WILL WIRELESS END WAR?

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 81, 13 March 1924, Page 7

WILL WIRELESS END WAR?

greater developments. PREDICTED. LAND LINES TO BE UTILISED. Professor A. M. Low. the eminent Scottish scientist, discusses in the article below the possibilities of wireless enthusiasts by means of moder, lately powerful sets conversing with friends in distant corners of the globe. Professor Low has interested himself in wireless from its infancy, and at the moment is busily engaged on other impsovements, which, he thinks, will in a short time revolutionise world communication.

In the very near future there is not the least doubt that we shall h e able to converse with friends in all parts of America. That view is not only held bv me but’by the chief engineer of the 8.8.C.’ The difficulty in the matter of speaking to America and other countries separated from us by an expanse of ocean is that the ships at sea are fitted with wireless sets 12 years out of date. Unfortunately that cannot be altered at the moment because the saving of life at sea is more important than the question of improving the communication of th© world. It is a fact, however, that the interference to wireless broadcasting by ships at sea is very great. I can only liken the effect of a shit’s wireless on broadcasting to the firing of a gun in a room in which a piano stands. Instead of one string corresponding, all the strings of the piano vibrate. IMPROVES THOUSANDFOLD. World communication In the future is going to be improved a thousandfold by a.combination of land lines and wireless. What will probably happen when this is brought about is that a man sitting in an -office in Scotland will speak to a transmitting station, say. at Glasgow, and his conversation will first be carried by wireless across* the Atlantic and then by a land line to whichever part of America he wishes to speak. Such an innovation will undoubtedly prove of the utmost value to business men.

Another point is that we shall bo able to speak much greater distances than we do at the moment. Land lines and wireless will be linked up in such a fashion that the world in the future is going to be a very small place indeed. By means of a system which will pick up weak waves and broadcast them on different length waves, as is at present being done, it should also be possible to broadcast music to almost every part of the world. The way this will be done will probably be in amplifying stages. Sa far as I can see. we are also going to get much more interesting matter broadcasted than at present, such as political news/ divorce cases, murder trials, etc., in which almost everybody is interested. At present transmitting is extraordinarily good, but the wireless waves are mangled by the reproducing machine. POCKET SETS. It is no idle prediction to say either 'that in a short time from now people will be going about with pocket wire--1 less sets. Members of the public to whom this will be specially useful will be policemen, ami then we shan’t have murderers setting the police at defiance in the wav they do nowadays. Wireless should become a very great aid to police. No sooner will a murder be committed and the police informed of it than every policeman, by merely carrying a pocket set, will he on the murderer’s track. Murder will out more than ever in the ftA.ire t> I am any judge, and another of its beneficial effects should be that it will minimise, if not eliminate, crimes of a brutal nature.

Incidentally the improvement of wireless should prove rather a nuisance to governments, because when it reaches a greater state of perfection it is going to make secret diplomacy even more difficult than now. It will be some time of course, before tuning can be brought to such a condition of perfection, that governments will be unable to conduct their affairs secretly. But even at the moment the worst wireless set can be utilised to advantage by spies. Messages can always be decoded.

GREATEST FUTURE. But the greatest future of all j see for wireless is in the way it is going to bind the nations of the world. So long as AmeiUcans and Englishmen were strangers to each other they were continually in a state of misunderstanding. When conversation, which depends so largely on methods of communication, has become such that we can speak to America or elsewhere, it should go a long way to making us realise that wars are ridiculous. To say that wireless could entirely abolish war is. of course, nonsense of the first degree. But wireless is going to make for more brotherly relations throughout the world, and who knows but that in time we may also be able to communicate with Mars,

Wireless is also going to play a large part in the improvement of light, because scientists have come to realise that between the two there is a very great affinity indeed. Both are governed by the same laws. One of the worst features about electric light is that when it fails in one corner of the town it is apt at times to plunge that entire city into darkness. Wireless is going to bring about a greater economy in light, and in time it should be merely ia question of altering the wave length to make wireless visible. Some, of the greatest scientific developments in the future will be in the manner of economising with light.