WIRELESS TELEPHONY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2300, 9 July 1921, Page 4

WIRELESS TELEPHONY.

Recently two representatives of the London Times, the one at Landvoort, in Holland, the other at Southwold, held a conversation of 50 minutes by wireless telephony across 125 miles of the North Sea. The station in Holland is only temporary, that at the English end is fully equpped with telephone room, power station, and wireless installation. Commenting on the sitcecof Mii- experiment, the Times says:—Wireless telephony can now he described as a practical achievement, capable of being used by the general public.- Tt cannot yet lie said, however, (lint the new system is ready to displace the old. The aether, if we may still use that term for the mysterious vehicle of eleclric waves, is continuous through and about our globe. Transmitters and receivers, if powerful enough, in any part of (lie world, arc linked directiy with all other transmitters and receivers. The wave length* necessary for the' tran.-mission of human speech are from eight to ten times the length of those required for wireless telegraphy, and are .Hill an easy prey to “tapping” or to wilful interference. Secret communications may stiii have to he sent over cables. But it is to he remembered that there are definite limits to cables. In the first place, they are very costly, especially when they have to he protected from sea water. On land, if “repeaters” are inserted at distances of about 250 miles, their range is almost indefinite. But the range of practical telephony by submarine cable is roughly 100 miles, and repeaters cannot he placed on the ocean floors, The immediate opportunity for wireless telephony is over the shorter stretches of ocean, where the cost of laying a cube is too great. Its goal must be to traverse the great oceans, to link Europe with .America. South Africa with Australia. Fortunately, the cost of experimental stations is insignificant in comparison with the reward of success.

Every man, it has been said, could write one book out of the story of his life. Mr Samuel Liles’ would be a romance stranger than fiction. lie was a seaman in the navy when lie was married to his wife Emily in 1890. One day in 1895 he returned from a voyage and found his wife expecting fo become a mother. There was a quarrel, and she left him. Fie could not find her, but later heard that she was dead, and believing this to be true, he married a woman named Fisher, and lived with her till she died in 1912. They had nine children. He then married Blanche Humphries, and in 1918 tried to get a divorce from.her on the grounds of her conduct. But she set up the defence that he was not legally married, on the ground that his first, wife was living, and the Emily Liles whom he had married over 18 years before appeared in Court. Accordingly, Blanche Humphries was granted an annulment of her marriage. A further chapter was added when, on Ihe grounds of her misconduct, Liles was granted a decree nisi against his first wife Emily.