LOUD TELEPHONE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18590, 28 December 1934, Page 3

LOUD TELEPHONE

FUTURE RECEIVER

BRITISH INVESTIGATION

LONDON, Nov. 7

British Post Office engineers are now engaged on one of the most formidable tasks imaginable. They are trying to produce a telephone receiver which, instead of having! to be held to the ear, will work as a loud speaker. The average mini may regard such an ambition as fantastic, but the Post Office engineers have only to be assured that some mechanical advice is impossible to tackle the problem with enthusiasm.

“Although the difficulties which have to be surmounted are tremendous,” said an expert, “1 have little doubt that in the future we shall all be using a loudspeaker as a substitute for the present form of receiver. That will represent the climax of telephone effort.

"But a considerable amount of work has to bt; done before this is possible. The Idea has appealed to more than one country, but our own Post Office has probably developed it most, and is busily experimenting with apparatus.”

SEARCH FOR SIMPLICITY This apparatus takes the form of a receiver which depends for its loudspeaker effects on the use of five or six valves, but the scheme is in embryo, because something very much more simple will bo required before the device can be. regarded as generally practicable.

Many firms, of course, have installed in their offices a loud-speaker system of communication. An imitation inkstand on a desk may he used as a transmitter, and the voice from another part of the building comes by way of a loud-speaker that may be fixed several yards away from the listener.

The adaptation, of this idea to the ordinary telephone service is the problem that has to be solved.