WIRELESS TELEPHONE.

Grey River Argus, 10 July 1922, Page 8

WIRELESS TELEPHONE.

CREATING A NEW WORLD. It is only a few years ago that Mr Marconi told me that In* had succeeded in speaking from his olTii'i' in London to his house at Southampton by a telephone without wires (writes Russell Stannard in “John o’ Loudon’s Weekly”). He probably did not realise it at the time, but he was creating a new world then with the spoken word just as Gutenburg did with the printed word. And now in the United States alone there are half a million radiophone receivers. There are a hundred thousand in daily use within the range of th. Newark broadcasting station, one of several such stations which. send out a nightly and daily service of news bulletins, concerts, lectures, sermons, to be picked up by anyone with a recciving se f— an( i this is only the beginning of the organisation of a vast wireless community, for the demand in America for instruments is so great that the manufacturers are working day and night. The voice of President Harding sitting at his desk has been heard by people in small isolated towns many miles away, and it is confidently predicted that the inaugural address of the next President will be heard by millions. A Prophecy. Mr Owen D. Young, chairman of the Radio Corporation, has made this interesting prophecy: —

Radio will Very soon be in the homes of both rich and poor everywhere. It will be the greatest potential educator and spreader of culture that has ever been dreamed of. It will be the most democratic, the most easily assimilated the most universal, and the cheapest form of publication man has imagined. Historians credit - - invention of printing with the tremendous strides civilisation has made in the last few eentuiics. But, after all, reading is an. an which must be learned; it has a limited appeal, and it often takes more effort than a reader wishes to give. In Britain the number'of those m possession of receiving sots, 7,000 to 10,000, is small in comparison to the United States .owing to the ofticial restrictions, but it is certain that in the near future wireless will be in tens of thousands of British homes. Plans For Britain. Air Godfrey Isaacs, the managing director of Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company, has recently explained that in the United States the wireless companies have a free hand. He thinks that America is going ahead too last and he foresees chaotic conditions it indiscriminate and vast use of wireless telephony comes. Installations have not, as in Britain, to be licensed by the Government. But he does not think that it will be long before we have lacilities which will give the public, both privately and commercially, great wireless benefits. Air Isaacs .says:— “What we propose'is to have a central station from which to transmit t'O all possessors of our receivers, and vsc shall so control the “waves” that the)-, and they alone, will be operating to our subscribers. “We shall not sell the receiving apparatus, but hire them out at a charge which will certainly not bo more than the cost of the present telephone installations. We think that will be better for the public, as we shall maintain thapparati and renew them when necessary. The result of this development will be obvious. We arc ready to make millions of fool-proof instruments, and a great industry, employing thousands of men, innst be founded. .1 he mateii.il we will require will make big business for other trades. The Government, 1 have reason to believe, appreciates this view. ’ ’ The cost in the United States is small One of the biggest manufacturers sells “a complete wireless telephone outfit’

for £3, “mailed anywhere.” One big hotel, the Alexandria Hotel at Long Beach, is installing a wireless telephone receiving set in each of its five hundred rooms. The “Cornell, special,” a train which runs between New York and Ithaca, has just been fitted with a complete radiotelephone installation capable of receiving and transmitting messages over a considerable distance. In the buffet car there is a receiving set affixed to the chair of each passenger. I Little Black Box. ' One of the standard form of radiophone sets now in use is a little black [box with knobs on top and a telephone ' head-piece. When the receivers are placed over the ears tiferc is a babel of tiny sounds, so small that the cardrums can just recognise their presence and nothing more. Slowly the tuning knob is turned, and as it moves one set of. sounds become more and more distinct, while the rest grow gradually fainter until they die away altogether. When the instrument is in perfect adjustment, the listener can hear a clear voice speaking, the words being more distinct; than they are over the ordinary telephone. I Infinite possibilities difficult to estimate are opened up when considering the use of the wireless ’phone for commercial and political purposes. Advertisers will naturally be eager to exploit its use. The candidate for political lionfours may soon be able to speak simultaneously to every voter in his’ constituency—not a bright lookout for the heckler!