TELEGRAPHS AND TELEPHONES

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 104, 27 January 1920, Page 8

TELEGRAPHS AND TELEPHONES

NEW ZEALAND AHEAD

MR. E. A. SHRIMPTON RETURNS FROM

AUSTRALIA

Mr. E. A. Shrimplon, Chief Telegraph Engineer, who lias returned from a busi 7 ness trip to Australia, visited Sydney, Melbourne, and 'Adelaide, ami some of the places in between. He left the express at Albury, and went into the country for a distance of 100 miles or so by motor, en route to Melbourne. The country then was burnt up. There was not a blade of grass- as far as tho eye could see, and consequently the country was quite desolate and bare of any l.ving thing, Ho then went on to Melbourne and Adelaide, u matter of eight days ab-enco, and returning to the Albury district, found that some fairy hand had changed the whole aspect of the country. The good rains had fallen in the meantime, and in every direction the eye rested on endless ni'les of the greenest grass inaginable, What a country of contests, of extremes! New South Wales is bigger than New Zealand, yet there was only one town with more than ICOO telephone subscribers outside Sydney— that was Newcastle. The telephone authorities in Sydney were very surprised to find out how many towns there were in Now Zealand with over 1000 telephone subscribers. It showed how the population of New South Wales was concentrated in Sydney. There the telephone system was hardly what it might be. It was part Strowger and part manual at present, but owing to the telephone being regarded there more as a luxury than a necessity, there was not. the same pro "less as one would expect to find in a fi-eut centre like Sydney. Melbourne was better, but there it was scarcely comparnbla to the service given in New Zealand. Nor were they so tar ahead on the telegraphic side. For instance, there was not a quadruplex working in the whole of Australia, whereas we had twentyfour in the Wellington office alone. They were still using tho Wheatstone automatic, which had been discarded in New Zealand some time ago. This month, or early next month, there should arrive in New Zealand some Murray sets—the very latest telegraphic machine—by which tho operator types the message something akin to a typewriter keyboard, which action x not only sends the message over the wire to Auckland, or Dunedin, but prints it at the other end. Australia aha has some Murrays on order, but they would be in operation first in New Zealand. Mr. Shrimpton ra.ido some inquiries into the operations of wireless telegraphy. In Sydney, private persons wore allowed to receive, but not to soml, which he did not think was at all advisable. To allow overvone and anyone to receive was tantamount to allowing anyone the privilege of tapping the telephone or telegraph wires, which was not allowed. Surprise was expressed, in Melbourne ■at New Zealand's radius of wireless activity. Onlv those actually/concerned in the wireless work appeared to bo aware that New Zealand was tho radial centre of a number of "island stations in .the Pacific, inotablv stations at tho Chathams, Parotoiim, Tahiti/Fiji. 1 Apia (Samoa), and now Tonga. Another feature in which the services of Australia differ is the special'sation that the Commonwealth favours. The telephone expert, for example.; knows little or .nothing about the telegraph -department, and reither of them is concerned to any extent with wireless. In New Zealand the engineers have to undergo a pretty stiff examination, which includes all threo branches of activity.