WIRELESS INSTALLED FOR T.B. PATIENTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 230, 17 December 1927, Page 13

WIRELESS INSTALLED FOR T.B. PATIENTS

ONEHUNGA GIFT On a quiet afternoon the visitor to tho Epsom Infirmary, with its 72 T.B. patients, will see, not a collection of people staring idly into space with nothing to occupy the long hours of the day, but will be greeted by smiling faces looking out between earphones | which are conveying the latest on the air from IYA. The installation of a wireless set with 72 pairs of earphones is the result of four months’ work on the part of Mrs. W. C. Coldicutt, Mayoress of Onehunga, and president of the Onehunga branch of the Hospital Auxiliary, in collecting donations and. soliciting support of the public to the worthy object. The pleasing feature of the installation is the absence of a loud-speaker, the phones enabling the patients to moderate tlie reception of the concerts at will. An amplifier in an institution of this kind would not be popular with those who had no particular wish to listen in, but while everyone enjoys the same broadcast with the phones, they do so individually. Dr. McKelvie, who attends the patients, says they have brightened up a great deal since the first reception on Thursday evening, and their enjoyment of the week’s continuous broadcast by IYA is unbounded. The reception is to be confined to New Zealand stations because foreign broadcasts do not come over till after the patients’ bedtime, which is set strictly at 10 o’clock. Mrs. Coldicutt is very proud of the new set, and considers it a far better thing for the patients, as well as for the auxiliary, than the old method of taking entertainment parties to the infirmary-