Intercontinental TV System Is Developed

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28234, 23 March 1957, Page 11

Intercontinental TV System Is Developed

NEW YORK, March 21. A powerful new antenna which relays television images by bouncing them off a six-mile .high layer of atmosphere has brought the world to the threshold of intercontinental television, an electronics executive said today. The antenna, which can transmit clear images hundreds of miles, was developed for the United States - Canadian Arctic circle radar warning system line. The executive, Mr Ira Kamen, vice-president and electronics research chief for the General Bronze Corporation, company which developed the antenna, said it had great commercial potentiality. X Mr Kamen, who is attending the Institute of Radio Engineers’

annual convention, said that at present the cost of a trans-Atlan-tic antenna network would be staggering. The antenna works on the “scatter propagation” method. It shoots an image toward the horizon, where it hits the troposphere —a six-mile high layer of the atmosphere—and then is bent back toward the earth. The image is then picked up by another antenna which relays it on. “By building antennas across the Atlantic, from Montreal to the Baffin Islands, then to Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, and either to Oslo or Edinburgh, it would be possible to bounce television images across the ocean,” Mr Kamen said.