NEWS BY CABLE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 122, 25 May 1928, Page 7

NEWS BY CABLE.

EVENTS FLASHED ACROSS THE GLOBE—KEEPING TOUCH WITH WORLD AFFAIRS. f 0 more engrossing chapter is contained In the book of human VI endeavour than the story of the *■ B ■ development of means of communi4rvj|Ucation. From away back at the end of the eighteenth century, when | optical signals by the shutter method spread the time of day along the South Coast of England, down to the present age of electric cables, beam wireless and facsimile transmission, runs the romance of the mastery of time and tide, the annihilation of distance, the conquering of the elements of Nature by the genius of man. The familiarity of daily experience alone obscures adequate appreciation and realisation of such achievement.

The Aucklander, as a matter of daily routine, sits in ease and comfort before his evening fire and reads in the pages of his "Star" the story of the intrepid airmen and gallant explorer who only 24 hours before had descended in the eternal snows of Spitzbergen after an epoch-making flight over the roof of the world. It is read ere the principal actors have had time to sleep

off the fatigue of their marvellous Modern invention combined with highly organised and perfected newspaper production makes it possible J, for Aucklanders in the far distant £ Southern Hemisphere to keep time j" with the march of events on the other Q side of the globe. H

Four separate services combine to supply the "Star" with its overseas budget, and these services have agencies in all parts of the world, with distribution agencies in all the chief centres. The service is more inclusive and more highly organised than any of those supplying newspapers in the Commonwealth, and the Aucklander thus receives a much wider range of news items from foreign countries than does the reader of any single paper in Australia. The speed displayed in sending through messages of an urgent nature is marvellous — thus two minutes after the Derby is run on the Epsom Downs the result it flashed into the Auckland office, and then telephoned or shot through the compressed air tube into the "Star" office, ready for immediate publication. So it is with the Melbourne Cup—the story of the race is picked up by wireless as it is described by the announcer on the course, but within three minutes of his record of the finish comes the confirmatory cable dispatched from a special cable office within a few yards of the finishing poet.

So it is that the thoughts, the hopes, the aspirations and the ideals of the world's leading statesmen and the foremost students are presented to the reader within 24 hours after they have been given expression. The influence of improved communications on the lives of the races of the world is incalculable. The most distant parts have been brought together through the bridging of oceans and continents by elements of the ether, and by directing the forces of electricity along the floor of the seas.

Yet to-day is but the dawn of development. Already the wonders of wireless have been pursued along the avenue of facsimile transmission. Pictures have been sent across the seas a jumbled mass of wireless waves, to be assembled into a composite whole for reproduction in the newspaper press immediately. The brains of the scientists never rest, and the picture of the future still remains incomprehensible.

In conjunction with the march of mechanical, typographical and transport invention, the generations to come are destined to reap benefits from the Press probably beyond anything that can to-day be imagined in the wildest dreams. With circulation speeded up by aircraft, and with the developing marvels of communication which is almost instantaneous between the countries of the world, it is likely that the ends of the earth will be drawn together still more closely through - * the medium of the printed word.