WIRELESS AMUSEMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19940, 6 November 1926, Page 19

WIRELESS AMUSEMENT.

FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN LIGHTHOUSES. The Commonwealth Lighthouse Service recently decided to have wireless telephone sets installed at several lighthouses in Bass Strait, whereby tho isolation in which keepers of those lighthouses are placed will be broken down, and the men there will be enabled to communicate with the land and with the remainder of the service (states the Sydney Daily Telegraph). At the present time communication is maintained between some of the lighthouses and the land by means of short submarine cables and land-line telephony. The expense of laying cables and the limitation of the length of cable over which telephonic conversation may be conducted has prevented the provision of services to all_ lighthouses. As a result, the keepers of those pos(a have hitherto bean entirely cut off from telegraphic communication with the land. Wireless telephony is to solve the difficulty, and it is proposed shortly to connect the lighthouses at Cliffy Island and Deal Island, Bass Strait, with the mainland by this method.

A. wireless telephone transmitter and receiver will be installed in each of these lighthouses, and a third unit will he provided at the lighthouse at Wilson’s Promontory, which also has a land-line service. Thus both tbe Cliffy and Deal lighthouses will he able to communicate with the main land thiough the Wilson's Promontory lighthouse. The distances to Cliffy Island and Deal Island from Wilson’s Promontory are respectively 17 and 49 miles. The necessary equipment is of Australian dssign and manufacture, and will be similar to the wireless telephone equipment which has recently been used with great success on trawlers operating between Sydney and the South Coast of New South Wales. Each transmitter will have a power unit of 250 watts, and the current necessary to operate it will be produced by a petrol-driven generating set. The wireless telephone sets are iu Melbourne, and will be taken to the ligthouses in the next steamer. For some time wireless telephony has been utilised in lighthouse work in Croat Diitain, but this is the first attempt in Australia to utilise it in this connection