"WHAT A RADIO!"

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 28

"WHAT A RADIO!"

THE QUEEN MARY'S MARVELS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW YORK, August 26..

The Queen Mary continues to move writers to fanciful flights in their effort to depict her speed and comfort; above all, her appeal to the American, millionaire or hobo, in the matter of luxury. "No royal palace ever JmeW such luxury," says one. "The biggest power plant on the seas," says another. Yet -ahother, "What a ship, but what a radio!".ln a land1 that seeks eminence in things, utilitarian, the; giant ;Cunarder 'has gradually become a byword —the toast of America. .•■ The radio-cabin" is the Mecca of wireless men, whenever she is in port here, where another towering giant, Radio City, testifies to America's; bid for supremacy in the other. "Every visit reveals something novel that may have been missed- at earlier inspections of this Radio City of the sea," writes Orrin Dunlap, wireless «ditor of the "New York Times/ "Her luxuries have-not caused one-tenth of the brainracking that produced the.boilers and turbines that made Her the fastest ship in the Atlantic," . says "Waldemar Kaempffert, who spent his time at the bottom of her hull, travelling in a lift as bare and practical as any to.be found in a factory. "Nothing seems to have been forgotten by those who designed the Queen Mary's voice," says Dunlap,'who describes high-speed, automatic transmitters that send and receive messages it 70 words a minute on a ticker tape. The emergency transmitter is fed by batteries on an upper deck, as high as possible from the onrush of water. "If disaster came, the Marconi man could stick to his post to the last minute, without having to make for the deck, when ordered to abandon ship An emergency exit is provided for him., A ladder up the wall will take him through a trap door to wv upper deck, whence he could escape without being forced to traverse water-filled corridors." Lifeboats have radio equipment. Several have radiotelephones, as well as wireless direction-finders^ Each of the fourteen radio operators delights to describe how one passenger can talk to Cape ■ Town,- another > to Buenos Aires, with no conflict or^overlapping of voices due to a device that "scrambles" their words, electrically. A tiny toggle switch turns the conversation into ethereal jargon, which only certain apparatus on shore can translate. A second trick to shake off possible eavesdroppers is to wobble the carrier-wave. The Queen Mary has thirty-one radio wavelengths available, utilising whichever combination remains neutral.