THE TRIUMPHANT AMATEUR.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 252, 23 October 1924, Page 4

THE TRIUMPHANT AMATEUR.

The success of amateurs with modest equipment in bridging with '-"wireless" the gap between, Britain and her antipodes i 3 faintly 'suggestive of the oft-repeated joke of the two fishermen. The man elaborately equipped with expensive rod, landing gear and creel, catches nothing, while the boy, fishing with a rough stick and a pin on the end of a piece of string, has a "good day." The world has been accustomed to think of wireless communication mainly in terms of great stations, equipped with towering masts and worked by dynamos of high power. There has been an agitation for a chain of these stations throughout the Empire, and the relative merits of this older system and the new "beam." method, m which lower power will suffice, are now being considered. In the meantime the amateurs have been busy with the restricted resources at their disposal, and, helped by the improvement in , receiving apparatus, they have established communication between Britain and New Zealand each way.- Probably most people find it difficult to continue to feel the wonder of "wireless," but there is something in this latest achievement that ought to stir the imagination of" even the sluggish. To the imaginative it can never cease to be extraordinary that a. small apparatus can send vibrations across the world. The success of these amateurs is a triumph for disinterested devotion to a practical science and for the enthusiasm that has to be content with small things. These signals were telegraphic, not telephonic, but now that this great distance has been covered, the transmission of the human voice and of music is bound to follow, and Mr. Massey"s dream of talks between a Prime Minister in London and a Prime Minister in Wellington will come true. While New Zealand awaits this development, it obtains through the triumphant Mr. BeE a splendid advertisement among all who are interested in wireless development. It is possible that this achievement will he to some persons in distant countries the first intimation that there is such a place as New Zealand.