Naval Experts To Report.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 28, 1912:
Known Now That System Is Considered Promising — Low in Cost.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, Aug. 27.— The Navy department has been trying out a system of submarine telegraphy in which Count Széchényi, who married Miss Gladys Vanderbilt, is interested, together with various members of the Vanderbilt family. The tests were completed last week, and, while the apparatus was not in the most satisfactory condition and results were not wholly satisfactory, the navy experts who conducted them regard them as highly promising. The system does not require the elaborate instrumentation used in other systems of submarine communication, and the cost of installation is very much less than with the system now employed to convey messages between vessels of the Atlantic fleet. The torpedo boat Stringham was ordered from her station at Annapolis to Newport for the purpose of making the tests, which were conducted by the same board that had other similar trials to make for the department.
    The system is not as at present developed an electric system, but is mechanical. It should not be confused with the wireless system of telegraphy, which it does not resemble in any particular, as it does not make use of a radío principle, but employs contact vibrations of the medium, which is of course water. In a rudimentary way, the idea is as old as the centuries, but the development is a valuable and important invention. The officers who made the test have made only a preliminary report, which is confidential for the present, so that little more than the barest details are known here.
    The distance through which communication may be established by the new system is not definitely known, but is several miles, and may with the use of more powerful instruments be extended to a much larger distance. The navy is interested in it because it would save many thousands of dollars in cost of installation over the system now in use.