WORLD TELEPHONY.

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18167, 4 November 1930, Page 10

WORLD TELEPHONY.

LONDON THE SWITCHBOARD (By J. S. Bainbridge, M.Sc., in Overseas.) Puck, in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” boastfully claimed that he would “put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes” —a feat which Shakespeare knew to be impossible, and, therefore, a proper quality to ascribe to a fairy. A few days after landing in Australia, however, Miss Amy Johnson, the young and brilliantly successful England to Australia air-woman, was almost instantaneously connected to her family at Hull (Yorkshire) by telephone, and Easily Outdistanced Puck. It is true that a regular telephone service between England and Australia was only inaugurated by the Prime Minister on April 30 last, so .that if Miss Johnson had carried out her flight a few weeks earlier she could not have used it, but that detail has no bearing on the subject of this article, which is to show how rapidly and effectively London is becoming the switchboard of the world. The postal telephone service is usually grouped by music-hall comcdinns with mothers-in-law and a few other stock and time-honoured jokes but it is very far from deserv- | ing any of the scorn which it receives. The Post Offlce engineers might, indeed, be excused if they boasted proudly of their achievements, instead of hiding their light more or less under a b'ushel. A few Weeks before the opening of the England to Australia service a new telephone service to the Vatican State, ■’ l via Rome, was opened, and the Isle of Man was linked by ’phone to the mainland. So recently as 1922 the • Only Telephonic Communication* Abroad which could be made were with Paris and Brussels —and even these services were somewhat uncertain but there is now a regular service • with Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the Vatican State, and the United States; and it is hoped that services will soon be in operation to the Channel Isles, South Africa, India and New Zealand, Even without these projected services, however, the 2,000,000 telephons users in Great Britain can talk to nearly 90 per cent, of the 33,000,000 owners of telephones who are scattered throughout the world. .The time when communication with the remaining 10 per cent, will be ’"possible depends to some extent on ' the efficiency and development of the telephone systems of Turkey and other countries, and the Postal authorities are at present' concentrat- , ing on the development of a 100 per cent. Dominion and Imperial telephone communication, although their - ultimate object is, naturally, to link up the whole world by ’phone. The user of a telephone in any of 5 the countries mentioned may com- ■■ municate with a subscriber in any j other country, but if the lines of communication were filled in on a . map it would be seen that in almost .every case they would

Pass Through London. Two examples will make this clear, and at the same time serve to emphasise the work which Yhe telephone authorities are doing in establishing personal contact with all parts of the world, and, as it were, abolishing frontiers and national parochialism. A call was recently put through from Stockholm to New Jersey, U.S.A. The call went via Berlin, Amsterdam, London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, back to New York, and then to New Jersey; and according to reports was heard distinctly at every point. The second example is of interest in showing the almost fantastm journey which one's voice may take. So far as I know this particular call has not yet been put through, but let us suppose a business man in Santiago, South America, wished to talk to someone in Ceuta, Africa. His voice would first speed over the wires which cross the Andes to Buenos Aires, then it would be transmitted to Netcong. by radio, and from there It would continue its journey by wire to New York. Another wire would then take it to the wireless station at Rocky Point, Long Island, from which it would travel by radio to Cupar in Scotland. Thence its journey would be more prosaic; . first by wire to London, then submarine cable to Boulogne, by wire through Paris, Madrid and Algeciras, another submarine cable under the Straits of Gibraltar, and so finally to its destination.

The service between London and Australia, which may of course be only a

Link In a Longer Chain, is of particular interest because the radio “jump” which it includes is twice the length of any previously in operation. From London the voice of a subscriber goes to Rugby (85 miles) by wire. It then goes by wireless to La Perouse, near Sydney, a distance of 11,000 miles, and is finally sent from Sydney by wire to the listener somewhere in Australia. The longest radio link previously in operation is that between Buenos Aires v, and Netcong, New Jersey (U.S.A.), a distance of 5300 miles, and this has only been working since April 3. The cost of a talk to Australia Is £4O, but the price will doubtless be reduced as soon as possible. A threeminute call from London to New York cost £ls when the service was inaugurated just over a year ago, but it has since been reduced to £9, and there seems

Every Prospect of It Being Reduced

to half this figure Within the next twelve months. Even at £9 for three minutes the trans-Atlantic service is now regarded as indispensable by a large number of business people, and although four-speech channels are now in use against the original single-speech channel the demand is often so great that it cannot be. met. At present about one thousand'telephone calls cross the Atlantic every day, and the completion of a new transatlantic cable for telephony, which is expected by 1932, is.eagerly awaited.

This linking together of the world by- ’phone is only one of the telephonic improvements which are taking place and in th’e development of which our own post offlce engineers are playing a very active part. It is now possible, for example, to telephone to ships at sea, and quite soon it will be possible to telephone to anyone who is a passenger on a main-line express train. A further

development which has great possibilities is a tele-printer, the first exchange for which—in the London area —is expected to be in operation about the end of the year. When this is working two subscribers will be able to

Telegraph Typewritten Messages

to each other, the instrument itself typing out the message received. It will be possible to forward telegrams for despatch, and to receive incoming telegrams directly, so that the innovation must be a great time-saver. Lord Birkenhead and many other writers have recently published accounts of what they consider the world may be like in 2030 and other dates from fifty to a hundred years ahead, but the reality seems likely to outstrip even the wildest flights of imagination.