THE WIRES WERE BUSY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 146, 10 April 1942, Page 11

THE WIRES WERE BUSY

Big Radio And Telephone Hook-Up

HE big radio hook-up of 15 stations, giving progress reports from all over the country on the "Bonds for Bombers’ campaign went off without a hitch. Listeners heard the National Savings Chairman, T. N. Smallwood, call up by telephone from a room in the G.P.O., Wellington, 18 district organisers, from Iavercargill to Whangarei. The conversations, each taking a little more than a minute, were dove-tailed with hardly a second’s pause, each organiser adding his thousands of pounds to the total amount collected. Behind the scenes at the main Wellington telephone exchange there was

plenty of evidence that this split-second efficiency was not achieved without hard work. The Post and Telegraph Department a week or two before had undertaken a direct radio-telephone hook-up between Wellington and New York, but the task of hooking together 18 conversations between points separated by so many hundreds of miles required, if anything, even more careful organisation. Nerve centre of the hook-up was a tall panel, known officially as the toll test board, though to the layman it was nothing more than a maze of dials, wires and switches. In front of the board, half a dozen technical experts worked smoothly and at high speed. At the first section of the panel, one of them prepared for the next call with such warnings as: "Hello, Wanganui. Is that you? This is the carrier room testing before you go on the air. Will you say a few words? Very good. I'll give you your cue in a few minutes." Then, a second or two later, as Mr. Smallwood, at the Post Office, called cheerfully, "Hello, Wanganui, what’s your total to-day?" there was a light. ning manipulation of plugs and circuits,

and Wanganui was on the air. Simultaneously a second operator took over the conversation and "monitored" it to ensure that it went out at the correct volume ("level," naturally, varied according to the distance of the toll stations from Wellington). From an organisational point of view, it was one of the most exacting jobs the Post and Telegraph Department has been called on to undertake for a long time, a complicating factor being the time of the broadcast, one of the busiest of the day for the toll system. To ensure that each call went through to Mr. Smallwood on schedule, the required channels were kept open well in advance, Two rehearsals were carried

out before the P. and T. engineers were satisfied. At the Wellington Post Office a group of officials, including the Minister in Charge of Broadcasting, the Hon. D. Wilson, watched with satisfaction as committee after committee reported bumper business in bonds. Mr. Wilson paid a tribute to the Post and Telegraph Department, the broadcasting services, and the National. Savings organisations, and remarked that it had been an extremely efficient and interesting broadcast.