NAVIGATIONAL AID.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20274, 27 June 1931, Page 10

NAVIGATIONAL AID.

PRIZE TO TALKING BEACON. I am glad to see that the Thomas Gray Memorial prize for the . maßfc meritorious contribution to the art of navigation has been awarded to Messrs I Charles and David« Stevenson, of EdinI burgh, for their invention of the Talking, Beaoon recently installed at tho Cumbrae Lighthouse (says "Amateur Wireless"). The beacon consists of an ingenious combination of foghorn and wireless-transmitter, the, latter leing opearted automatically from a gramophone record. It has been sped* ally to help ships in foggy weather. The navigating officer of an approach* ing ship first hears three warning blasts from the foghorn. Then through a pair of headphones come the name Cumbrae, followed by a series of numbers representing distances in nautical miles, 'and finally two more blasts from the foghorn. After a short period the whole sequence is repeated. The time intervals are\ so arranged that the number spoken before the second blast from the foghorn tells the navigating officer his actual distance from the lighthouse. Personally, I think the prize has been well won. It makes one realise what tremendous possibilities there are in wireless—quite outside the field of ordinary broadcasting. EARLY TRANSMISSIONS. BROADCASTS FROM COPENHAGEN. Lyngby radio station, near Copenhagen, Denmark, is one of the most interesting stations in the world to the student of broadcasting, for it was v from this little town that coherent speech and music were ■ first transmitted by wireless in 1906. In that year, the inventor of the Poulsen Arc —Waldemar Poulsen, . a Danish engineer—first demonstrated that his arc system of ether-wave production could be' utilised for the successful transmission of telephony. Poulsen Continued his experiments at Lyngby until the war at which time his station was purchased by the Danish Government for oomtaercial use, , Amateur interest in broadcasting began in Denmark about 1920, and in the following year the statio. at Lyngby was fitted up with a telephony equipment which enabled it to transmit to one of the neighbouring islands In 1922 the Lyngby station began to transmit, an occasional concert. Consequently it provided the first popular broadcasting station in Denmark. Lt is rather strange in these modern times to note the fact that when Lyngby first commenced its broadcast concerts it still employed the Poulsen Arc system of transmission, and that it used a wave-length as high as 2400 metres.

k;lk