WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2662, 2 June 1908, Page 7

WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY.

Wireless telegraphy to-day is a vast improvement on what is generally termed. "Tho Old Plain." The printer, which a large number of ships and stations still use, is very reliable. With the instruments now hi use. the wireless operator has at his command means with which he can cut out almost any sort of interferences. Signalling is known by the different length waves, which are known to an inch, the shortest, wave in use being 360 feet, and the highest (Clifden) probably 14,000 feet. These lengths are measured from crest to crest. Heading h- ear. as at present, messages may be taken by clever operators at a rate of .10 words per minute, at a range of about 500 miles. Clifden is sending to America at about from Jl2 to 11 words per minute. The operator may adjust his instruments to-day, then, for the particular wave (previously arranged) that his co-ships and stations are using and read away without getting into a perspiration ivith the fear of some one jamming him. as in days of yore. Or, if he wants to rend or send on another wave, ho can easily inform his coships and stations by means of, say, a previously arranged cypher code. Should he be curious to know what was going on around him, he may, by adjusting his instruments for all waves in turn, easily find out. Ji" an outsider manages to get on the same length wave that he is reading, his only chance of getting his own message would be that of cutting out the out aider : t his can only be done when the interference is a weaker signal, and even then he will weaken his own by so doing. If she is a stranger he may have to tell his sender to repeat several times before he manages to tret the message. By that time he will be in the perspiration mentioned above, and by way of sp'te he will probably set about making it impossible for tho reader of the outsider's signal to take it. In the old days the printer gobbled up everything, atmospherics as well—a jumble that has caused more bald heads in the wireless world than any other trouble.