WORLD-WIDE SERVICE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19541, 30 March 1926, Page 4

WORLD-WIDE SERVICE

TELEGRAMS TO SHIPS AT SEA VALUE OF THE RUGBY STATION. A new long-distance wireless service to ships at sea was started bv the British Post Office in the earlr hours of ■January 31. The opening of the now wireless station at Rugby has greatly extended the radius of the Post Office wireless activity; it has now become world wide. The first message sent in the new service was to a ship at Port Arthur, and other messages were Io ships far across tho Atlantic, in tho Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and south of South Africa. The messages, though transmitted through the Rugby Station, are actually despatched from the Central Telo- ; graph Office in London. They are ! punched beforehand and the perforated tape is passed through the telegraphic machine which sends the messages over the land line to Rugby. The object of this is not speed, but the perfect formation of each letter, the messages being sent at a low speed to enable them to be road by any operator. By the side of the transmitting apparatus in the '■Central Telegraph Office is a loud I speaker, through which the re-transmis-sion by wireless from Rugby is heard, and the operator is able to chccX the dearness of the wireloss reproduction of the message. Though it is first carried to Rugby by land line and returned by wireloss, no interval that anv existing appliance can detect takes place between the click of the key in London and the reception of the wireless reproduction from Rugby. The new service being designed for communications to ships at long dis* tance, no replies can be received. They are sent out twice daily at 12.55 a.m. and 12.55 p.m., and to ensure certainty of reception they are all repeated in the next period following the first transmission. Tho messages to ships follow immediately after the broadcasting of the British news bulletin, and then can be received by all ships fitted with continuous wave receiving apparatus. A similar service was formerly worked from the Oxford station, but the range was limited to 3000 miles. The new service will, it is believed, give communication with ship at any point on the high seas, however remote.