DOUBT FELT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 65, 18 March 1938, Page 9

DOUBT FELT.

HOME TELEVISION. OBSTACLES IN WAY. ADVANTAGES OF RADIO Doubt whether television would ever he as commercially important as some people seemed to think Tvas expressed by General James O. Harbord. chairman of the board of directors of the Radio Corporation of America, and a notable figure in the United States business world, when he passed through Auckland on the Monterey to-day on his way to Australia. Television did not have the adv intakes of sound radio, to which people could listen while they were eating their meals or even talking, said General Harbord. With television, however, one had to keep eyes glued on to the screen, and so it was doubtful whether television was ever going to be as important for family or home use as was sound radio. "The R.C.A. has done most of the experimenting will television in America," said General Harbord, "and we have had for over a ye<r a station on top of the Empire State Building in New York City for experimental purposes. Distance of transmission, of course, is limited by the curvature of the earth, and at the present rate of progress the effective radius is from 25 to 40 miles. "We have quite a number of television receiving sets in the hands of people who have enough technical knowledge to be able to report on reception and distance—probably about 100 of them in all. We haven't thought it right to sell apparatus to the public when it is c o much in the experimental stage/'

If television was to be put at tlie disposal of the public at tlie present stage, probably about a billion dollars would have to be spent to "cover" the whole country, because the limited range meant that stations would have to be

thickly dotted through the populous areas. These stations would probably have to be entirely independent, too, since there was no practical way as yet of "syndicating" or relaying television programmes as was done with sound radio by means of a system of telephone wires. There was a promise that this could l>e done by mean* of the co-axial cable, through which light, converted into electrical impulses, could be transmitted, but this cable cost about a dollar a foot.

Another obstacle was the fact that there was no way of amplifying light, and that had so far limited the size of the screen on which the television imaire appeared.

On the other hand, added General Harbord, continual progress was beinsr made in the efficiency of sound radio, it was becoming progressively better each year.