TELEPHONE IN STORM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 178, 29 July 1932, Page 12

TELEPHONE IN STORM.

"NO DANGER" SAYS OFFICIAI* BUT CANNOT CONVINCE WIFE. Melbourne electrical experts are puzzled by a cabled report that an Austrian professor was killed while using wireless earphones during a violent thunderstorm. The cable said that lightning struck the aerial and fractured the professor's skull, causing instantaneous death. The experts say they can understand the eardrums having been fractured, but not the skull. On the other hand, they admit that there are many phenomena about lightning which are unknown to science. AMelbourne postal official explained that no real danger was incurred by speaking on the telephone during a thunderstorm, but he confessed he had not been able to convince his wife on the subject. If the wire connecting a subscriber's telephone to the exchange appeared above the ground for an inch, he said, an arrester was put in the telephone line to protect users against lightning and other currents. Arresters were unnecessary and were not used where the line was wholly underground. He could not remember a serious accident in Victoria through lightning striking a telephone. At Warrenbayne this the postmistress received a severe shock while at the telephone, but a boy playing marbles not far away had his arm badly burned, suggesting that a thunderbolt, and not lightning, was responsible. Switchboard operators sometimes received electric shocks, but these were usually due to stray current. While operating at the old type of switchboard 30 years ago he had got a severe shock. "There are many things about lightning we do - not understand," he said. "Once at the board little balls of light jppeared on the instruments and floated upward in front of our eyes, but why this' happened I have never been able to discover."