WIRELESS TELLPHONY.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 June 1919, Page 4

WIRELESS TELLPHONY.

j FROM AUSTRALIA TO LONDON ’ Sydney, June 2. ' Had any man twenty years ago ■ seriously suggested the possibility i of a person sitting in his home in Sydney or Wellington, and talking with his friends in London, without the use of a telephone wire or other visible connexion, he would have been promptly placed with those labelled mentally deficient. Yet, here are the words of Mr E. T. Fisk, president of the Wireless Institute of New South Wales: — “ I feel confident that the time is not far distant when we in Australia shall speak directly by wireless telef phone with our friends and relatives i in England, and eventually we shall j be able to sit in our office chairs and : I speak into the ordinary telephone ! which, through exchanges and relay ; apparatus, will operate a great wireI less station powerful enough to carry the voice waves to a similar station 1 in England, which again, through relays and exchanges, will pass it into the ordinary telephone instru--1 rnent in our friends’ offices in London.

“ Besides these great undertakings, which will call for huge investment aud special organisations, there are the less spectacular but equally valuable possibilities of communication with ships at sea, with aircraft, with moving trains, and with isolated places iulaud. Our unexplored and inaccessible regions will be brought as close as Sydney is to Melbourne.” Mr Fisk is only one of thousands in this country who have been greatly impressed with the enormous possibilities of the wireless, and the aeroplane in this great laud of emptiness aud distance. The difficulties of communicaaion over wide, waterless wastes have done much to retard the development of inland Australia. The wastes are waterless apd almost barren—yet, contrary to the general belief, they are not desert. Under an intelligent system .of irrigation aud dry farming, combined with a proper use of the limitless supply of artesian water, inland Australia can be made fruitful. It is believed that the aeroplane and wireless will be greater factors in this development than in any other part of the world