MARVELLOUS WIRELESS

Waipawa Mail, Volume XLVI, Issue 148, 11 September 1925, Page 2 (Supplement)

MARVELLOUS WIRELESS

SAILOR CALLS UP MOTHER IN SANTA MONICA WONDERS OF A WELLINGTON STATION AVIATOR ABOVE NORTH MAGNETIC POLE HEARD

Says the Wellington correspondent of the Manawatu Times:— Away up on the 34th parallel on the coast of California lies Santa Monica —a semi-tropical watering place near Los Angeles. A young wireless operator, not Jong out of his teens, and now in one of the United States battleships, has his home there. On the Miramar Peninsular at Wellington, perched on a hillside, is a pleasant suburban residence with two masts and connecting wires, with strangc-looking loops in the middle indicating a wireless plant or more than ordinary amateur pretensions. The young wireless operator on the warship had noted this station and a day or so after his arrival, he called on the owner and said he would like to call up his mother in Santa Monica. Permission was readily -given. Now Wanta Monica, at a rough guess, is about seven thousand miles away from Wellington. The call was made and in wireless language the young operator “got back right away." The answering “tictack came from the young man’s sister who is an expert operator. “I know its you, Ed," she replied. “I know your fist. ’ ’ In one way, reading morse is very much like reading handwriting. If you are used to it, you can pick it without a moment’s hesitation. Immediately the brother and sister began to “talk" to each other across the seven thousand miles of ocean that separated them. Ed was able to tell the old folks at home that he was having a wonderful trip and that he was bringing home some lovely “steamer rugs," as they call them in the .States, which he had bought in New Zealand. These rug 3, he added, were the best in the world. Then the two began to talk about intimate family affairs. It was a strange coincidence that the New Zealand wireless man had previously “talked" with this very American before he had joined the Fleet and, when, like himself, lie was an amateur wireless operator. This present signalling was done on a wave length of 38 metres and to a layman a strange thing about it is that while the station is talking to America on this wave, no one in New Zealand can hear it, at least in the daytime, when one must be 800 or 1000 miles away to pick up the signals. People in New York and Boston can hear it quite loudly, but so far as the operators at Dunedin or Christchurch or Day’s Bay, just across the harbour, are concerned, it is dumb and yet at night it can be heard on a 38 metres wave. On a 20 metres wave, which is much shorter, the operator can communicate with stations 12,000 miles away at night. Once he “had a yarn" with a fellow in Essex, England. With a given power, one can communicate ten times as far by morse as by telephone, but who shall say that before many years have passed, the New Zealander will not be able actually to talk to the explorer in his ship at the North Pole? Indeed, in this quiet suburban home at Miramar, from which the American sailor called up his sister, the Wellington man once heard an operator in an aeroplane calling up the ship “Peary," from which he had ascended in the Arctic regions. This ship is on a scientific expedition in the Arctic and the airman was saying that his magnetic compass was absolutely useless where he then was. He must have been almost, or actually above, the magnetic pole. It is surely one of the marvels of modern science that the signals from a man flying above the North Magnetic Pole should be heard in New Zealand and it sets one wondering what will be possible to the next generation. Already the Miramar man has eomunicated with 87 people in the United States, 5 in Canada, T in England, 4 in Italy, 2 in Argentina, Chile and France, and 1 each in Brazil. Cuba, Porto Rico, Bermuda and Bwcden.