RADIO AND ESPERANTO

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 575, 30 January 1929, Page 16

RADIO AND ESPERANTO

INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS An English writer. Gladstone Murray. | in a London periodical, has some interesting remarks to make regarding broadcasting and Esperanto, and the international aspects of broadcasting. Wireless has singularly little respect for national frontiers. The very : idiosyncrasies of the ether pulsations : which result in wireless signals tend to accentuate their disregard of man- j made or geographical frontiers. With regard to wireless, and particularly broadcasting, the policy of self-con-tained nationalism is not consistent with efficient service. Thus, in con- : nection with wireless broadcasting, there is a new and compelling factor making for effective international action. For example, successful j broadcasting in Northern Ireland is to a certain extent dependent upon successful broadcasting in Southern Germany. Therefore there must be some agreed distribution of the limited ether channels available. This, in the case : of Europe, is arranged through the j Union Internationale de Radiophenie, which has its headquarters at Geneva. Thus, brought together chiefly because | of the necessity of co-operation in i order to develop their own systems, the broadcasters of Europe have now formed a cordial partnership of public service. The rearrangement of the ether-channels is perhaps still their main function—one which is continuous and insistent^—but the enlightened conduct of this business led naturally to useful co-operation in other directions and particularly in the exchange of programme material and programmes. The 8.8. C., for instance, began two years ago to relay regular excerpts from Continental programmes. These were collected by wireless link and re-radiated through the British system. A similar procedure was adopted in the other direction with the result that listeners who could not afford the expensive apparatus necessary to receive distant programmes direct were given a taste of the entertainment and instruction contained in foreign programmes. It was discovered, however, that the interchange of these programmes by wireless link did not contain a sufficient factor of safety to make the service dependable or acceptable. For the first two or three occasions defective or irregular reception was counterbalanced by the natural wonder evoked by the novelty of the experience. Subsequently, however, listeners rightly demanded the fulfilment of the conditions of satisfactory service. And the fulfilment of these conditions is one of the tasks now claiming the attention of broadcasting engineers' both here and on the Continent. British listeners are familiar with what has come to be known as the S.B. system. Under this system the 8.8. C. distributes throughout the whole of its 20 stations programme material collected within land-line range of any one of these stations. Landlines carry the programmes to be radiated from each of the 20 stations. A logical extension of this principle is to institute an S.B. system for Europe. It should be possible before long for the 8.8. C. to radiate from all its stations a programme from Berlin or Paris as easily as a programme from Manchester or London. The consequent enrichment in artistic material is obvious. First of all, of course, the international message of good music will be emphasised and permanently consolidated. Then there is bound to be a growing appreciation of special artistic and intellectual developments manifested elsewhere. Then, all the more valuable because it. will happen without any conscious propaganda, the listeners of all countries concerned will come closer together in sympathy and aspiration. International enmity, suspicion, ignorance, cannot exist in the face of broadcasting handled efficiently and with enlightenment. And, as this unifying process develops, the language problem will be very much to the fore. The broadcasting system of each country would naturally be expected to advance the claims of its language as the instrument of acknowledged common usage; nevertheless, each broadcasting system would remain so anxious that its programmes should be acceptable elsewhere that there w*ould be no room for a policy of exclusion. Thus, as I see it, the logical development of the broadcasting position in Europe should couple friendly competition with a tolerant “give and take” attitude. The growth of vitality of a language must be in terms of its gradual and involuntary incorporation into the mental equipment of the peoples concerned. I look upon Esperanto not from the point of view of linguistics—a subject of which I know little—but from the point of view of one who welcomes all agencies which may contribute practically to Continental and world amity, and, seeing that Esperanto has already obtained recognition as a supplementary language of growing importance, it may well be that the future will bring forth a kind of universal bilingualism, in which the great active, virile national languages -would flourish side by side with Esperanto.

CONTROLLING OSCILLATION Threshold oscillation is that peculiar howl which is sometimes experienced on short-wave sets, and which is somewhat similar in sound to a grid-leal: howl. It occurs just about at the point where the set should commence to oscillate in the normal manner, but as soon as the reaction control is tuned to make the set oscillate more strongly, the threshold howl ceases. There are two points which will invariably be found to help matters, if not to completely cure the trouble. The first is to use a higher value gridleak than the usual two megohms, one even as high as five megohms sometimes being desirable. Secondly, the effect of reducing the H.T. voltage on the detector valve should be tried.