Music of the Spheres

Using a selenium cell, which is photo-electric (i.e., when sensitized by light rays, it gives off an electric current), French engineers of the military wireless service, General Gustave Ferie, M. Jouaust and Major Mesny, amplified waves from Capella, the blue star of the first magnitude in the constellation Auriga, into audible sound waves. The transformation was effected by a bulb of four electrodes, with much higher potential than the audion bulbs commonly used in wireless. The star is 71 light years (over 400 trillion miles) from the earth. The sounds were audible over a telephone to a considerable distance. The report was presented to the French Academy of Science.

The inventors are continuing their experiments in the hope of perfecting some practical application of radio communication with other planets. The principle is not new, for Alexander Graham Bell talked along a beam of light in 1882, and the similar nature of sound and light has long been an established fact.