RADIANA

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 47, 18 May 1927, Page 10

RADIANA

BY “THE BUZZER” In radio matters, as in other things, we are apt to be smothered by the commonplace. The miracles of one age become the trivial every-day occurrences of the next. In the contemplation of details we often lose sight of the significance of the whole. In fact, to put it briefly, we cannot see the wood for the trees. * * * When a great scientific invention dawns upon the world, it is at first regarded almost with awe. but when use makes one familiar with it the wonder ceases—it has entered the region of the Commonplace. I often feel, in reading the broadcasting columns in the Press, that excess of detail is limiting one’s appreciation of that wonderful art which is at present in its infant stages, but which is destined to an almost unimaginable future.

Think of what has been accomplished already. The power to draw intelligible sounds from the formless ether, that infinitely attenuated fluid which pervades all space. What a triumph it is! In Shakespeare’s

“Winter’s Tale” the men on the Enchanted Island heard sounds not made by human lips or instruments—music by invisible performers. That charming fanev of Shakespeare has become the reality of to-day. PLACE FOR IMAGINATION We must not disparage the part played by imagination in the realm of discovery. The art of flying was forecasted by the ancient Greeks in their fable of Daedalus, who made wings for himself and his son Icarus, while the power of television and (if one may invent a similar hybrid word) the power of telaudition were hinted at in many a fairy tale of olden days. The latter of these, that is the power of long-distance hearing, has become an accomplished fact, as every owner of a wireless set knows, and the former, the power of long-distance vision, is on the very verge of realisation. * • » What T would like to impress upon my readers is that it may lie with any one of them, either by lucky chance or patient experimenting, to find the clue to the perfection of television, or at least to the elimination of those many interferences which at present somewhat spoil aerial reception. LOOKING BACKWARD Over 40 years ago Richard Bellamy, in his hook “Looking Backward,” projected himself, as it were, into the future, and then took a glance behind. One of the powers which he imagined to have been acquired by the advanced race which he described was this very power of receiving music from a distance by means of an ordinary telegraph wire. He had not even got the length of suggesting reception from the air. FUTURE OF TELEVISION It is interesting to try and realise what successful television would mean. A man has left England, let us suppose, and emigrated to New Zealand. Tie has not seen his mother or his sister for 20 years. It will undoubtedly be possible, and that before long, for such a man to see his mother or his sister on a screen as clearly as in a moving picture, and also possible for him at the same time to hear her voice. A perfect synchronising of the picture projection and of the words uttered when the picture was taken is all that is required. In this sense space has been annihilated, and. as far as sight and hearing are concerned, one can be here, there, and everywhere at the same instant. VARYING VIEWS

Now, some people look upon this power with horror. They say that privacy no longer exists, that we are at the mercy of any or every talker who gets an opportunity to fling his words into the ether. Indeed, a newspaper controversy has already arisen as to whether Mr. Prentice was justified in broadcasting his views on Chinese missions. This is where the necessity for greater selective power comes in. At present it is crude. It takes a fairly wide difference of wave length to prevent interference of one broadcasting station with another. This fact was illustrated by the recent complaints in regard to the spacing of the New Zealand wave lengths. In time, however, it may be possible to achieve much finer differentiation. The ideal condition would be where a listener-in could “hook on” to any sending station he liked, and completely exclude the others. JOHN L. BAIRD

Anyone who despairs of making a new discovery in because he is hampered by poor equipment should remember that of our most remarkable inventions have been due to men working in poverty and so!itude at their experiments. Crompton, the inventor of the spinning mule, sticks in an attic, and the man who has brought television to the vethreshold of peifection had countless difficulties to overco ne. Here is a short sketch of his life.

SEEKING PERFECT TELEVISION Television is still in the experimental stage, but when the credit for this remarkable invention is finally apportioned a large share of it must go to John L. Baird. This young Scotsman, working always towards the possibility of showing on a screen what is happening hundreds, or thousands of miles away, has achieved remarkable results in spite of handicaps sufficient to daunt most men.

As is so often the case with young inventors Baird began his work in poverty, with scarcely more than a sei of carpenter's tools, a few vacuum tubes and electromagnets, and had to make everything he needed with his

own hands. In 1923 he went to London with the germ of his invention in his mind and lived in two cheap rooms in Soho. There he began a long and lonely grind, unable to afford the shining brass and exquisite precision of the instrument maker, and contenting himself with bicycle sprockets, tins, cardboard discs, and bullseye lenses tied together when necessary with string and sealing-wax.

There were three years of this sort of thing, three gruelling years that, brought him finally within sight of success. In January, 1925, he was able to demonstrate to members of the Royal Institution, and on that afternoon his poverty ended.

In at sense, he is already a historical personage. In the collection of early telegraph, telephone and radio apparatus of the Great Science Museum of South Kensington his first television transmitter has taken its place—but without its precious light-sensitive cell. That primitive machine typifies Baird and his hard struggle with poverty. The man himself seems incarnate in its wheels and tubes. A mechanic, unaware of its historic significance, would laugh at it. And yet this collection of tins, sealing wax, jumbled wires and crazily mounted shafts was the first reasonably successful invention of its kind in the world: the first apparatus that ever sent the vision of a human face through space.

CURRENT NOTES Mr. D. L. Button, of Canterbury College, Christchurch, while listeningin at six o’clock on Friday morning, claims to have heard an experimental transmission from Findlioven, Holland. Mr. Button was using a 30.2 metres wave-length. He states that the call sign given was BB JJ. The transmission, which consisted of abotit 15 gramophone records, was at good phone strength on two pairs of phones with detector and two stages of low frequency without earth. There was no fading. * * * Broadcasting has brought plenty of forgotten musical instruments into prominence, and has helped to popularise the development of a host of new ones, and according to the radio impresarios the process will contimie just as long as musical tools which register through the microphone with new tonal qualities can be discovered or created.

Before the advent of broadcasting few people had heard of the celeste, although it had always been a part of every full symphony orchestra. The instrument consists of a number of

steel plates which are played by being struck with small hammers, a description which sounds considerably less melodious than the sweet tones which the celeste produces in broadcasting. To-day, the instrument is being used by many popular orchestras in their concerts over the air.

The xylophone, the marimba, and the cymbalum, all implements similar in construction to the celeste, have also been brought to fame largely by radio, and the vibraphone, which produces its tones from metal tubes rather than from strings or discs, has been designed especially for broadcasting purposes.

In the same class is the Hawaiian guitar, with its plaintive, appealing tones produced by sliding a steel bar along the strings with the left hand while they are being strummed with the right. It was responsible for the great vogue of Hawaiian music in America some eight or ten years ago, but it has required the aid of the microphone to revive its popularity.

At the present time no radio enthusiast who prefers “quality” when listening to broadcast will deny that truthful reproduction can rarely be obtained from stations other than the local one. Even with the most expensive receiving sets, including superheterodynes, what happens, as a rule, when a distant station is tuned in? First, there is the eternal nuisance created by Morse transmissions which come spurting through at nearly every position of the dials to which distant stations are tuned. During nights of fog Morse signals are more numerous and powerful than is usual in clear weather, and it is well-nigh impossible to tune in broadcasts without interference. We must believe, then, that radio is still very niLich in its infancy.

Engineers at station 20L, London, have built a special room which they call the “echo room.” It has no draperies nor any objects likely to act as impediments to the natural echo.

A loud-speaker designed to give as perfect reproduction as possible is located in this room, and a microphone re-collects the transmission which is conducted back to the control room to join the original output from the studio. The artificial echo is imposed *on dance music, orchestral work, octets, ballad concerts, and opera, but never on speech. It is possible to produce almost any desired effect by changing the number or positions of the amplifiers and microphones. * * * ESSENTIALS TO A GOOD SET As a spur to the so-called experimenter, and a warning to purchasers as to the results they should expect, the following requirements of a receiving outfit are cited, and should be aimed at and demanded: (a) Quality of speech at maximum volume is essential. (b) Selectivity to permit of proper separation between local and distant programmes. (c) Selectivity and range to ensure long distance reception under normal atmospheric conditions. (d) Simplicity of control, including tuning, regulation of volume, and supply of power. Shielding—either whole or partial—presents another field in which every amateur has an opportunity of doing something of note and with the added prospect of solving a difficulty by efficient and economical means hitherto unthought of.