CALLING LONDON

Grey River Argus, 16 October 1936, Page 4

CALLING LONDON

N.Z. Takes Nine Minutes QUICK DESPATCH ON RADIO TELEPHONE A remarkable record for speed, in securing radio-telephone communication between Xew Zealand and England was recently achieved. It was a vivid demonstration of the actual fact that New Zealanders who have the telephone are able to readily communicate with subscribers in Australia, the United Kingdom and other countries almost with the facility of putting through an ordinary toll call m the Dominion. This particular customer of the Post Office made a request at 7.45 p.m. to have a call put through to an English telephone number. The instruction was being handled three minutes later in the London International telephone exchange, and at 7.54 p.m. the. two subscribers, more than 12.000 miles apart, commenced their conversation exactly nine minutes from the time of making the original request. Another call from New Zealand to London on the same evening was effected within lift) minutes of making the request, and this would have been more quickly completed but for the fact that the radio channel was engaged for Sydney traffic at the time. The installation of “scrambling" apparatus in New Zbaland, Austinlia and the United Kingdom makes ail radio telephone conversations quite secret, as the speech is inverted and passes over the radio channel in the form of an incomprehensible .jumble of sounds which are converted at the receiving end into intelligible speech.

In another sphere, distance presents no time-handicap to the Dost Office which finds that on the average the normal commercial handling of cables between New Zealand and England takes less than an hour. This gives New Zealanders the unique experience of being able to send a reply to an English cable received, say at 4 p.m. knowing that it will be delivered on the same day at the commencement of business on the other side of the world. New Zealand is twelve hours ahead of Greenwich time.