OVERHEARD ON THE WIRELESS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16374, 23 June 1927, Page 3

OVERHEARD ON THE WIRELESS

"Broadcasting has brought another embarrassment "into life," writes a correspondent from Aberdeen to the Daily Mail, London, who states: "My family gathered round tho loud speaker, and immediately jt was switched oil the voices of a man and a woman discussing a domestic matter were heardOur perplexity was heightened by the fact that the'voices seemed familiar to us. "Some lays later a, chance remark by a neighbour, occupying a lower flat, brought to our realisation the fact that the yoiccs we had heard were those of himself and his wife. They recalled that they had had tho conversation in front of their loud-speaker. "Wo found that so long as a water pipe, running through; the house is used in both flats as an earth, wo have a. two-way telephone service between our homes. " Several friends' stated that they had had similar experiences, some of them between separate houses in the same street." A British broadcasting corporation engineer told a. reporter that many reports had been received of crystal sets becoming telephones. The head-phones or loud-speakers acted as microphones. Tho current flowing in the aerial was varied, and the variation was transmitted; to the nearest aerial. The, effect was much more pronounced when there was one part in common, such as the earth.