WIRELESS TELEPHONY

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160739, 27 August 1920, Page 10

WIRELESS TELEPHONY

FIRST NEWS MESSAGES. A WONDERFUL ACHIEVEMENT. LONDON, June 20. A new era in the process of transmission of news for publication has iust been successfully inaugurated. For the first time in British journalism a reporter baa telephoned! direct to the editorial office messages relating events of the day. These, sent from ford, Essex, were picked up on the Daily Mail wireless receiving set the first to be permanently installed in any London newspaper office. Ln view of the important bearing of the _ experiment on the future transmission of news, many representative men in journalism attended. They included Lord Atholstan (owner of tho Montreal Star), Mr S. Carey Clements (manager'of Router’s), Lid.),' Mr G. B. Hodgson (general manager of the Press Association), Mr E. G-. Tillycr (engineer to the Exchange Telegraph Company, Ltd) and Sir Campbell Stuart. Enthusiasts in many part of the country “listeued-in” and clearly hoard tho messages spoken by Mr W. Pollock, a Daily Mail reporter. A number ot them, in sending their congratulations', stated that tho words thus spoken into space were more distinct than those heard over an ordinary telephone. Messages were heard at Morecambc (233 miles), Liverpool ' (200 miles) and at Devonport (230 miles). HELLO! HELLO ! The Postmaster-General’s authorisutioTi limited tho experiment to 20 minutes. Precisely . at 3.35 p.m., after five minutes’ tuning of instruments, tho voice of Mr W. Pollock was distinctly heard calling: “Hello! Hello! Hello! Daily Mail!” For .about the next 15 minutes ho continued his message, which was taken down in shorthand by two reporters. A song lasting two minutes concluded the test. '‘ATMOSPHERICS.” "Tt was not the best of days for an experiment, all tho experts present emphasising the amount of “atmospherics”—that is, disturbances in the air which render ■■jlcar speech rather more difficult than usual. Tho messages wore repeated 'and checked during the second sending. One of the messages was an account of an aeroplane test, sent as follows: ■‘lnteresting experiments in receiving a-aucnrrlt-iKg smte 1 phono messages between an aeroplane in flight and a ground station wore carried out here (Chelmsford) to-day before members of the London Chamber ' of Comm (wound the Chartered' Institute, of Secretaries . Die machine, a DJI.6, bslong. mg to the Marconi Company, flow from Croydon, and, speaking on a SOO-motrea wave-length, it was picked up when ever the Thames. Tho operator reported misty conditions and frequently asked for position. While it was out of sight of Chelmsford I spoke to the machine, asking for the name of the pilot. Twice the message was ‘jammed’ by local interference, but the third time proved successful, and back came the reply ‘Lieutenant Lovell, late of the Royal Air Force. 1 Tho visitors were greatly impressed by tho test. Mr IT. 1.. Symonds, deputy-chairman. of tho Council of tho London Chamber of Commerce, said every business man should soon be able to talk to various parts of the world by wireless, and that too fatherly Governmental care must not be permitted.” Others of a more prosaic nature included a local police court case. WIRELESS TELEPHONY NOT TELEGRAPHY. The. Daily Mail test was not of wireless telegraphy, but of wireless telephony, which is only in its infancy in a commercial sense. The best brains of research are now devoted) to sol vine its many problems. It is well-known among wireless engineers that wo arc on tho eve of very important developments, and that, in tho near future, wireless telephone talks between London and New York, Paris and other capitals, and between land and liners at sea will bo possible. Already experimental talks have been held between this country and the American continent. At tho moment, science is waiting for the removal, of legislative fetters. The imagination of everybody is stirred by the roman os of wireless telephony. How is the,' voice of a man carried through space without any visible link into a room at tho top of an office in London? SECRET OF WIRELESS. It is explain ‘-d that if you put two toy boats m a bath, one at each end, and ro s one of them, the waves so produced will travel through the medium of the water and rock the other boat. There you have the secret of wireleas inter-communication, except that, in the place of boats, you have electrical instruments sending out electric waves, and in place of water yon have the ether through which the electric waves travel, and “rock,” so to speak, another electrical instrument at the receiving station. These electric waves leave tho aerial at the sending station, and radiate through the ether at 386,000 miles a second, or practically instantaneously. Nothing can stop them. They go through or over buildings or any other subjects in their track. Just ae the

electric current employed at the sendin!j station produces electric waves in tlie aerial and sends them out broadcast, so_ those same electric waves, on being picked up by a receiving aerial reproduce in the instruments there the same electric current that gave them birth. In wireless telephony, when you speak into tho transmitter,' the sound waves of your voice produce certain variations in the electric current. The wireless waves repeat these variations in tho current at the receiving station, and the currant is reconverted by the telephone received into tho sound waves of your voice. So the listener hears yon.