PIONEER WORK OF BRITISH ENGINEERS

Putaruru Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1238, 10 July 1947, Page 3

PIONEER WORK OF BRITISH ENGINEERS

DISCOVERY OF WIRELESS Marvel Of Modern Science Haw that marvel of modem science, wireless telegraphy, was discovered (was told at a dinner at tße Guildhall, London, on April 21 in,-celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of .the first demonstration. Lord Listowel, the retiring Post-master-General, who presided, proposed the toast of “the memory of Signor Marconi and Sir William Preece” (engineer-in-chief of the British Post Office, 1892-99). He referred to the inestimable value of wireless as a means of bringing the peoples of the world to a better understanding. Dealing with the discovery and development of wireless communication, Lord Listowel recalled a number of early wireless experiences by post office engineers. In 1869 he said, a select committee -of the House of Commons was assured by a witness —chief engineer- of a private telegraph company—that a system of telegraphyrising no poles or wires was utterly impossible. Yet in 1882 W. H. Preece (later Sir William Preece), when the cable linking the Isle of Wight with the mainland broke, successfully used the sea to maintain telegraphic communications. In 1884, in examination of faulty telephone (circuits in Gray’s Inn Read, ILondon, it was found that messages transmitted along gut fa percha insulated telegraph wires, carried in iron tubes beneath the road, were toeing read on telephone circuits carried on roof poles more than 80 feet above the ground. To discover to what distance circuits could toa separated from each other before those inductive influences ceased, Preece made a sories of experiments on the Town Moor at Nowc.astle-on-Tyne in 1885, and in the following year on the banks of the Severn. After mere experiments the Engineering Department of the Post Office set u,p a permanent installation in 1899 which gave telephonic ■communication between Anglesey and 111 i Skerries lighthouse, a distance of three miles. The first commercial wireless induction circuit was established ir March, 1895, when the cable connacting the Island of Mull with the mainland near Oban was damagec and, pending the arrival of a cable ship, pos-t office engineers set uj wireless te-lngraph communications using an existing overhead wiri along the coast of the island fo: one circuit and a gutta percha in sulated wire laid on the ground o the mainland. Many telegrams were thus tran-s mitted before the cable was re paired.