ROMANCE OF RADIO

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 February 1927, Page 3

ROMANCE OF RADIO

MIRACLE OF 25 YEARS.

Just over twenty-five years ago Britain and America had a talk, one that was to revolutionise world history and mark a definite, stage in the march of civilisation. For on December 12, 1901, the first wireless signal was transmitted from the great station at Poldhu in Cornwall, and received without difficulty in Newfoundland. The story of wireless is a story of romance, an epic of vision and aspiration, backed by dogged energy and patience. Signor Marconi was just twenty-one when in the closing years of last ceil tury he followed up the work of Hertz and other pioneer investigators and made his first wireless signal in his father’s villa at Pontecchio, near Bologna in Italy. An induction coil, a

ball connected to a metal can which was hoisted on a pole, and the other to a metal plate attached to the “earth” formed the transmitter. The receiver was a small tube, filled with metal filings, which only permitted of the passage of a current of electricity when they were influenced by an electric wave. When the wave passed through the tube it could be used to make a “click” in any recording instrument. With this crude wireless set Marconi sent his first message from one [room to another. For the first time wireless telegraphy was a reality when that first message had been sent a mat-

ter of a few feet. From the interior of the villa he removed his apparatus to the garden outside, testing it on longer distances. When he had sent a message the full length of the garden—fifty yards and more —he knew success was in his grasp.

Within twelve years that play with an induction coil and a tube of metal filings was to grow to the transmission <•£ messages across the Atlantic itself, and of this Marconi had his vision when he packed up his apparatus and left Italy to come to England. Here, under the supervision of varius Government Departments, experiments were conducted for twelve months. The first wireless message ever transmitted in England was sent from the old General Post Office at St. Martin’s-le-Grand to the Thames Embankment, a distance of nearly a mile.. Then on Salisbury Plain a four-mile communication was set up, and afte that the young Marconi sent a message across the Bristol Channel from Fenarth to Brean Down, a distance of no less than nine miles.

He had found others to share in his enthusiasm by this time, and the boy’s dieam was fast becoming the world’s reality. By 1898 the great corporation cf Lloyd’s had taken up the new invention, and next summer a steamer was fitted with wireless to report the progress of the Kingstown Regatta races to a Dublin newspaper. In August of 1898 Queen Victoria

had wireless communication provided between tfie Royal yacht Osborne and Osborne House, in the Isle of Wight, to communicate with the Prince of Wales and learn Ips progress • back to health after an accident he Ifad sustained.

When a quarter of a century ago the Atlantic was spanned by the wireless waves, and Britain and America talk ed together through the ether, Marconi might have counted his triumph , com-

plete. But his vision reached further yet; there was still wireless telephony to be achieved as a commercial possibility. The enormous broadcasting system which links the world together to-day is only one outcome of the boys’ experiments with his set in a back garden.

But, according to Signor Marconi immeasurably greater developments are yet to come. “It is in the British Empire, that the greatest improvements, are likely to be made," he said, in a special interview. “Isolation, which is one of the principal difficulties in peopling the outer zones of Canada and Australia, will be oyercme by the new beam sys tern. “By this system the signal strength for a certain power, and signalling speed as well, can' be enormously increased. It will ipean almost a revolution in ordinary telegraphic communication.

“It is more than possible in the matte I ,!’ of the beam system in telephony that events taking place in England can be simultaneously broadcast to every part of the world. “In parts of Western Australia aeroplane ambulances can be summoned bv wireless to convey patients immediately to hospitals in the towns. This is a very valuable consideration in setting on the land where townships are infrequent.” . How great a factor in our daily life ti e broadcast message has become Since 25 years ago; the first Atlanti .- message was sent is shown almost daily by the S.O.S. messages which go cut for relatives of sick or injured people, invariably winning the desired response. Thus a week or two ago two urgent calls were broadcast, one for a traveller in Mesopotamia to return to Englang for a case of urgent illness, and the 'other to recall a man from Port Said. Both had their due effect. Thirty years ago such miracles would not have been believed. They belonged to the category of children’s fairy tales and Arabian Nights impossibilities; they were no more real than the magic carpet or Aladdin’s lamp, but to-day they are facts, commonplace to all, and no longer wondered at. The latest dream of wireless conquest, transmission of power by ether\ waves, is fast approaching realisation. It may be that in the next quar ter of a century coaling and oil stations will disappear, and vessels at sea will be “fed” with electric power from a transmitting station something like broadcasting apparatus, while land machines will also derive their powei from a great central generating and distributing plant. •