STATIC "ELIMINATORS"

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 24, 30 December 1927, Page 13

STATIC "ELIMINATORS"

Inventive means for minimising statie in radio reception are embodied in ap--proximately a hundred United States patents, granted up to the present." These contrivances, so-called "static eliminators,’? vary in character ‘and inagnitude from improvised violin strings, which are unresponsive to atmospheric disturbances, to apparatus resembling a miniature cannon and which is so cumbersoine as to require a motor truck for its transportation Since the first patent relating to a, separation of atmospheric disturbances from radio signals was granted to Dr. Reginald A. Fessenden, a quarter of a century ago, inyeutive minds have sought a device that would completely eliminate static. ‘Their efforts have been only partially successful ; many instruments and methods reduce this form of interference, but no device has yet been designed that will completely reject or suppress static. This fact was recently emphasised in an editorial written by Hugo Gernsback, editor of the New York "Radio News,’’ in which it was stated that an electrical conmpany had made the gesture of offering a bounty of 1,000,000 dollars (£200,000) for a simple, practical, and inexpensive static eliminator.