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Radio Broadcast
ful experiment to check the results of the famous Michel son-Morley test. This test apparently proved that light waves travel with a fixed velocity through space, independent of the speed of the light-emitting source. The speed of light east and west was compared with that going north and south. Due to the high velocity of travel of the earth on its axis and through space, it seemed possible that the velocity of a light wave would be different in the different directions. They found no difference at all, although their apparatus could easily detect even smaller differences than was to be expected in the test. This remarkable experiment, the results of which underlie the modern theory of relativity, was carried out over comparatively short light paths. Now it is within the realm of possibility that two sets of radio stations might be used to repeat the test. Radio waves, we believe, are exactly the same as light waves except for wavelength. This experiment, using
light waves, could just as well be proved by radio. A pair of stations with east and west transmission, automatically controlled, as in the case mentioned above, could be compared with the transmission with a similar pair having north and south transmission (say New York-Warsaw pair and a New York-Argentine pair). There will be a certain difference in time required for transmission between the two pairs of stations due to the different distances, but this difference changes as the earth rotates, if the results of the Michelson-Morlev test are not correct.
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If, therefore, two such pairs of stations, operating as "radio clocks" should be left running all day, and if it could be shown that one gained on the other with a periodically changing rate, as the earth revolved, our ideas on light phenomena would have to be materially revised. 1 1 is not improbable that this striking means of checking the time period of radio waves will soon be used to advantage.
An Interesting Court Decision
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11 And now, little Kiddies, what do you think Peter Rabbit answered?"
(This was the eloquent cover of Life for November i , 1 923)
ANY a radio enthusiast will at some time or other get an idea which has commercial value; if he is employed in the technical division of a radio manufacturing company, the decision recently handed down in the case of the Burgess Laboratories against the French Battery and Carbon Company will prove interesting. The decision is
neither new nor novel, but it serves to bring up again a certain aspect of the patent problem which must interest all who have inventive minds.
One of the members of the Burgess Company, a man who did much of the technical development for the company, severed his business connection here and entered the French Battery and Carbon Company. Naturally he was of value to his new associates primarily because of the experience and knowledge he had gained while working with the Burgess Company. He began to improve the products of his new employer, who was in competition with his old one, in the drybattery market.
It appears that many of the improvements he soon incorporated in the products of the French Company were conceived while still under contract with the Burgess Company. If so, according to the decision of the Court, he has no right to use these ideas in improving the product of its rivals.
But how is one to tell when he first conceived an idea? And did he conceive it completely or only in part at this time? Whatever he conceived, in line with the general character of his work, while in the employ of a company, belongs to that company, and he is not free to use it for any one else. It is not necessary that the idea should have been shown workable, or " reduced to practice," as the patent law has it; if the mere conception of the idea can be shown by one's former employers to have been gained