TELEVISION ADVANCES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1938, Page 8

TELEVISION ADVANCES

Technically, the problems of television—the seeing, by scientific devices, of moving objects at a distance beyond the limits of ordinary human vision—appeared from the start so difficult as to baffle all the skill of the inventor and the equipment of modern science. Yet the prospective rewards of success and the fascinating nature of the problem itself have kept the inventor at work through disappointments and failures until a sufficient measure of success was achieved to wan-ant the British. Broadcasting Corporation's endeavour to establish a regular service. This has now been in operation in London for some time, and the results were surveyed by the deputy directorgeneral of the 8.8.C. (Mr. C. G. Graves) in a broadcast this week, summarised jin an Official Wireless message yesterday. It' had beejn found, he said, that the range of transmission was greater than was expected, and although a 30-mile I radius was regarded as the service area of the London station, many private viewers up to and over a hundred miles away were receiving programmes regularly arid well. In television, Britain, with its established home service, had a two-year lead, he said, on any other country. America and other countries were impressed by what had been done in England in creating a great national industry. There is, of course, very much still to be done, but it is something, for instance, to be able to see the cricket Test at the Oval on television sets at the Olympia Radio Exhibition some miles away. On kindred lines the transmission of photographs, docu-| ments, and printed matter by radio1 over much greater distances and their I rapid reproduction in facsimile is another useful achievement of: science in .regular use. There is' also the possibility, recently fore-! shadowed, that television may bej used to detect the approach of aircraft and thus assist in the defence of cities against aerial attack. This possible application is being closely examined in Britain and America today. Altogether, television shows great promise of progress in the service-of man.