GLOBAL TV NETWORK BY 1960 CLAIMED POSSIBLE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27426, 12 August 1954, Page 11

GLOBAL TV NETWORK BY 1960 CLAIMED POSSIBLE

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, August 10. In less than five years a television network could be erected to girdle the world, according to American television engineers.

With Britain as its imaginary centre, the network could reach from Scandinavia in the north, to South Africa, across Asia and south to Australia and New Zealand, and over the Atlantic to the United States. It could be extended over the whole of North and South America, spanning the Pacific and embracing China and Japan. Discussing this possibility, the television correspondent of the “Yorkshire Post” says that at recent meetings in London of television executives from all over the world, it was emphasised that every technically-advanced nation would have to make provision in its future plans for the impact of international television on a scale never attempted in the field of radio. United States technicians have been planning globally for some years. World-wide expansion of television represents an immense business for electronic concerns. But international communication on the scale envisaged represents more than that, the correspondent says. It would mean a radio relay network

which would be of use to telephone and radio systems, airlines, the fighting services, educationists —and propagandists. In Britain, international television is receiving close attention from* the 8.8. C. and the electronic industry. Perhaps the first step in creating world-wide television has already been taken, the correspondent says. Television spans the North American continent from coast to coast by a system of towers. The working of the system must obviously have given valuable experience to engineers planning to extend the network, first of all between North America and Britain, and thence to the European continent. Several methods have been put forward as a means of spanning the Atlantic, among them plans to relay signals between series of aircraft maintaining a continuous shuttle service across the ocean.

Other methods include suggestions to-relay signals between a number of aircraft flying in circles over a series of aircraft-carriers permanently stationed in the Atlantic and plan to

beam signals by reflecting them from the moon. Two other methods are considered feasible for crossing the ocean. The first is a submarine cable, and the second is a very-high-frequenev and microwave relav along the chain of islands in the North, Atlantic by way of the Shetlands, the Faroes. Iceland, Greenland, Baffin Island. Goose Bay, Quebec and Montreal to New York and a link with the trans-United States network. This system would be by means of a series of tower relay stations. Into these stations, would be built repeaters which would provide the requisite over-all amplification for television, teleprinter, and telephone services. This would improve trans-Atlantic telephone services to provide direc-tion-finding and weather services for airlines and provide isolated districts 1 with their own internal communication systems.