TELEPHONIC MARVELS

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 246, 12 July 1921, Page 9

TELEPHONIC MARVELS

THE WORLD’S LISTENING POST OUTSTRIPPING THE SUN ■ “I have spent the last few days in what an American poet called. "Carty's Hall’" (writes the Washington correspondent of the London "Times"). "It is the largest auditorium in the world, for it embraces the whole of Northern America and vast expanses of the Pacific and the Atlantia oceans, constructed, as it is, of over 25,000,000 miles of telephone wires. "From its listening tower I have heard together the beat of the Pacific eurf and the roar of the Atlantia waves. Phaeton-like, I have also chased and overtaken the sun—a glorious hunt—pursuing it through thousands of miles of darkness, catching its last disappearing rays at Salt Lake City, hurrying past it with incredible speed until the voice of the wireless operator at Santa Catalina, an island in the Pacific, described it to me as shining gloriously far above the horizon. "In Carty’s Hall, 100, I have attended amazing meetings—4ooo of them all told •—composed of men seated in 35 different cities as far apart tis Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington, Jacksonville, Chicago, and San Francisco are. I have heard reports read in New York, motions proposed in San Francisco, seconded in Boston, supported in New Orleans, and finally carried amid cheers reverberating, deafening, and flashing along 75,000 miles of wires from thousands ot throats in the most distant quarter of the United States. "I recJte these experiences, not because they are altogether a novelty in the new world of telephony, but because they illustrate the possibilities implied in Colonel Carty's statement to mo that it is to-day physically —observe he does not say commerdTdlly—practicable to connect London with -Johannesburg and Cape Town, or with Bombay, Calcutta, HongKong, and Peking, sa-that British subjects in South Africa, India, and elsewhere might listen to the King s Speech or to the deliberations of the forthcoming Imperial Conference in London. What is needed toperform this miracle is for the old world to equip itself telewhonically as the United States w equipped to-day. I exclude from the scope of this statement Gbnada and Australia, for none better than Colonel Carty knows the limitations of wireless and deep sea telephony, in both of which he has accomplished notable Perfomances. "Colonel Carty and his staff of 2000 expert assistants, who are constantly en- . gaged in development and research work on tho Bell telephony system, have not attempted to apply their achievement in trans-Atiantio telephony to commercial uses, for the ample reason that the vtner doea not provide facilities for regular conversations by wireloss between America and Europe. The ethereal din across the Atlantic is deafening and almost incessant. As he observes, wireless speech requires a wave length eight to ten times greater than wireless telegraphy, and it has been deemed advisable therefore, in the words of the Communications Conference at Washington, to r«strict its use in international communications to situations and places where wires cannot be employed. "The limitations to the multiple use of wireless telephony were dramatically illustrated during a recent demonstration. When President Harding desired to speak with Havana and Catalina, tho American fleet was engaged in target practice in the Pacific, and it was necessary for Washington to request two aeroplanes flying over the fleet to cease talking in order that our ceremony might proceed. Tho aeroplanes promptly obey-

eci. , The difficulties of long-distance submarine telephony are equally great, though' different from those of wireless telephony. In overcoming these tlie deepsea cable which has been opened between Havana and Key West marks an important advance. The cable was manufactured in Englahd according o American specifications, and is capable of transmitting simultaneously four telegraphic and one telephonic message. At Key West it is equipped with what is technically known as a repeater, the amazing fact that after reaching this repeater the voice of the Havana speaker can be continued with perfect clearness over 5434 miles of land wires to Los Angeles is due to improvements effected in the American system in the lost six "These improvements cannot possibly be described within the limits of a cabled message, for they are of a highly complex, technical nature; but,, briefly, it may bo said that they consist in a greater refinement in the balainp of the lines effected by the removal df the Pupine loading coils, which produce marvellous results in underground wires, but are not so useful in overhead wires, and by increasing the number of repeater stations, which are now established at intervals of 250 miles throughout the entire system."