SAFETY IN SHIPS

Shannon News, 6 December 1927, Page 2

SAFETY IN SHIPS

NEW DISTRESS ALARM. An intei-esting new safety device for use on ships has been produced by Marconi’s Wireless Telegraph Company. It is an automatic alarm which responds to distress sig-nals and will call an operator to the wireless equipment to take messages from ships in distress without the need of continuous watch being kept. On a great many of the smaller vessels fitted

with wireless only one operator is carried, and consequently the watch each day lasts only eight hours, and is largely occupied by the transmission and receipt of messages. This means that little time is available for general Lsicning, in which most distress signals are heai’d. The new distress alarm is fitted to the ordinary ship’s receiver and it -is left attached to the receiver when the operator is not on duty. If a distress signal is sent by any other vessel within range, the alarm rings hells which are placed on the bridge, in tlxe cap-

tain’s cabin, in the wireless operatoi-’s cabin, and at any other desired place on the ship. The operator cait then hurry to the receiver to take particulars of th e distress call. The principle on which the alarm works is simple, and something akin to the general principle of tuning on which all receivei’s depend for their selectivity. -The ship sending out a distress call simply sends a series of dashes of a length, and with spaces between them such as are never heal’d in the ordinary signalling. An automatic machine will he used to do this. The alarm

equipment attached to the receivers is so adjusted that it will not respond to ordinary signals, but it immediately operates when the series of dashes preceding a distress signal is impressed on it. In practice a standard system for ti'ansmitting the signals will be used and all receivers, of course, will conform to this standard. Once summoned to the receiver by the alarm, th e operator takes the distress message in tlxe ordinary way.