LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 136, 25 May 1911, Page 11

LONG-DISTANCE TELEPHONY.

WELLINGTON EXPERIMENTS. Long-distance telephony has been regarded in New Zealand until recently as too expensive a privilege to be made cheap and popular, because it meant the installation of a double line of heavy copper wire between the talking points. A demonstration of the newest form of long-distance telephony at a lecture in the Wellington railway social hall by Mr. J. T. Fahy, A.M.1.E.E., showed that it is possible not only to hold audible and easy conversation with a person at Palmerston North (a distance of about ninety miles), but also to transmit telegraphic messages simultaneously over the same wire. The phonofar, as the instrument is christened, is of English origin, and the first set imported into New Zealand came through the agency of Mr. J. H. Wynne, electrical signal engineer to the New Zealand Railways Department. A trial has been made with it between the chief traffic inspector’s office in Wellington and the Palmerston N. railway station. Telephonic conversation over that distance had previously been almost impossible, certainly quite unreliable for business purposes, because of the many interruptions from other points in

the circuit and the tremendous buzzing due to induction. Now, to use the simile of one of the officers with experience of its working, “ Giving orders to Palmerston is as easy from Wellington as if you were looking in at the door.” All the time the line is in use for telegraphing of Morse signals, which are not heard through the telephone. Roughly speaking, it costs about £lOOO to put in a copper wire for telephoning between Wellington and Palmerston North, but the phonofar gives far better talking facilities for the expenditure of £lO on instruments attached to the iron wire of the telegraph line.