PROGRESS OF TEEVISION

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVI, Issue 144, 29 August 1938, Page 2

PROGRESS OF TEEVISION

’J'ECHNICALLY, the problems of

television—the seeing by scientific devices, of moving objects at a distance beyond the limits of ordinary human vision—appeared from the start so difficult as to baffle all the skill of the inventor and the equipment of modern science. Yet the prospective rewards of success and the fascinating nature of the problem itself have kept the inventor at work through disappointments and failures until a sufficient measure of success was achieved to warrant the British Broadcasting Corporation’s endeavor to establish a regular service. This has now been in operation in London fpr some time, and the results were surveyed by the deputy-director-gen-eral of the 8.8. C. (Mr C. G. Graves) in a broadcast last week, summarised in an Official Wireless message. It had been found, he said, that the range of transmission was greater than was expected, and although a 30-mile radius was regarded as the service area of the London station, many private viewers up to and over a hundred miles away were receiving programmes regularly and well. In television, Britain, with its established home service, had a two-year lead, he said, on any other country. America and other countries were impressed by what had been done in England in creating a great national industry. There is, of course, very much still to be done, but it is something, for instance, to be able to see the cricket test at the Oval on television sets at the Olympia Radio Exhibition some miles away. On kindred lines the transmission of photographs, documents, and printed matter by radio over much greater distances and their rapid reproduction in facsimile is another useful achievement of science in regular use. There is also the possibility, recently foreshadowed, that television may be used to detect the approach of aircraft and thus assist in the defence of cities against aerial attack. This possible application is being closely examined in Britain and America to-day. Altogether, television shows great promise of progress in the service of man.