TELEVISION ACROSS ATLANTIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 3, 5 January 1939, Page 8

TELEVISION ACROSS ATLANTIC

Television, particularly in Britain, has made great progress in recent years towards practical accomplishment, but the reception, reported today by an Official Wireless message, in America of pictures transmitted from Alexandra Palace, London, is something quite out of the ordinary. No doubt, as experts are inclined to regard it, according to the message, the phenomenal reception across the wide Atlantic was in the nature of a freak, due to exceptional atmospheric conditions. Yet the fact that it has relually happened does constitute an important landmark.in the development of a remarkable process. It is from such "freaks" that sometimes spring permanent discoveries

leading to the establishment of regular services. There is an enormous difference in the normal range —30 miles—for the effective reception of televised pictures and this new record, chance though it may be at the moment; of a distance over a hundred times as great. Readers of Mr. H. G. Wells's fantasia of the future, "The Sleeper Awakes," may recall that the platform address of "The Sleeper" in London was televised simultaneously all over the world, including America, though the television was by wires and not without them, for the story was written forty years ago when wireless was much more of an experiment than television is today. Thus it may come about long before 2000 A.D., the age of "The Sleeper," that people throughout the Empire and the world may not only listen in to'princes and presidents and premiers and dictators —as they do nowI—but1 —but sec them too.