RADIO PROGRESS

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 15, 12 October 1932, Page 8

RADIO PROGRESS

Revolutionary Development LOUD-SPEAKER ONLY Central-Receiver Distribution The newest form of broadcast reception, involving a revolutionary development in radio, was outlined by Mr. E. Hitchcock in his presidential address before the Electrical Supply Authority Engineers’ Association yesterday in Wellington. “One of the trfost interesting subjects whiqh I heard discussed while away last year was an aspect of radio development.” said Mr. Hitchcock. “It was only in the experimental stage in England, and there was some difficulty In getting definite information about it.

“One way in which I heard the subject put forward was as follows:—A telephone company, or Government department, administering a telephone service, would not consider providing the whole system of exchanges, overhead and underground cable, etc., and then allow individual subscribers to attempt to receive the service offered by putting in any type of instruments that they fancied. All sorts of instruments and varying degrees of satisfaction from the service, would result. The telephone organisations insist upon a uniform type of instrument. “The parallel in its application to radio would be that the broadcasting authority supplies a station and a given broadcast," continued the speaker. “The reception by the individual listeners is now subject to all the vagaries of their Individual grades and types of instruments, by which means the efficiency of the broadcasting plant, and the efforts of the broadcasting authority, are often seriously marred. “Receiving Station.” “■The proposal for overcoming this difficulty was that the local supply authority should install a high grade receiving outfit, and from it deliver by wire to its consumers the programme, with all the refinements in reception that could be provided by such an elaborate receiving station, and with such reception unimpaired between the station and the listener. In other words, all the refinements in reception that could be embodied in a central receiving station, which would be much in excess of that which individual listen-ers-in could afford, would in. this way be made available to them. “There was in England, at the time, a company actually doing this, offering this service, and erecting wires for the purpose* The newer proposal of which I heard some details, was put forward by a radio engineer formerly with the British Broadcasting Company. His method was to use the existing overhead circuits of an electrical undertaking for this purpose, and his patent covered a method by which this could be done and all the inherent difficulties overcome. In this way, the benefits and refinements in reception of a central or district receiving station would be made available to all electrical consumers on a given overhead reticulation system. All that the individual lister-ers-in would require would be a simple loudspeaker equipment, to plug into the circuit connected to the supply system, so that radio service would be an added function which the supply authority could offer to its consumers simultaneously with the ordinary supply of current Test Demonstration. “I witnessed one of the tests in which the patentee was seeking to demonstrate to oue of the electrical companies the practicability of his method,” said Mr. Hitchcock. “The test was merely a preliminary. A gramophone record was broadcast, a receiver set received it, it was impressed upon the local reticulation, and in two separate houses, each several miles away, the gramophone record was reproduced from the ordinary wiring of the house. The method, if practicable, promises to be quite a revolutionary development in radio. It may also easily be a most revolutionary development in connection with an electrical supply system if all that is claimed for it can be developed. The prospect of operating, as it were, a second business over the reticulation, which represents an existing investment, has obvious advantages and interesting possibilities. Its effect upon the future development of electrical supply could be very farreaching.”