TELEVISION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 April 1938, Page 9

TELEVISION

NOT CONSIDERED A RIVAL TO RADIO. INVENTOR IN SYDNEY. The “father of television,” as Mr John Logie Baird has been called, arrived in Sydney recently to attend the World Radio Convention, states a correspondent in an exchange. One of Mr Baird’s first declarations was to define television’s place in relation to broadcasting. “Television,” he said, “is a thing apart from present radio broadcasting, with which it is not a competitor. They are essentially two different things. They require altogether different kinds of transmission and reception apparatus. The public, therefore, should give no credence to any suggestions that television will render obsolete existing broadcast radio receivers. Nor will it compete with radio broadcast reception in the future. It must be regarded as supplementary and not as an alternative or a rival.”

Nevertheless, Mr Baird added, it would be incorrect to assume that television had not reached a stage of public acceptance. When the Coronation was successfully televised in May last year there were only about 500 televisors in use in London; at the end of December there were approximately 9000.

That was rapid development, but it should be noted that there were 2,000,000 broadcast receiving licences in London. In that great metropolis, television receivers were being sold at from £3B up, although a good televisor giving pictures 12in by lOin cost about £6O to £7O. The British Broadcasting Corporation gave two television session a day —one in the afternoon and one at night. Mr Baird said that at the present stage of the process television was a commercial proposition only in large centres of population. London was the only city in which the regular television services were relayed. Notwithstanding that he had actually “spanned” the Atlantic, he agreed that as yet the system was limited for practical purposes to a range of about 30 or 40 miles.

The marvels of the invention he has pioneered are almost the last things that Mr Baird can be induced to talk about. He speaks in a soft and diffident voice, and confines himself, wherever possible, to monosyllables when he is answering questions, but with no suggestion of curtness. He made it clear that his sole intention was to read a scientific paper before the Institute of Radio Engineers.