AUSTRALIA’S FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29638, 7 October 1961, Page 8

AUSTRALIA’S FLYING DOCTOR SERVICE

Similar Project For Use In East Africa [Commonwealth Department of the Interior] CANBERRA. An Australian electrical engineer whose genius for “fiddling round with electricity” gave the vast Australian outback its voice is now working on a similar project for use in East Africa. He is Alfred Traeger, aged 65, of Godfrey Terrace, Erindale, in the State of South Australia, inventor of the pedal radio transceiver.

These pedal wireless sets (worked by power from a generator turned by two foot-operated bicycle pedals) spread a mantle of safety over 2.006,000 square miles of Australia’s remotest settlements. They formed the backbone of the Flying Doctor Service of Australia and helped to break the age-long isolation of the people of the outback who had often gone for months without seeing or speaking to another white man.

A unique establishment, the Flying Doctor Service of Australia provides immediate medical advice by radio, to be followed if necessary by the swift arrival of a doctor by plane. Many lives were saved by the Flying Doctor Service in the space of a few years, and welcome relief was provided for the sick.

The early pedal radios opened up an exciting new world of contact for their owners and brought the news of the world to their door. “Neighbours” 100 miles apart could exchange gossip and information and lay the bogy of loneliness.

Nigeria Seeks Aid Now Mr Trgeger’s pedal radios have aroused the interest of the Flying Doctor Service of Africa Ltd., a newly-founded service, which is negotiating with him to supply modern versions of the early pedal radios, for use in Nigeria. A mild-mannered and re. tiring man, Mr Traeger was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his humanitarian work. He remembers well the trials and difficulties of establishing wireless communication in the Australian outback before the now famous pedal radio was born.

"In 1926 I was approached by the flev. John Flynn, of the Australian Inland Mission. to go to Alice Springs in Central Australia to make tests with radio transmission,” Mr Traeger said. An electrical engineering graduate of the South Australian School of Mines, with additional experience in the electrical industry, Mr Traeger was then earning his living by making generators. He tinkered with radio in his spare time. “We installed our first transmitter in the engine room of a nursing home at

Alice Springs and linked up with the power supply,” Mr Traeger said. “We planned for this to become the basic radio station BAB of the Australian Inland Mission, which people could call on their radio sets for medical aid.”

Mr Traeger took a smaller set, operated by primary batteries, 80 miles away to the Hermannsburg Mission and a message in Morse was sent successfully to station BAB. “But those first sets weren’t too good,” Mr Traeger said. “They were too heavy and awkward and they had to be worked with batteries and by Morse. It took a lorry to get them to a station."

Back in Adelaide, Mr Traeger went to work aiming to design a complete wireless station, cheap enough to be economically within the reach of the outback people and simple enough for them to maintain and operate themselves.

Two years later he produced the first pedal set in which the power was generated by working a pair of pedals on a frame. It was an old idea, but Mr Traeger improved on it by providing an almost constant frequency no matter how irregular the power generation supplied by the foot pedals. “The first set weighed 201 b had three valves and re, quired .70 revolutions a minute from the bicycle pedals to generate sufficient operating current," Mr Traeger said.

Widespread Aerial Medical Bases

The first pedal set was in. stalled in the Cloncurry area in 1928 and with it was founded the first of the country-wide aerial medical bases. The Cloncurry area embraces a vast stretch of country, including parts of the Northern Territory and the States of South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, and- at its widest radius extends some 800 miles.

Several more pedal transceivers were installed in outback stations that year. It took Mr Traeger a fortnight to install each set and to teaeh the Morse code.

“Sometimes I was away in the outback for six months at a time.” Mr Traeger Said. “We travelled by car and could move only during the dry season from May to October * * With the installation of nearly 50 more sets in the next eight years in the remote country areas the settlers’ days of isolation were almost over. “But one great drawback

about the pedal radios was that they transmitted and received only Morse, which gave them a rather limited usefulness,” Mr Traeger said. Again his ingenuity overcame the difficulty. He aided the outback settlers who had no knowledge of Morse by designing a Morse typewriting keyboard. All the operator had to do was to press down the letter he Wanted to send and the Morse signal for the letter was sent out automatically. This was a great advance which permitted the set to be operated by any literate person or even by a child. Radio-T ele phony Sets “My ultimate aim was to design a radio-telephony set, and I was able to produce the first set in 1935,” said Mr Traeger. “It answered every requirement, being small, comparatively cheap and practically foolproof." During the next two years Mr Traeger installed 120 radio-telephony pedal sets all over Australia. Apart from their humanitarian purpose, the pedal radios have played a great part in opening up the great hinterland of the Australian Continent. Without Mr Traeger's transceivers the early establishment of the Flying Doctor Service of Australia would not have been possible. The pedal radio has made one family of all the people scattered sparsely over a quarter of a million square miles. round each Flying Doctor Service wireless base. In addition, hundreds of school children in the outback receive their lessons over the Flying Doctor Ser. vice radio network in the unique Australian School of the Air. Development in Australia, with improvement of communication and transport, has seen the gradual disappearance of the pedal radio in favour of batteryoperated sets. The sets are streamlined today. The original staff has grown from three to 19, all of whom are engaged in Mr Traeger's Adelaide factory making components for standard outback station radio transceivers Or for the more specialised set for the Australian School of the Air. There are more than 1,000 of Mr Traeger's transceivers in use all over Australia today. The modern, compact trans, ceivers make full use of transistors and weigh only 151 b. They come off the production line at the rate of about 25 a month.

In spite of his great contribution to the development of the Australian outback, Mr Traeger modestly re. fuses to take credit for his pioneering role. “We didn’t invent anything,” he said. “Nothing of ours is patented. It was just a matter of assembling manufactured parts.”