THE WONDERS OF WIRELESS.

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 28, 27 January 1928, Page 4

THE WONDERS OF WIRELESS.

The advances made in the technical perfection of radio Have followed so closely upon the heels of one another that the capacity for wonder has become almost satiated, and one is prepared to accept everything as it comes as inevitable and in the due order of things. From this attitude there is required some little incident to thrust the real wonder home to the mind of the immense progress being made while we carry on our daily work. Such a thought-provoking incident is revealed this week by Mr. Sellens, the well-known Wellington short-wave enthusiast, ir his record of having heard, on Saturday morning, a telephonic conversation between Britain and ‘America so clearly as to follow the sense and text of the conversation. The feat of hearing either station concerned separately is no new one, and amateurs in New Zealand have already conversed with both countries. But there is something in the incident of New Zealand, twelve thousand miles from. Britain, quietly listening to the very words of converse with America, which grips the imagination. The wireless telephonic service between U.S.A. and England has been operative for some time and there is now talk of extending the direct service from the United States to European countries. The beam service for commercial purposes has proved so efficient as to imperil the old cable services, and some combination and compromise for mutual good seems the obvious outcome. So tar New Zealand’s volume of business has not induced beam development, but a co-ordination of the serVices indicated would open to us the facilities and advantages of the Australian beam station. The world is hastening on ail sides towards closer associations and quicker communications. [Phe new service may be resisted in some parts by entrenched interests and may not at first receive that welcome that it Should, but there will be no gainsaying the demand for progress. All aspects of radio in their quickened service to the public demand consideration; those semi-public bodies who, as yet, are loath to open to ‘he newcomer those facilities which the Press, the first servant of the public, at first won tardily, and now hold as a privileged right, will inevitably | yield to the public desires, and through radio the public will have at command the resources of the world for the speedy transmission of thought and the acquisition of news. Television, too, is coming, and with it the wonders of wireless would seem, for the moment, to be exhausted-unless then begins the big scale transmission of electrical energy without wires? Where will the end be?