WIRELESS AMUSEMENT.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 165, 30 December 1926, Page 6

WIRELESS AMUSEMENT.

FOR PEOPLE IN LIGHTHOUSES* The Commonwealth Lighthouse Service recently decided to have wireless telephone sets installed at several of the lighthouses in Bass Utrait, whereby the isolation in which keepers of those lighthouses are placed will be broken down, and the men there will be enabled to communicate with the land and with the remainder of the service (states the Sydney Daily Telegraph).

At the present time communication is maintained between some of the lighthouses and the land by means of short submarine cables and land-line telephony. The expense of laying cables and the limitation of the length " of. cable over which telephonic communication may be conducted has prevented the provision of services to all the lighthouses. As a result the keepers of those posts have hitherto been entirely cut off from telegraphic communication with the land.

Wireless telephony is to solve thedifficulty, and it is proposed shortly to connect the lighthouses at Cliffy Island and Deal Island, Bass Strait, with the mainland by this method of communication.

A wireless telephone transmitter and receiver will be installed in each of these lighthouses, and a third unit will be provided at the lighthouse at Wilson’s Promontory, which also has a land-line service. Thus both the Cliffy and Deal lighthouses will be able to communicate with the mainland through the Wilson’s Promontory lighthouse. The distances to Cliffy Island and Deal Island from Wilson’s. Promontory are respectively 17 and 49 miles.

The necessary equipment is of Aus-* tralian design and manufacture, and will be similar to the wireless telephone equipment which has recently been used with great success on the trawlers operating between Sydney and the south coast of New South. Wales. Each transmitter will" have a power unit of 250 -watts, and the current necessary to operate it will be produced by a petrol-driven generating plant. The wireless telephone sets are in Melbourne, and will be taken to the lighthouses in the next steamer to sail.

For some time wireless telephony has been utilised in lighthouse work in Great Britain, but this is the first attempt in Australia to utilise it in this connection.