human attainment for the penetration of the Sidereal firmament. He had made a great number of photographs at Irvington, and the photographic laboratory was a charming illustration of my father's ingenuity and precision. At Mt. Cook we enjoyed a marvellously clear atmosphere for work of this sort, and amongst the first thoughts of my father was to provide the most satisfactory means for the continuance of our stellar photography. Besides our visual telescope we had a photographic telescope which was used, instead of connecting the visual lens on one and the same instrument, as in the Lick Observatory.
The innovations introduced by photography have revolutionized the processes of stellar measurement. Instead of the laborious task of measuring the stars through the telescope, the photographic plate can be studied at ease as a correct and identical chart of the heavens and the results thus obtained placed at the disposal of astronomers. My father appreciated this and amongst his numerous projects of scientific usefulness the preparation of photographs of the stars fully occupied his mind.
We had no Meridian Circle, as it was less in the direction of the determination of the position of stars than in the elucidation of the surfaces of planets, that my father's astronomical predilections lay. Our telescope was a refractor and had an objective of two feet diameter. It was firmly supported on a trap rock pedestal. The eye piece adjustment was unusually successful, and the remarkable freedom of the objective from any traces of spherical or chromatic aberration gave us an image of surprising clearness. The photographic results were admirable. I imagine few more satisfactory photographs of the face of Moon have been made than those we secured, so far at least as definition is concerned, and the detail within the limits of our powers of magnification.
The telescope was very slowly installed and it was well in 1885 before we were able to use it for either observation or photography.
As the surprising messages detailed in the following pages came by means of wireless telegraphy, I will dwell for an instant for the benefit of the non-scientific reader, upon the investigations made by my father and myself in this subject.
The installation of a wireless telegraphic station is not necessarily difficult. The progress made since my father and myself began these experiments has been, of course, considerable, and yet so far as I am able to ascertain the new devices in this direction were largely anticipated by us. The tuning of wireless messages by which the interception of messages is prevented was certainly forestalled by us, though in the communications with Mars herein detailed the ordinary [non-syntonic.—Editor] receiver was employed.
We employed an induction coil, emitted a wave by a spark, and had a wire rod [antenna.—Editor] which was in turn part of an induction coil. This was the sender (transmitter) and we could regulate the wave length so that a receiving wire adjusted for such a wave could only receive it. [There seems to be implied in these words an arrangement known as the Slaby-Arco system, which American readers have had described for them by M.A. Frederick, Collins, Sci. Amer., March 9 and Dec. 28, 1901.—Editor.] The receiver consisted of iron filings in which later carbon particles were added.
My father died in 1892 and we had not at the time of his death learned of Popoff's microphone-coherer in which steel filings were mixed with carbon granules. The magnetic waves received at first by us presumably from Mars, and later, as the communications indisputably show, from that planet, were taken upon a Marconi receiver, or what was practically that.
My father became more and more interested in the direction of interplanetary research by means of the magnetic wave. He argued vehemently, buoyed up by his increasingly augmented hopes as our own experiments improved, that the electric wave through space moving in an ethereal fluid of the extremest purity would progress more rapidly than in our atmosphere, that the tension of such waves would be greater, that they could be so "heaped up" as he expressed it—(In the Slaby-Arco system an apparatus is employed consisting of a Ruhmkorff coil with a centrifugal mercury interrupter, by which a steeper wave front of the disruptive discharge is secured.—Editor)—that their reception over the almost impassable distances of space would be made possible.
This idea of piling up the waves was suggested by purely physical analogies. The enormous waves generated by severe storms upon the ocean travel farther than the smaller waves, and are less consecutively dissipated by the resistance of the water, the traction of its molecules and the occasional diversion of cross disturbances from other centers.
Again some experiments made invacuo upon a limited scale seemed to show the accuracy of his predictions. Through a glass tube one foot in diameter and ten feet long we sent magnetic waves both when the tube was filled with air and when it was exhausted. Our means of measuring the time required in both cases were quite inadequate—perhaps there was no appreciable difference—but the records in the latter case, secured upon a Morse register, were unmistakably more vigorous and audible.
At last our various results had reached a point where we felt justified in extending the limits of our investigations. We had up to this time only tried our messages between the two stations upon the plateau of Mt. Cook. My father now proposed that I go to Christ Church, install a sender (transmitter) and send messages to him at the observatory. I did so and the experiment was convincing. The day before I was ready to transmit a message I had attended an attractive church service—it was toward the close of Lent in the year 1889—and as my father was entirely unprepared for the account I proposed to give him of the function, I thought its correct transmission would afford an indubitable proof of our success. I wrote out the description. It was received by my father with only ten imperfect interpretations in a list of 1,000 words.
From this time forward our plans for erecting a receiver in the observatory were pushed to a completion. We had discovered the necessity of elevation for the senders (transmitters) and receivers for long distance work, and a tall mast, fifty feet in height, was put up at the observatory, which—needlessly I think—was to serve as the terrestrial station for the reception of those viewless waves which my father thought might be constantly breaking unrecorded upon the insensitive surfaces of our earth.
The eventful night came. It was August, 1890. Mars was then in opposition. The evening had been extremely beautiful. Nature united in her mood the most transporting contradictions of temperament. It was August and the day had been marked by changes of almost tropical severity, although, as we were south of the equator (the latitude of Christ Church is S. 44 degrees) August was, with us, mid-winter. A thunderstorm had broken upon us in the morning, itself an unusual meteorological phenomenon, and the downpour of black rain, shutting off the views and enclosing us in a torrential embrace of floods, had lasted an hour when it passed away, and the Sun re-illumined the wide glistening scene. The line of foam from the breakers along the remote shore, yet lashing with curbing crests the inlets, promontories, and islands, was readily seen; the northern Alps shone in their ermine robes, greatly lengthened and deepened by the season's snows, the washed country side below us was a patch work of rocks and fields and denuded forestland. Christ Church like a vision of whiteness sprang out to the west upon our vision, and immediately about us the mingling rivulets poured their musical streams through and over the icy banks of half consolidated snow.
As night came up, the stars seemed almost to pop out in their appropriate places, like those stellar illusions that appear so appropriately upon the theatrical stage, and the low lying moon sent its flickering radiance over the yet unsubdued waters. It was the time of the opposition of Mars which brings that planet nearest to us. As is well known to astronomers, the perihelion of Mars is in the same longitude in which the earth is on August 27; and when an opposition occurs near that date, the planet is only 35 millions of miles from the earth, and this is the closest approach which their bodies can ever make.
Our magnetic receiver had been placed in position, the Morse register was attached; the whole apparatus