QUICKER CABLES

Evening Star, Issue 17959, 4 May 1922, Page 4

QUICKER CABLES

NEW INSTRUMENTS -MADE ON A LONELY ISLAND. Cablegrams to Australia have been considerably expedited by tho recent inventions of a former Rugby man, Mr K. G. Cox, station electrician at tho Auckland (N.Z.) office of tho Pacific Cable Board (says tho London ‘Daily Mail’). While in charge of tho lonely Norfolk Island relay station in tho South Pacific, Mr Cox fitted up a lathe, and made tho find instruments embodying his ideas, He perfected them in London on a recent visit. The most important of his inventions are. a selenium magnifier and an interpolator. The former magnifies signals which come from a, long distance in too weak a form to bo received automatically. By Mr Cox’s device tho message operates a tiny circular mirror which throws a beam of powerful light divided into bars on a plate prepared with selenium, a chemical element with electrical properties acutely sensitive to light. The action of tho current representing tho message causes tho mirror to oscillate, and a movement in the bars of light results, producing on thejsonsitive chemical ehlhcnt changes corresponding to tho received signals. Tho power from these change?, ran, if necessary, be multiplied 40.000' times. Tho message then passes through the interpolator, which cuts tho signal into its original dements, and also automatically sends tho message to the next cable station. Mr Cox, who is about 45, has been for about twenty years in the service of the board, which operates the Imperial cable from Halifax (Nova Beotia) to Australia.