RADIO NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1179, 29 November 1924, Page 12

RADIO NOTES

(By “Sauealer.”), It is officially estimated that the people of the United States' will this year spend £70,000/100 on listening-in apparatus. Huge as this sum seems, it is supported by the actual figures of one wireless concern, whose sales jumped from nearly £3,000,000 in 1922 to over £7,000,000 last year! At the Radio "World Fair held at New York recently 17,000 people stormed the gates on the opening night. As a result of the great interest shown by the public, radio companies’ shares aro booming. A feature o ftlie exhibition was a very large receiver of English manufacture costing well over £IOO. Several other English products were on exhibition, and the entire attending crowd was free in commenting on tho beautiful workmanship shown by these goods. Australia’s first broadcasting station was due to open recently, a group of banks and electrical firms having been granted a concession for that purpose. Germany, in addition to the two stations already operating, is constructing similar broadcasting centres in Munich, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Stuttgart Nuremburg, Konigsburg and Breslau. The National Telegraph Administration has full control of wireless communication and all receiving and transmitting stations are operated subject to its approval . The Swiss Radio Association has erected a new station in Zurich, and Lithuania is expecting to got broadcasting service from its two wireless stations—Kovno and Memel—very shortly. The position in Italy has been rather difficult so far, but recently invitations were issued from Rome to the representatives of various wireless organisations to demonstrate their systems of broadcasting. The most suitable system lor Italian conditions was to be chosen after the demonstrations.

Portugal and Spain have become interested in broadcasting, and so has Denmark. Other projected broadcasting stations are Sumatra, Chile, Sao Paulo and Tokio. Judging by present indications the time is rapidly approaching when there will be , no spot on the earth from which some broadcasting cannot be heard. Broadcasting was introduced to the Russian public for the first time recently, when the Council of People’s Commissars issued a decree permitting the manufacture and use ' under the supervision of the commissariat of posts and telegraphs, of commercial and homemade receiving set. Radio users are charged a license fee of £1 a year, working men will pay only Gs annually, while soldiers and officers of the Red Army will be taxed 2s a year. The public is permitted to receive only general matter broadcast by Government stations, including information speeches, reports, concerts, weather bulletins and time signals, hut it is forbidden to intercept or to use for private purposes official. Government matter or information intended for the Press. It also is restricted from picking up matter disseminated by foreign wireless stations.

There are forty sending" stations in Russia, eight ol’ which have a radius of 2000 miles or more each. The Government is completing a powerful receiving station at Lioybertzy, near Moscow, which will be capable of picking up the prineipaloAmerican stations. The latest broadcasting project of the. Russian Government is the erection of a high-power broadcasting station of 150 kilowatts. This station is expected to have a normal transmitting range of 5000 miles. Concerts should easily be within reach of the better-cless sets in New Zealand.