Wireless Telegraphy. CONNECTION BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 4, 1 February 1906, Page 89

Wireless Telegraphy. CONNECTION BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND.

Captain L. E. Walker (Third Battalion Durham Light Infantry), representative of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, recently arrived m the colony to confer with Sir Joseph Ward regarding the establishment of communication by wireless telegraph between New Zealand and Australia. Captain Walker has the promise of the Commonwealth Postmaster-general, Mr. Austin Chapman, that if New Zealand will reciprocate m a wireless telegraph scheme, the Government will consider the advisability of calling for tenders for the installation of a high power station somewhere on the coast. The object of this station, he explains, would be to open up communication with New Zealand, Tasmania, and some of the islands in Bass Straits. At the present time the Marconi Company is carrying out practically the entire naval and commercial application of wireless telegraphy throughout the world. A few of the contracts are those with the Governments of Great Britain, Italy, Canada, Newfoundland, Belgium, United States, Russia and Chilli; the Congo Free States, Lloyd's, and the principal British, German, American, Dutch, Italian, and French shipping companies. The Admiralty contract gives the Company the sole right of supplying British men-o'-war with tuned wireless apparatus. With the Board of Trade the Company's contract is for the use of the apparatus on board lightships and on lighthouses. The contract with the British Postmaster-general provides for the collection of messages for transmission to ships at sea, and the delivery of all messages received from ships at sea. In the first three months of the arrangement being in foree — from January ist to March 31st, 1905 — no less than 1766 messages were dealt with by the post office. The contract with Lloyd's is a most important one, being for a period of fourteen years. The contract with Canada covers the long distance station at Glace Bay, Cape Breton, which, since 1902, has been able to communicate with Poldhu, Cornwall. It also covers the two stations communicating across the Belle Isle Straits, established in 1901, and it provides, furthermore, for the five stations on the St. Lawrence for the purpose of rendering safer the navigation of this dangerous river, as well as for the opening up of an efficient substitute for the land line service along the shores of the St. Lawrence.