RADIO BY TELEPHONE

Evening Star, Issue 19781, 3 February 1928, Page 6

RADIO BY TELEPHONE

“ WIRED WIRELESS " [From our own Correspondent.J SAN FRANCISCO, January 9. Radio that requires the buying of no tubes or batteries, nor even the purchase of a radio receiver; that needs no aerial, but conies to your home over the telephone wires, and yet does not interfere with the use of the telephone, has arrived. It is radio without static, without interference from the superabundance of broadcasting stations which has become a plague in many American cities; radio that never varies in the quality of rcecption, that requires no tuning and no knowledge of radio sots; yet, at the pressure of a finger on a button, gives you your choice of four different kinds of programmes. You rent it by the month, just as you do your telephone, and it requires no more attention than the 'phone instrument itself. And the cost may be no greater, and perhaps less, than telephone service. The monophone, an invention of Major-General George 0. Squier, U.S.A., and former chief signal officer, makes it possible. It is the climax of his years of experiment with “ wired wireless ” —radio which is made to travel along the path of a wire, though without being put into that wire through any electrical connection. In effect, the aerial stretches all the way from one’s home to the telephone office, and the broadcast signals, instead of going out into the air, are picked up at_ their source by the phone-wire aerial and brought up to the hearer. In one’s home is a loud speaker, concealed in a neat console cabinet of highly polished walnut. The speaker is of the latest “exponential” type, made of heavy cast plaster_ of paris to keep it free from vibrations, and with an air column fourty-two inches in length. Above the loud-speaker grille, and almost hidden in the shadow of the overhanging top, are from left to right a small radio switch of the toggle type, four little push buttons, and a small knob that might have come from a radio rheostat. OPERATION DESCRIBED. Mr J. Earl Miller, describing the process, says; “Three wires lead out of the back of the case. One goes to the telephone bell box, where it is attached to one side of the telephone line. One goes to the most convenient ground, which may be a water pipe, or even the lightning-arrester ground of the telephone. The third is an extension cord that plugs into the nearest electric-light socket. “In operation you turn on the switch, push one of the buttons and turn the knob to the desired volume—to the right to increase it and to the left to cut it down. If you want another programme you push another button ; each of the four brings in a different selection. One may furnish nothing but dance music; another provide classical music only; a third, educational talks, bedtime stories, children’s hours, the day’s news, time signals and special features. The fourth may be used for popular programmes of songs, semi-classical and popular music, playlets, and other diversions.”

*' Use of the mononlume is not limited,” says General Squier, “to the telephone.” The electric-light company may enter tho broadcasting field and furnish radio over the elcctric-light wires. One city, however, is already getting radio by telephone. The Kellogg Switchboard and Supply Company, which furnishes most of the equipment for the 8,000 independent telephone companies in the United States, has developed it for use with the telephone, and has installed tho first equipment in Freeport, Illinois, a county seat of 25,000 population, 110 miles west of Chicago, At the start the service is costing subscribers about sixteen shillings a month. George X. Cannon, general manager of the_ telephone company, estimates that with 2,000 users, it may go as low as eight shillings.” “For the present,” says Mr Cannon, “ we will operate one studio to furnish local programmes, and use powerful receiving sets to pick out of the air the best programmes of distant stations, passing them on over our telephone wires to our subscribers. We have made an entire survey of the city with a receiver mounted on a portable truck, and found the point in the suburbs where radio reception is at its best. There we _ shall locate our studio. People who live in parts of town where radio reception is had because of steel buildings, power lines or other causes, will be (£ble to get just as good radio as those at the most perfect receiving point in Freeport.”