WIRELESS

Northern Advocate, 5 February 1926, Page 8

WIRELESS

GREAT DEVELOPMENTS. POWER OF RADIO-ACTIVITY. Developments in regard to the utilisation of wireless for practical purposes have been extraordinary during the past twelve months. Broadcasting has become, not only a source of entertainment, but is now practically one of the necessities of the age. In the realm of broadcasting it is now almost impossible for a person to be isolated anywhere, provided he has with him even an ordinary portable receiving set . t A traveller went through the unexplored portions of Northern Australia a few months ago, and visited the outlying mission stations, and during the whole of the trip he was in touch with ■orie or other of the different broadcasting stations in the central cities, and daily learned what was happening there. * The McMillan expedition visited the North Pole region, and not only received messages there from different wireless stations throughout the world, but transmitted messages giving an account of their daily programme, which were received throughout the civilised world, including the southern portion of New Zealand. The messages went almost from pole .to pole. Television has become an accomplished fact. Not only is it possible for the owner of the latest receiving sets to hear the singer or music transmitted through the air, but actually to see the movements of the persons who are entertaining them. Amateurs in the United •States have for months past been entertaining themselves by transmitting and receiving over long distances scenes associated with the studio from which the messages wore being dispatched and received. Messages and programmes have been transmitted from and received in some of the world’s deepest mines. In New York, Sydney and. Melbourne messages have been placed on the ether direct from the bed of the ocean. Short wave transmission and reception between Australia and Britain has become an accomplished fact, and musical programmes placed on the pir in the United States have been not only received but re-broadcasted in Sydney and Melbourne. Daventry, Britain’s high-power station, transmits messages received in Australia regularly each day, and is rapidly approaching perfection of transmission. The possibilities of the "beam” wireless stations have been proved beyond the slightest doubt, and within a few months commercial wireless between Australia and Britain and Canada will be accomplished. Then time and distance between the different parts of the British Empire will be annihilated, for wireless messages travel with the speed of light, and a message despatched by the beam station from Sydney will be received almost simultaneously in Lo adon. The future of radio-activity in *the industrial and scientific world cannot be over-estimated. Professor Rutherford has indicated some of the possibilities resulting from his discovery of the means of breaking the atom into many parts, and its use in .radio work. There is more than a possibility of electrical energy in the future being generated from the air and transmitted direct to the consumers by means of radio-activity. Already the power of radio-activity in regard to warfare and questions of attack and defence is being seriously considered by the experts of all nations in the civilised world. WIRELESS IN BATTLE. Successful experiments have been made in tlie control not only c.f aerial torpedoes by wireless, but in the sotual flight manoeuvres of aeroplanes. The possibilities of aeroplanes without pilots and controlled entirely by w'rcless in battle have been carefully considered by the defence departments of different countries, espeeiallv in Britain and Germany. The latest advices from Britain, show that the experiment lias been successfully made of com-plerc-Iy controlling the movements of a battleship by wireless. In the recent gunnery tests of the Mediterranean Fleet, British naval officers tn (he destroyer Shikari from a considerable distance controlled the movements of the target ship Agamemnon, which was used for the gunnery tests. The result of the experiment demonstrated that t!ie target ship could, under wireless control, perform practically all the operations that would have been possible had there been a full crew aboard. Actually there was no.t anyone "on board the target ship The result of the experiment was eminently satisfactory in every respect, and foreshadows the possibility, in the near future, of a battleship going into actual naval battle with no crew aboard ,the movements being controlled by officers on board another ship or actually on the shore.