George Constantinesco arrived in London in November 1910 with very little money but full of ideas. At first he took an apartment in Bloomsbury in London and established his first laboratory in the kitchen. Later he obtained more space to test and demonstrate his inventions on an island in the middle of the Thames at Twickenham. This site was somewhat precarious as it was subject to frequent flooding. Once he was only just able to get his equipment out in time before the bridge to the island was washed away! In spite of the limited facilities, George pursued development of his ideas with characteristic enthusiasm and remarkable speed. By 1913 he had already applied for eighteen British Patents related to improvements in internal combustion engines and their ancillaries such as carburettors, fuels and transmission elements as well as early patents on methods of transmitting power by pulsating waves of energy through liquids.

The further elaboration of these ideas on the use of waves of energy to transmit power, formed the basis of George's Theory of Sonics. His treatise on the subject, was first published by the Admiralty in a limited edition in 1918 [1]. As described by George Constantinesco: ''Sonics is the science dealing with the transmission of power by periodic forces and motions through liquids, solids and gases" [2]. He discovered that these phenomena had their analogies not only with the properties of sound waves and the laws of harmony, but also with AC electrical circuits. As he pointed out, these aspects covered a wider field than just sounds, which were the proper field of Acoustics.

George had for many years been intrigued by the possibilities of transmitting significant amounts of power by impulses through a liquid in a closed circuit. If impulses could be transmitted through a liquid enclosed in a pipe this would assume that the enclosed liquid was elastic or compressible. It was not generally accepted at the beginning of this century that liquids were compressible to any significant extent and this was ignored as a factor in hydraulic calculations, although Francis Bacon is credited with having provided the first experimental proof of the compressibility of water in 1600 [3]. George knew well from his own experiments that liquids were compressible and could release significant energy on expansion. It fell to his lot to prove it by practical demonstrations of liquid springs, and guns fired by the expansion of highly compressed water or oil, a few years later.

While studying the characteristics of conventional hydraulic transmission systems with a view to improving them, George became convinced that he could drive a hydraulic motor by the waves of energy produced by the generation of impulses by a hydraulic pump in a closed circuit. The first and simplest model of a hydraulic wave transmission or sonic system consisted of a single phase hydraulic pump, without ports or valves, called a generator which produced the pressure impulses in the liquid (e.g. oil or water) in a pipe leading to a similar single phase motor at the end of the pipe. This caused the motor to reproduce the motion of the generator. The energy thus transmitted could be used to do useful work, either by percussion or by transformation into rotary motion. Prototypes of rock drills working on the percussion system and polyphase rotary systems were already being demonstrated by 1913. The rock drill was capable of boring through hard granite rock, quietly and smoothly compared to a pneumatic drill, fig. 2.

As George discovered, the terminology and the mathematical formulae applicable to alternating electric current circuits had their counterparts in sonic circuits. Thus, terms and phenomena such as resistance, current, pressure, amplitude, capacity, frequency, wavelength, phase, tuning, were interchangeable in the design of sonic machines for the various purposes intended. For example, he noted that if the length of a sonic pipeline containing liquid was comparable with the wavelength of the pulsations produced by the generator, a succession of longitudinal waves would travel down the pipeline. On the other hand, if the pipeline was short compared to the wavelength of the pulsations generated, the liquid in the pipe would act as a capacity. It would be compressed, or act as a cushion, and deliver power on expansion. In either case the amplitudes of the pulsations would depend on the power generated, the length and cross section of the pipe and the frequency of generation.

It followed that if sonic circuits were correctly tuned, as in the case of alternating electrical circuits, multiple harmonic frequencies could be transmitted down the same pipe line. If the sonic circuits were not in harmony there would be "discords'', in which case the circuits would not work or would sustain damage. With correctly tuned polyphase¹ circuits step-up and step-down transmission systems could be devised which would eliminate the need for conventional gearboxes. As an example of this kind of application, George constructed a prototype four phase system for marine use, with the generator running at a high speed and the propeller running at a low speed, fig. 3. Other applications suggested included the replacement of shafting, belting and gearing of all kinds, including, as he pointed out in later years, the driving of various elements in agricultural machines, such as in combine harvesters. The percussive applications would include hammers of all kinds, such as rock drills and machines for riveting, chipping, crushing, piercing and presses requiring rapid action.

Then, there was the possibility of transforming sonic energy directly into heat through a suitable resistance. For example it was possible to produce a high temperature in a coil of tubing filled with oil with a result like that of an electric heating coil. A suggested application of this principle was to use wind power to drive a three-phase sonic generator to power heating elements for dwellings, particularly those of explorers or other parties marooned far from fuel supplies.

George also found that there was another important factor to take into consideration in some sonic transmission systems, which he described as the phenomenon of sonic cavitation. An example of cavitation is that ships' propellers suddenly lose their grip on the water when they exceed a critical angular speed and instead start to create gaps or cavities in the water. In effect the same thing happens with some sonic transmissions when substantial amounts of energy are to be transmitted and when the frequency of pulsations are too high for the design. This phenomenon occurs generally with all materials which show a low resistance to tension compared with their resistance to compression. In order to overcome this problem in sonic circuits the wave pressure in the medium (e.g. oil or water) must be kept high at all times.

By 1913 George was beginning to suffer the lot of many inventors. He was bursting with ideas and had patented an invention, on average, every two months from the time he arrived in London in 1910, but he lacked the resources to develop them. Neither the City nor Industry were prepared to put up the substantial funds required for research and development in the unknown field of sonics, particularly as applied to the transmission of power through a hydraulic circuit in which the oil did not move. After all it was said that liquids were incompressible!

Disillusioned, George decided to visit the United States of America and try his luck there. During this visit he met with the great inventor Thomas Edison, whom he much admired. Edison was then sixty-six years old and world-renowned for his inventions of the phonograph, the electric lamp, the duplex telegraph and the kinetoscope, to mention only a few of his accomplishments. George was only thirty-two years old and a relatively unknown engineer in the United States but Edison agreed to meet him at his headquarters at Menlo Park. Edison showed George a machine he was trying to develop which would score a melody played on the piano in musical notation and play it back to an audience. His problem was that he knew nothing about the laws of harmony, and had not found anybody who could teach him. By this time he was also stone deaf, which added to his difficulties and communication had to take place through Mrs Edison or on paper. The consensus of opinion at Menlo Park was that a machine of this sort was impossible. When George volunteered that he did not think it was impossible, Edison showed immediate interest and thinking the young man might have something useful to contribute, took him to his private study, where they discussed the project and other matters at length.

As usual George started with a mathematical analysis of the problem, but he was astounded when Edison informed him that he never learned any mathematics. He worked by trial and error with models, and if he needed mathematicians, he hired them. He was however quite able to understand George's annotations for his own theory of harmony, which he had developed in his early days in Romania. These two inventors had much in common to talk about - the older man with his long experience in the fields of acoustics and electricity, and the younger man with his already well developed theory on the transmission of power by vibrations, with its analogies in the same subjects. As inventors they both suffered from the disbelief of "experts" in their new ideas. One example in Edison's case was when he demonstrated his phonograph at the Academy of Science in Paris where they concluded it was merely ventriloquism.

If Thomas Edison and George Constantinesco could have joined up in a co-operative venture at Menlo Park, the results might have been quite remarkable. But on the other hand the sparks might have crackled due to a clash of personalities as they were both inventors. Edison hired people to help him develop his inventions, mathematicians, engineers, administrators and the like, but he was suspicious of other inventors who might steal his limelight [4]. In any case the opportunity was lost, due to the intervention of World War I.

George failed to obtain interest and financial backing for his inventions in the United States. Even in the U.S.A., the main point which raised suspicions on the validity of his ideas was again their non acceptance of the compressibility of liquids. It is interesting to note that even as late as 1941, George Dowty (later Sir George) applied for a patent for his liquid spring undercarriage for aircraft, and his application was turned down by the U.S. Patent Office "on the ground that the device was against the laws of nature'' [5]. In the event, war clouds were looming in Europe and George returned to England to resume work on his transmission systems.

Back in England, George was badly in need of finance to develop his inventions and better premises because of the flooding at Twickenham. He had moved from his flat in London to a house in Richmond, where he had installed his sister Gisi. She had come over from Romania, to look after his affairs while he was in the U.S.A. Gisi persuaded him, that at the age of thirty-three, it was high time he got married. She introduced him to Alexandra (Sandra) Cocorescu. She was young (only nineteen), beautiful and musical and George was duly impressed. Gisi returned to Romania before the outbreak of the war and Sandra and George were married in Richmond in December 1914. They moved house to Wembley and then, soon after their son Ian was born, they moved to Weybridge.

In the meantime George had met with Walter Haddon, with whom he had entered into an agreement in January 1914, in which Haddon would help to finance development of George's inventions in exchange for a 50% share of all present and future royalties on wave transmission patents. With this arrangement George had been able to obtain some disused stables and cowsheds in Honeypot Lane, Alperton, just south of Wembley, which he had converted for use as his laboratory. Walter Haddon had originally been in the printing business and became Managing Director of W.H. Dorman & Co. of Stafford, who made printing machinery and footwear making machinery. During the war Dorman & Co manufactured various other items such as engines, and were licensed to manufacture George's wave transmission rock drills and the synchronizing gears for fighter aircraft.

It was clear to George that if he was to make any progress with getting his ideas over to Officialdom and Industry he would have to explode the fallacy of the incompressibility of liquids. He did this with several important practical demonstrations. In one case he constructed what was, in fact, a liquid spring. It consisted of an empty 75 mm shell with a pressure gland fitted to the pointed end instead of the fuse, and filled with water. A steel plunger was pushed down through the gland until all air was expelled. A weight of 100 kilograms was dropped on to the plunger from a height of three metres. If the water had been incompressible it is quite likely that the shell would have burst. It did not, and instead the plunger was pushed down nearly the whole length of the shell and rebounded with a force of 2,000 kg, which propelled the weight up again along its guides to nearly the same height from where it started. The weight continued to dance up and down, as it would have done on a powerful spring. By damping the return stroke of the plunger, it was evident that this device could form the basis of shock absorbers, or liquid springs for the undercarriages of aircraft, fig 4.

In another set of experiments George demonstrated that it was not only possible to compress a liquid under very high pressure, but also to store the resultant energy and release it when required. Using this principle, he constructed silent and fleshless guns, including mortars and a cannon, figs 5 and 6. The mortars worked by the expansion of water compressed to 2,000 atmospheres (about 30,000 psi.) by a hand pump. At this pressure the water would have been compressed to 70% of its original volume. The cannon was capable of throwing a 90 kg bomb over a distance of 1,400 metres with the energy derived from the expansion of highly compressed oil. These experiments he thought were sufficient to prove that liquids were compressible and also indicated the ballistic possibilities, comparable with explosive propellants for military use, but officialdom was yet to be convinced.

By 1915 George had taken out a whole range of British Patents on various aspects of wave transmission, including heat generation and the flashless guns and submitted them to the War Office for consideration as to their use in the war effort. Even then they were viewed with considerable scepticism and suspicion, especially when it was suggested that wave power could be used to heat trenches on the Western Front, and as for the guns, their function relied on the compressibility of liquids, which they said was impossible. As the whole concept of wave transmission relied largely on the compressibility of liquids, the validity of which had not yet percolated through to the Authorities, all the inventions were turned down out of hand as the "ravings of a mad Romanian!''.

Meanwhile, the Germans were inflicting devastating damage to Allied aircraft due to their introduction of mechanical synchronizing gears for firing machine guns forward between the propeller blades. Various attempts were made to overcome this menace with the introduction of a variety of similar mechanical devices by the Allies. But it was George Constantinesco's wave transmission system which was to provide the final answer and render all mechanical systems obsolete.

1

 Polyphase systems use different frequencies while multiphase systems (such as AC mains) use the same frequency for each phase. One example of a polyphase system is the frequency multiplexing used to transmit multiple phone calls down the same line.