TELEPHONY.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 November 1920, Page 4

TELEPHONY.

COMMUNICATION BY WIRELESS. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, Nov. 15 Mr E. A. Shrimpton, chief telegraph engineer of the Post and Telegraph Department, who has been in the United Kingdom since August 13, left Liverpool for New York on November 5. During his stay in the OK Country M. Shrimpton has been busily engaged in investigating all matters relating to telegraph and telephone administration and operating. The latest advances in wireless telegraphy and telephony have been carefully examined, and Mr Shrimpton,’ speaking from the Marconi Company’s works at Chelmsford, England, was on one occasion in telephonic communication with Mr Marconi, who at the time was about 1000 miles away in a yacht specially equipped with wireless telephony apparatus. Mr Shrimpton is convinced that wireless telephony will play an important part in the Pacific in the near future, as it is specially suited for linking up places such as lighthouses, isolated islands, etc, with civilisation.

The question of linking up the North and South Islands by a telephone cable laid across Cook Strait also received consideration, but until tenders are called it cannot be known whether the cost of the work would at' present be justified, on account of the high prices ruling for all raif materials that enter into its coirfposition.

To overcome the delay that is being experienced in connection with the supply of the Murray printing telegraph apparatus that has been under order fsome years past, Mr Shrimpton has been able to arrange for certain supplementary parts necessary to complete a portion of the equipment, and it is expected that before many months it will be possible to bring a section of this apparatus into use on one of the most congested main telegraph- circuits. It will not, however, be possible to obtain the whole of the equipment until some months later.

Mr Shrimpton has been making exhaustive inquiries into recent developments, whereby tTie capacity of overloaded telephone toll lines can be increased by the application of certain principles that are daily in operation in connection with wireless telegraphy. JK-is bas an important bearing upon telephone toll lines' in this country find if developments prove to have reached a practical stage the erection of many hundreds of miles of costly toll circuits will he obviated.