BEAM WIRELESS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18348, 3 April 1925, Page 7

BEAM WIRELESS.

AUSTRALIAN SITES CHOSEN

It has been officially announced by Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia 1 ), Limited, that their experts have selected sites for the new Marconi beam stations in the vicinity of Melbourne. One of these sites is situated about six miles south of Ballan, a town on the main road between Melbourne and Ballarat. and on the main MelbourneAdelaide railway line. On this site, two of the new Marconi beam transmitters will be erected. One transmitter will send a concentrated beam erf wireless waves direct to a station in England, and the other direct to a station on the Ht. Lawrence River, near Montreal, Canada. On another site, about 15 miles from Melbourne —near the towns of Keilor and Sydenham, close to the main roads and to the railway line between Melbourne and Bendigo —the company will erect two new Marconi beam receiving stations. One of these will be designed to catch the beam of waves coming direct from the transmitting station in England; the other to catch the waves coming from the beam transmitter near Montreal. In addition to these main oversea stations, the company will erect feeder stations in all the ''other capital cities, so that each State will have a complete wireless service from its capital to and from London, and another to and from Montreal.

The two new stations will provide communication direct with England and Canada, during the full twenty-four hours of every day in the year; and they will be capable of working automatically at high speed. The company will establish collecting and delivering offices in each capital city, from which the wireless stations will be operated by distant control. Messages at very much reduced rates will, it is offieially announced, be accepted from the public for despatch-to Great Britain and to all parts of North and South America through the Montreal beam station. For the first time in the history of Australia, private- messages will, it is stated, be sent to and from Great Britain at a charge as low as sixpence a word (which will be the rate for weekend telegrams). Daily deferred messages will be reduced to one shilling a )vord, and business messages in code to two shillings per word, whilst Press messages will be dealt with at the low rate of od a word.

In selecting the sites, provision has been made for the extension of the service in the future to other parts of the world. The work of erecting the masts, buildings, wireless plant, and connecting lines will be proceeded with at once, and it is expected that the service will be in full operation in the early part of next year. The new beam stations are guaranteed to have a speed and capacity far in excess of anything previously attained over so great a distance. A beam sent from the Australian station to England or vice versa, will cover the distance in less than one-fifteenth of a second, and the operating spqed between the two countries will reach at least one hundred words a minute; and, since it will be possible for'the new stations to handle four messages simultaneously, the total speed will reach at least four hundred words a minute.