EUROPEAN WAVELENGTHS

Evening Star, Issue 23065, 17 September 1938, Page 4

EUROPEAN WAVELENGTHS

PRELIMINARY PLAN FOR REVISION At the end of 1937, according to the annual report of the Council of the International Broadcasting , Union, which recently held its summer meet”’K at Ouehy, Lausanne (Switzerland), the number of registered or licensed radio receivers throughout the world was about 87,500,000, representing a figure of approximately 350,000,000°listeners. Of that number, 31,200,000 sets (approximately 125,000,000 listeners) are in Europe. Delegates representing 23 European countries, three U.S.A. broadcasting systems, Porto Rico, and the Dutch •'East Indies, together with observers from postal-telegraph administrations m various parts of the world, attended the meeting. Preliminary discussions by the Technical Committee on the groundwork of a plan for the revision” of European broadcasting wave lengths, which the

recent World Telecommunications Conference at Cairo invited the U.I.R. to draft, were an important feature of the meeting’s business. The president of the Technical Committee (M. Raymond Braillard, Director of the Brussels Checking Centre) was asked by the council to prepare a memorandum on the existing conditions in the short wave field, with a view to a possible world conference on short wave broadcasting. Questions ..of copyright, the international protection of artists (a, problem that is to be examined by', an expert committee convened by the International Labour Office), and the tihr. authorised recording of broadcast transmissions wore discussed by the Juridical Committee, over which Dr Sourek (Czechoslovakia) presided. A recommendation by the Programme Committee (presidefxt, Monsieur Dymling, Director-General of the Swedish

broadcasting service) that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation should be invited to provide the fifth world concert, to be relayed in_ five continents and to consist of music characteristic of both the English-speaking and French-speaking peoples of Canada, was adopted by the council.

TOO LATE BY IWEMTY-ONE YEARS, IN FACT A cable from London asserts that one Professor Appleton has discovered by means of radio signal echoes that the moon draws huge tides in the upper air, lifting up the atmosphere twice a day. However, Dr D. F. Martyn, of Sydney’s (Radio Research Board, regrettably admits that Appleton is a little late; that the moon’s air-tide was discovered by Chapman 21 years ago, after indefatigable study of more than 23,000 barometer readings; and that an apparatus is now installed at Sydney University which is capable of'measuring those tides correct to within 20 yards, where Appleton’s apparatus was correct to one mile.